All over St Andrews, that catchy little slogan “Everything has led to this” was emblazoned across the stands at the 150th Open Championship. At a media conference at Prestwick last week, several of the members made mischievous mention of how they would have liked it to be made plain that they were a part of that “Everything.”
“If we are talking about the Open, it didn’t start there at all,” said one. “It started here.”
Which it did. Beginning in 1860, the first 12 Opens were hosted and organised by Prestwick Golf Club on the southwest coast of Scotland, and it was only after Young Tom Morris had won the Open championship belt outright in 1870 that changes were made. After an Open-free year in ’71, all three of Prestwick, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (they were then based in Musselburgh) and St Andrews contributed £10 apiece to what is now the Claret Jug. And when that was not ready for the Open of ’72, Prestwick had a gold medal struck for the winner who, for the fourth time in a row, was Young Tom Morris.
Not wanting to get in the way of St Andrews’ 150th Open festivities, Prestwick delayed its celebrations until now. Today, Monday 17th October, it is 162 years to the day since Willie Park Snr. from Musselburgh won the inaugural Open at Prestwick with a score of 174 over three laps of what was then a 12-hole course, to win by two from Tom Morris Snr. Old Tom Morris, incidentally, had designed the course and was then serving as Prestwick’s “Keeper of the Green.”
Prestwick’s way of celebrating was to spend £50,000 on re-creating those original 12 holes. Dave Edmondson, the head greenkeeper, was put in charge of the operation, and what a glorious job he made of reviving the old times both for the media, their members, and others including the captains of all those courses which have at some point hosted the Open. In telling the press about his task, Edmondson mentioned that he had wondered whether there is a tendency to “over-manage” some of today’s courses.
The field for the Open of 1860 was eight-strong, while the overall proceedings – two rounds in the morning followed by lunch in the town’s Red Lion ahead of the final round – took no more than 4½ hours.
When you think back to the denouement of this year’s Open, you had to wonder whether some of the old magic has gone a-missing. Firstly, there was the richly talented Cameron Smith squirming uncomfortably as he desisted from talking about whether his future might lie with LIV Golf. Secondly, there was an all-corporate move on the part of the R&A, which did not want to go along with Prestwick’s request for Smith to be presented with the original Open belt in front of the public on so momentous a golfing occasion. (The extra dimension to the presentation did take place, but it was in the privacy of the secretary’s office.)
Just as we have got used to being fobbed off with “It’s all to do with COVID” as an answer for every downhill trend in the service industry, so the message that has been going the rounds about some of the hierarchy’s decision-making of late goes like this: “It’s all about branding.” If, of course, it is “good branding” that is enabling the R&A to promote golf in all corners of the world, there’s maybe no harm in it.
However, Global Golf Post first noticed a sorry side to this modern trend when the lovely old Tom Morris Shop overlooking the 18th hole on the Old Course had its name changed to “The Open.” There cannot be too many Americans who fail to wonder how on earth such a thing could have happened.
Last Wednesday, I had a long chat with Mungo Park, the great-grandson of Willie Park Snr., that first Open champion. This Mungo, who is named after one of Willie Park Jnr.’s brothers, is understandably a little sore about how the R&A would appear to have lost a bit of interest in Musselburgh’s contribution to Open history over the years. He had felt the warmth of their embrace at the 125th-anniversary celebrations, but it was not quite the same this time around.
Mungo Mk. 2, an architect who lives in Gloucestershire, is putting the finishing touches to the book “Musselburgh, the Cradle of Golf,” which is all about the town’s great golfing families who perhaps have been overlooked in contrast to the St Andrews stars. Aside from the Parks, Bob Ferguson and David Brown, he mentioned the Dunn twins, Willie and Jamie.
“Musselburgh were ahead of the game at the time when so many of the famous Edinburgh clubs moved down the coast. In the golfing sense, they were ahead of everyone. It took St Andrews 30 years to catch up.”
The latest Mungo said that Willie Park Snr. and Jnr. both putted better than the next man. In the case of Willie Park Jnr., a favourite family tale tells of how he was barely in his teens when he would escape through his bedroom window to putt against all the old Musselburgh golfers “for pennies.”
Not wanting his parents to know what he was up to, Willie kept all of the pennies in a bag and when, at 17, he left home to be the professional at Alnmouth in England, he buried his bag of riches under a gas light.
Four years later, new housing had been built over the top of his hidden treasure.
Today, of course, all the talk is of LIV millions and billions as opposed to pennies.
The fear here is that everything is getting so big – including the 290,000-strong crowd at this year’s Open – as to dilute the memories and traditions on which the game was based.
Top: A stone cairn at Prestwick marks the spot where the first tee of the original 12-hole Open links began in 1860.
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