1986 Open Championship - Sharkive - Sharkwatch

Towards the end of the last century, Scottish landowners, particularly the nobility among them, were more likely to have sought their sporting pleasures from river bank, glen or moor than from the golf links which, even then, were dotted in fair profusion round their coastline. The Marquis of Ailsa was a notable exception and for the good of Turnberry, British golf and, more recently, the Open Championship, it was as well that he was.

He might also have earned an approving nod from modern owners of stately homes who have had to develop increasingly commercial instincts in order to keep the wolf from their illustrious doors. By joining forces with the Glasgow and South West Railway, the Marquis gave rise to the first purpose-planned golfing resort centre in Britain.

The first thing this entailed was for the railway company to extend the line from Ayr to Girvan and then build a station and hotel, a more logical sequence of events than in the 1960s when British Railways planned a new hotel in St. Andrews and promptly closed the branch line from Leuchars. However, of all the many people who deserve credit for guiding Turnberry's star in the early days, rescuing it after the last war when all seemed lost, and masterminding its finest hour in 1977/ the Marquis was the first to realise its potential.

This was no surprise or accident since golf had been in his family's blood for many years before that. In his wonderful book, A History of Golf (J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd.), Robert Browning sketched an early branch of the family tree by pointing out that the title of Marquis of Ailsa was a relatively modern creation, the ancestors of the Kennedy family being Earls of Cassilis and Lords of Culzean.

In making reference to chole, a game in which both sides played the same ball and were perfectly entitled to hit it - intentionally - into some horrible spots, rather as in croquet where you can hit your opponent's ball into the flower bed, he made the general point that sinister subterfuge was less likely to happen at golf. But he did instance an occasion to the contrary in which an ancestor of the Marquis of Ailsa played a match on "the linkes atte Air" against a monk of Crossragruel, the stake on the result being the monk's nose.

Browning went on to say that "if there is any foundation for the story, the match was probably part of the campaign of intimidation by which the then Earl of Cassilis in 1570 forced Allan Stewart, commendator of the abbey of Crossragruel, to sign a conveyance of the abbey lands to the earl."

"The luckless commendator, who was somehow prevailed upon to visit the earl at Culzean, was later conveyed to a lonely tower called the Black Vault of Dunure (the ruins of which still stand), and there roasted over, a slow fire until he agreed to sign the deeds."

More than three centuries later, the Marquis of Ailsa had no need to resort to such methods in order to become captain of Prestwick Golf Club in 1899. He was elected by popular acclaim as a golfer of some ability, conscious of the part his Club had played in starting the Open Championship and in running it, first on an individual basis, and then in tandem, until such time as the Royal and Ancient took ultimate control.

The Marquis no doubt witnessed some of the early Opens which may have strengthened his motive for wanting his own course, although it may equally have stemmed from a desire not to have to travel so far for his golf; in those days, the journey to Prestwick, even with coach and four, must have been quite an undertaking.

On the other hand, he knew better than anyone the glories of Turnberry's setting and perhaps felt that that alone was a strong marketing force. Subsequently, the nearest equivalent to Turnberry in terms of setting, proved to be Pebble Beach - with which it is often compared. There, Sam Morse assumed command of Del Monte Properties and established a veritable gold mine.

All Turnberry lacked in those early days was the proper communication, a void which the Marquis filled by his agreement with the railways. By 1906, the station and hotel had opened and a frequent and fast train service from Glasgow established together with a direct sleeper service from London. This had the obvious merit of the carriages being unhooked in a siding at Turnberry, the occupants strolling, when the spirit moved them, along a covered way to the hotel for breakfast.

Not that the building of the railway was entirely free from opposition. The Scotsman newspaper of June 3rd 1903, reported "there are navvies now, gangs of them, defacing the fair face of Carrick along a route where Carrick looks across to Arran, to Ailsa Craig, to the outer gates of Clyde. They are making a new line of railway that is to carry the traveller through the country of the Kennedys and the heart of the land of Bums."

Reaction to change was no different then than it is now, or the speed with which criticism can become muted. On May 17th 1906, the Glasgow Herald covered the inauguration of the Maidens and Dunure Railway which took the form of "a complimentary visit to the magnificent new hotel and golf links at Turnberry."

The entire description that followed was centred on the hotel rather than the course although the Ayr Observer and Galloway Chronicle, covering the same occasion a day later, talked of "being afforded the privilege of a game at golf over the splendid course laid out in 1901 by Willie Fernie."

