The British is coming
CARNOUSTIE, SCOTLAND | For some reason, I have long viewed the Open Championship as the beginning of summer, even though the tournament comes a few weeks after that season has officially started. There is something about watching contestants battle bad bounces, fierce winds and the occasional rain squall that evokes this time of year for me as much as farm fresh tomatoes and corn.
I also like how long the days are in July – and how they allow me to watch golf most of the day, tuning in and out as I choose. And I relish the TV images of rugged dunes and rumpled fairways, to say nothing of white-capped seas we often see in the distance.
Equally as enticing are the stories of past Opens and the golfers who made their marks during them, for better or worse.
Generally, I am home in the days preceding the Open. But this summer, I was ensconced for a week in this Scottish burg, which is as closely associated with the world’s oldest golf tournament as any other on earth. And that only heightened my already high anticipation for this year’s championship.
Part of that was fueled by the view of the local links from my room in the Carnoustie Golf Hotel. Roughly 875 acres in size, the property boasts three courses: the Championship, which starts and finishes right below the hotel, and the Buddon and Burnside beyond. I regularly marveled at the subtle humps and bumps of the golf holes before me, pocked in places by revetted pot bunkers, their bases covered by ivory-colored sand. The swaths of heather and gorse, too, and the sinister Barry Burn snaking along and across parts of the 17th and 18th holes. And I thought of what a great place this is to play golf and also watch the best in the world compete.
I was also reminded of what a top-notch Open venue Carnoustie is.
The list of those who have won here speaks to that, beginning with Tommy Armour in 1931 and continuing with Henry Cotton six years later, Ben Hogan in 1953, Gary Player in 1968 and then Tom Watson in 1975. Paul Lawrie, Pádraig Harrington and Francesco Molinari have also raised the Claret Jug in triumph here.
But Carnoustie is also about the golfers who saw their dreams of an Open victory collapse on the final hole of the Championship course. Like Johnny Miller, who in 1975 took two shots to get out of a fairway bunker that now bears his name to miss the playoff by a stroke. And Sergio García, who bogeyed 18 in 2007 to fall into a playoff with Harrington that the Spaniard eventually lost.
And who can forget the hash that Frenchman Jean Van de Velde made of the final hole in 1999, posting a triple bogey to drop into a playoff that he, too, failed to win.
Of all the golfers who prevailed at Carnoustie, I am most impressed with Hogan. For one thing, he had to qualify for the 1953 Open even though he had already won that year’s Masters and U.S. Open. And for another, the Hawk needed to get used to the smaller ball employed in the championship back then. To do that, Hogan spent a couple of weeks pre-Open practicing on the nearby links at Panmure.
Clearly, that was time well spent, and after qualifying on the Burnside with a 70, he went on to win the main event, shooting a final-round 68 even though he was battling the flu to prevail by four shots.
Hogan made such an impact in the area that he had not one but two holes named after him in the wake of his winning the only Open he ever entered. One was the sixth on the Championship course, which became known as Hogan’s Alley for the daring way he drove his tee shot down the left side of the fairway even though the slightest pull would have sent his ball out of bounds. And the other was No. 6 at Panmure, where the club also installed a bunker short and right of the green at Hogan’s suggestion.
It has taken a while, but summer – and the Open Championship – are finally here.
John Steinbreder
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Top: Ben Hogan at the 1953 Open Championship at Carnoustie
BETTEMAN COLLECTION, GETTY IMAGES