August 8, 2008 












Though the weather was less than ideal, the 115th Open Champiosnship at Turnberry was a memorable occasion which the Championship Committee of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club is pleased to have recorded in this publication. In the winds of the first day the average score soared above 78 strokes. Then Greg Norman, our eventual champion, returned a 63 on the second day to equal the lowest score in Open Championship history. He held a one-stroke advantage after the rainy third round and came home five strokes clear on the marvellous fourth day when, at last, the beaustiful setting of Turnberry was seen at its best.

A.J. Low
Chairman of Championship Committee
Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews

Foreword
By Greg Norman

I've never cried on a golf course before, but walking down the seventeenth and eighteenth in the final round at Turnberry, I was fighting to hold back the tears. Especially on the seventeenth. When I hit my approach in there about five or six feet, the people went crazy. That's the dominant reflection I have from winning the 115th Open Championship at Turnberry. The people. They fell in behind us during the last one hundred and fifty yards of the seventeenth and the walk to that green was just as strong an emotion as during the traditional rugby scrum on the eighteenth fairway because by that time I realised and convinced myself that the championship was mine as long as I signed the scorecard correctly.

Norman equaled an Open record with a stellar 63 on Friday.

Truth be known, even when I was sitting at the presentation table waiting for them to give me the trophy, I was so scared I had done something wrong with the card. I just knew somebody was going to walk up and say, "Gee, I'm sorry, Greg, but we can't give this to you after all." I was petrified that I might have signed the card wrong or put down my nine-hole score in the box for the ninth hole.

It had all been so long in coming and after all the frustrations of the near-misses in the U.S. Open and U.S. Masters, I couldn't believe I was sitting there in the champion's chair and they were going to give me the championship trophy. It was only when I had that wonderful old loving cup in my hands that I convinced myself I had truly and irrevocably won.

Walking down the eighteenth was, in a word, overwhelming.

To get a standing ovation in any walk of life - professor, lawyer, president, whatever - is a wonderful experience. Winning a golf championship is a wonderful thing, especially when it's the British Open, which is the true Open, the oldest championship in golf and in the country where I first won a professional tournament in Europe after venturing away from my native Australia. But the true reward is the emotions of the moment - the emotions of the spectators, of my friends, of the other players like Jack Nicklaus and Bruce Devlin and Fuzzy Zoeller and all the other people who got wrapped up in it just as much as I did. The emotion, to me, was the greatest thrill of winning the Open because I've never before experienced it to that degree.

1986 Open Championship Archive
ForewordBy Greg Norman
The VenueBy Donald Steel
The First Day: A Cold And Windy StartBy Michael Williams
The First Day Commentary: Fickle Nature, Fickle MemoriesBy Mark Wilson
The Second Day: The Great White Shark Hits For 63By Michael Williams
Second Day Commentary: Norman Lives By The SwordBy Renton Laidlaw
The Third Day: A Test of Everyone's PatienceBy Michael Williams
Third Day Commentary: The End Of America's DominanceBy Alister Nicol
The Fourth Day: A Major Victory, At LastBy Michael Williams
Fourth Day Commentary: A Triumph Of Positive AttitudeBy Norman Mair

Writers

Renton Laidlaw
Norman Mair
Alister Nicol
Donald Steel
Michael Willams
Mark Watson
Photographers

Lawrence Levy
Brian Morgan
Editor

Bev Norwood

Authorized by the Championship Committee of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. (© 1993, Partridge Press)


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