The Fernies, Willie and George, of Troon and Dumfries, were respected pro-greenkeepers in the latter half of the 1880s and Willie was therefore the obvious candidate to submit the design for Turnberry at a time when golf course architecture had not yet become a recognised profession. The results of his labours were two courses - No.1 measuring 6,115 yards and No. 2 5,115 yards with both open on Sundays which was as rare as a Scotsman confessing publicly to a dislike of the bagpipes or haggis.

An unusual occurrence, not to say unique, was the appointment of Tom Fernie, Willie's son, as Turnberry's first professional. To take over on a course which your father had designed had a precedent only in Young Tom Morris succeeding his father, Old Tom, as Open champion. But Turnberry's first chapter was a distressingly short one.

By 1914 and the advent of war, Turnberry was commissioned as a training centre for the Royal Flying Corps and other Commonwealth Flying Units. The flying machines of those magnificent men, among them J. B. McCuddon, who won the Victoria Cross, were mercifully light and did not require the concrete runways that scarred the landscape 25 years later although the risks of military flying, then in its infancy, is reflected in the War Memorial to the fallen which stands on the hill beside the present twelfth green.

The hotel was requisitioned for that period as an officers' mess but life quickly got back to normal and Carters of Raynes Park were soon engaged to build a new No. 2 course which became so good and popular that titles based on numerical merit were no longer appropriate. When the London Midland and Scottish Group assumed control of the Glasgow and South West railways, and took over total ownership of Turnberry from the Marquis, the now familiar names, Ailsa and Arran, were conferred on the courses but Turnberry's championship status, begun in 1912 with Gladys Ravenscroft winning the Ladies British Open Amateur, was admirably preserved with a succession of ladies championships, British and Scottish, between the wars.

The most notable was that in 1921 when Cecil Leitch inflicted on Joyce Wethered her only defeat in the final of a national championship, an event graced by the presence of Bernard Darwin who described as "memorable" the first round meeting of Leitch and Alexa Stirling, the reigning American champion from the same Club in Atlanta as Bobby Jones. Memorable in a different context was the weather for that game. Turnberry is not alone among seaside links in being heaven or hell - often in the same day - and Darwin revealed years later how the dripping notes he tried to keep provided as vivid a memory as the golf he had faithfully followed.

Quite why the men were so reluctant to extend their patronage for championships is one of the more major mysteries. It is true that Scotland has always been rich in the number of its championship venues, not all so welcoming to women, but Turnberry was conscious that there were improvements to be made. Consequently, Major Cecil Hutchison, a well known name in golf course architecture who had had a hand in shaping Gleneagles, was called in.

It was no doubt that his work there prompted his invitation to try and boost the Ailsa's popularity by eliminating some of the blind shots and introducing more length, a task completed in 1938 which earned the commendation of Darwin.

Had Hitler's wickedness been supressed in the 1930s, it is possible that Hutchison's work would have been further hailed as fit for an Open but no sooner had it been unveiled, than heavy dust covers were laid over it, so to speak. Its subsequent destruction was as devastating as if the art treasures of Florence had been lost in a fire or the Mona Lisa the target of vandals.

Turnberry's geographical position was thought to be of such strategic importance that its conversion a second time by the War Office was ordered. Many other of our great links suffered to the extent of being defended by pill boxes, mines and barbed wire to make inva- sion more difficult, some like Prince's with lasting consequences. The post-war Prince's has never hosted an Open, as the first did in 1932, but at least it survived.

Turnberry's very existence was threatened; and that for a small town or village that lived for its golf and because of its golf was verging on calamity. Commandeered by RAF Coastal Command, fairways, bunkers, tees and greens were flattened by insensitive bulldozers and converted by concrete mixers to landing strips capable of handling the Liberators and Beaufighters so essential to the spotting of German V-boats.

Training for this involved a lot of low flying over the Firth of Clyde with more than the odd casualty, a state of affairs that led seasoned fliers to question the suitability of Turnberry for the purpose. However, whatever the wisdom of turning it into an airfield, it didn't alter the desolation that faced those with the re- sponsibility of picking up the pieces in 1946.

Many of the hotel directors, on surveying the scene, felt like running up the white flag from its masthead. They saw no future, but one man who did was Frank Hole, Chairman of British Transport Hotels Ltd., as the group became with the nationalisation of the railways by Attlee's government. Hole fought Whitehall in a long and vigorous battle for financial compensation which led in 1949 to a contract at last being let to Suttons of Reading to perform the miracle of transformation of runway back to fairway.

The magic wand they waved was conjured up by Philip Mackenzie Ross who masterminded the whole operation even to the extent of building plasticine models that showed the slopes, shapes and contours he wanted. There has never been, either before or since, an operation to compare with it; nor a project where every square yard of fairway, tee and green was turfed instead of seeded.

