By JoHn hopkins
The American poet R.F. Murray wrote:
“Would you like to see a city given over,
Soul and body to a tyrannising game?”
I would, and indeed I have. St Andrews is a city given over to a tyrannising game – golf, in this case. It is none the worse for that. In St Andrews, you can play golf, see golf, smell golf, feel golf and pay for golf. You can practically taste it. It is among my most favourite places in the world.
Surprising as it may seem, I wasn’t at St Andrews in 1873 for its first Open, though I would have liked to have been, but I have covered the past nine Opens there (starting in 1970), the thrilling 1971 Walker Cup, and numerous Dunhill Cups and Alfred Dunhill Links Championships. I did attend a dinner to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in 2004 when Peter Alliss delivered a speech which ended with him giving a “V” sign to a primary school teacher who had suggested he would not amount to much in later life.
I have eaten breakfast, lunch and supper in the sturdy grey R&A clubhouse, which may be one of the world’s most impressive and recognisable headquarters of a sporting organisation. I have had a gin and tonic in the chief executive’s office and looked through the telescope on the balcony outside his office. I have seen the original H.M. Bateman cartoon – “The Man Who Missed The Ball on the First Tee at St Andrews” which used to hang in the Gents lavatory – and I have been woken by a kilted piper playing outside my hotel on The Scores.
I have run along the West Sands beach where the opening scene of “Chariots of Fire” was filmed. I was standing behind the 18th green in 1970 when Doug Sanders missed the short putt that would have won him the Open. I have walked over some of the holes in near darkness, and believe me: Until you have done that, you have no idea how undulating the ground is.
I saw Costantino Rocca fluff a chip into the Valley of Sin at the 1995 Open and then hole a putt to get into a playoff with eventual winner John Daly. At this, Rocca fell to his knees as if he were a supplicant in church. Little wonder. The putt was more than 60 feet long. I saw Daly putt from near the first tee to the 18th green and draw a considerable murmuring of pleasure from Scots who believe the ball should be played along the ground rather than through the air.
I bemoan the disappearance of a viewing platform 30 feet above ground to the left of the 11th hole from which an observer could see most of Fife, or so it seemed. A woman was climbing the ladder to reach the viewing platform one day during the 1978 Open when a jobsworth stopped her. “Where’s your badge, madam?” he asked. “It’s all right,” I said. “This is Carmen Ballesteros, and she wants to watch Seve play the Loop.”
At least two dozen of my hundreds of second-hand books about golf, including a much-prized first edition of “The Golf Courses of the British Isles,” described by Bernard Darwin and painted by Harry Rountree, were bought in St Andrews. Wonderful as is the Topping and Company Booksellers on Greyfriars Garden, these were purchased at the long-departed and much-missed Quarto Bookshop on Golf Place, almost next to the Royal and Ancient clubhouse.
On the Old Course you can have a blind putt, and there are double greens so large that seven of those at Pebble Beach could fit into one on the Old Course. Some greens, some wag once wrote, are so big that they need their own postcode.
I am a member of the R&A and have played in one of the annual autumn medals. Later that day after a bibulous dinner, I and Jim Nantz, the distinguished television commentator, were among those who kissed the captain’s balls (gutta perchas that were hanging from an old putter) as we completed our induction into membership.
After receiving the Freedom of St Andrews in 1973, (Bobby) Jones said: “I could take out of my life everything except my experiences at St Andrews and I would still have had a rich and full life.”
I have played the Old Course the conventional way on numerous occasions. The first time was with three Scots, and on the first tee the talk was of money. The £6 green fee had been paid, and now the bets were being struck. “We’ll play for 10, 10 and 30,” Bill said looking at his partner as if for confirmation that such extravagance was in order. He paused, ever the canny Scot, before adding: “Pence, that is.”
Once I played the left-handed course with Sir Michael Bonallack, then plain Michael, when he was secretary of the R&A. On this course you drive from the first tee to the 17th green and the 18th tee to the 16th green and so on. Bonallack wore a battered sweater with a hole near the collar and carried his 30-year-old clubs in a slim bag. “This is going to be interesting,” he said, pulling down the peak of his cap and leaning into the strong wind. The man who knew the course backwards was about to play it backwards. It wasn’t always easy. I stood on the 16th tee and aimed toward the 14th green and was actually playing the fourth hole. I was about to chip to what I thought was the seventh green when a lordly shout stopped me in my tracks. “Oi,” said Bonallack, pointing. “Over there. That’s the 11th green.”
I have been unable to play the first four holes in 3, 4, 3, 2 as Bobby Jones did on his way to winning the 1930 Amateur Championship, the first leg of what I call the Impregnable Quadrilateral and not the more mundane Grand Slam. But he and I do have something in common. After receiving the Freedom of St Andrews in 1973, Jones said: “I could take out of my life everything except my experiences at St Andrews and I would still have had a rich and full life.”
Me, too.
Top: Jack Nicklaus takes a breather during the playoff at the 1970 Open Championship.