By 1951, troubled waters were calm once more, the Ailsa course reopened and rave notices flooded in. Demand to hold tournaments and championships was enormous. It owed much to the design of Mackenzie Ross, whose modem version was an undoubted masterpiece; but the biggest effect it had on first time visitors was why they hadn't been there before. With Turnberry, seeing really is believing. It was "as if a new, promised land had been discovered.

The heart of the Ailsa lies on the coastal stretch of holes from the fourth to the eleventh, a mingling of dune and rocky crag with the close proximity of the ocean. This is most apparent on the tees of the fourth, ninth and eleventh, but broader horizons encompass some of the most stunning scenery in golf's firmament.

My own introduction came in the Amateur Championship of 1961 and I don't remember being more moved by the first sight of any course or, more accurately, the course and the splendours of its surroundings as seen from the terrace of the hotel. It was a morning when the full panoply was unfurled. The peaks of Arran, the Mull of Kintyre and the sunlit waters lapping Ailsa Craig whose reputation for providing the finest curling stones was always well plugged on television by Henry Longhurst.

Turnberry's sterner moods are exemplified by the day in 1973 when a fierce wind blew many of the tents down in the John Player Classic and on the first day of the 1986 Open which may have been some revenge for the rel- ative peace and quiet of 1977. With any seaside links, you learn to take the Tough with the smooth, but it wasn't just the likelihood of a brisk wind to stiffen the defences of the Ailsa that boosted its reputation.

Its graduation to the highest ranks was dazzlingly swift, an eminence that was doubly justified by the quality of the champions it produced. Michael Bonallack used the 1961 Amateur as a launching pad to the greatest re- cord since the faraway days of John Ball; Christy O'Connor, Eric Brown and David Thomas were as worthy matchplay champions as the PGA or the News of the World could have found; Sandy Lyle landed the European Open in the best manner possible in 1979, a final round of 65; Philip Parkin won the 1983 Amateur as easily as anyone could have done; and no finer compliment could have been paid than when Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus made the 1977 Open their very own.

It took the crowning glory of that Open to complete a romantic tale that tells of so much change, upheaval and earnest faith. It is important for each new generation of golfer to be reminded of this because historical records can soon be lost, particularly such detail as the loss of the railway from the hotel's back door.

However, as vivid a memory of Turnberry as any for me took the form of the Braemar tournament in 1964, which was a fully-fledged PGA tournament with the novel variation that the number of clubs a player was permitted to carry, or have carried, was limited to seven.

Apart from appealing to the traditionalists who believe that the game has been made harder, not easier, by being allowed fourteen clubs - never mind the effect it has had on the speed of play - it encourages the strokemaker and not those stereotyped golfers who treat .every shot the same. Lionel Platts' winning score in far from easy conditions was 288 although Turnberry, in most normal circumstances, has never denied success or a spectacular score to those who earn it.

There is no trickery or deceipt. The problems, if difficult, are natural and all plain to see - the hallmark of a great architect. Mackenzie Ross struck the perfect balance between what is challenging and what is unfair. There is frequently a thin dividing line, but it was the amateurs as much as the professionals who gave the Ailsa course the recognition necessary to its rapid climb up the charts once its rehabilitation period was over.

In the sadly defunct match between Amateurs and Professionals in 1958, it was the amateurs who handed out a lesson to the masters; two of the most notable results were the defeats of Eric Brown and Christy O'Connor by Joe Carr and Reid Jack. However, following the Home Internationals in 1960, the blue riband came with the staging of the Walker Cup in 1963.

There were hopes, too, of a home victory at the start of the second day. The American team that included Deane Beman, Billy Joe Patton and Charlie Coe were behind by 7 1/2 matches to 4 1/2 and wearing a distinctly worried look, but on the Saturday morning all four foursomes slipped away from the British and Irish, two of them through calamities on the sixteenth, and the afternoon brought no trace of a revival.

The next few years brought limelight in the form of countless pro-ams and pro-celebrity televised matches which introduced millions to the scenic delights now familiar to those understandably tempted to go and see for themselves. To set the domestic record straight, the last chapter in the story of Turnberry came when Margaret Thatcher's government sold the railway hotels as part of their privatisation scheme and Sea co, later called Venice-Simplon Orient-Express Hotels became the new owners.

Thus ended an eighty-year connection with the railways, but an insistence upon redoubling the search for excellence regarding all aspects of Turnberry was indicative of how highly they rate the asset value of their new possession. It is nothing short of a national golfing monument.

Writers Renton Laidlaw Norman Mair Alister Nicol Donald Steel Michael Willams Mark Watson	Photographers Lawrence Levy Brian Morgan
	Editor Bev Norwood