1986 Open Championship - Sharkive - Sharkwatch

There was an air of suspicion in the days Ieading up to the Open Championship. It was too calm. Scarcely a breath of wind stirred the flags and as a fishing smack nosed slowly back towards Girvan harbour so it tore a crack, as if across a mirror. There was some talk of the rough, which was deep and tangled. There were the odd mutterings about the limited width of the fairways, between twenty-five and thirty yards, which may not be all that narrow but seems so when the fairway bends in the driving area. Generally however one had seldom heard so much praise for the conditioning of an Open Championship course. "Never better" seemed the concensus.

And then, on the very eve of the championship, the weather broke. A near-gale sprang up from the south and suddenly it was a whole new ball game. Players set out for the final tuning of their games in the last practice round and gave up. Others decided not to go out at all. Some said to themselves "What the hell!" and carried on. Sandy Lyle, the defending champion, was one of them. He was worth listening to afterwards.

At the eighteenth, which he had been playing with a three wood and an eight iron, he now needed two drivers. At the fifteenth, earlier perhaps a five iron to this teasing short hole, he had to hit a driver as well. At the sixteenth, where a gentle if delicately judged pitch is needed to clear Wilson's burn, he needed a one iron to be sure. At once the complaints mounted.

The rough was so savage, said Greg Norman, that he and Raymond Floyd had discussed the possibility of a player injuring himself as he tried to extricate himself. Could that player then sue the Royal and Ancient for damages? He did not know but he thought it an intriguing question. Overnight the fairways had also seemed to have come down by about ten yards in width and there were broad hints that something should be done about it.

Hurriedly Michael Bonallack, Secretary of the Royal and Ancient, was called for a Press conference. He was as unflappable and calm as one would expect of the most senior officer in golf's oldest institution. The Championship Committee still regarded the course to be fair. There was no point in cutting the semi-rough because it acted as a cushion in front of the thick rough and there was less point in doing anything with the thick rough because there would be no means of carting it away. And in any case the forecast was that the wind would not be as strong on the morrow.

What no one wanted, least of all the R&A, was a repeat of the very variable weather suffered the year before at Royal St. George's. Then the players out on the afternoon of the first day and the morning of the second had got by far the roughest deal. Lyle had been one of the lucky ones.

Often such changes of weather are dictated by the turn of the tide at high water. A telephone call to the harbourmaster at Girvan revealed that high water would be at around 8 a.m. and then again some twelve hours later. It was his opinion, as a man of the sea, that the weather, whatever it would be, would stay about the same all day.

For all that there was doubt and uncertainty in many minds as Thursday dawned. It was grey, cold and windy; not quite as windy and it had also shifted to the west. Nor were the early omens any better. Ray Stewart, out in the first group at 7.30 a.m., drove into the rough, could not play it and had to take a penalty drop. Some early red figures appeared on the leader boards but they never stayed there for long. Par began to get recognition instead. Then it became the one overs. It was that sort of day.

But there is always someone who gets it round and that man was Ian Woosnam, who last year had played his part in Europe's famous victory in the Ryder Cup. A chunky little Welshman with a stout heart, he played the inward half in 31 for a 70. He was the only man to match par though, realistically, it felt more like five under. Moreover it could be measured against an average score of 78.19.

For a long time it had looked as if Nick Faldo, who has been trying to re-build his swing for the past twelve months with only slow success, had done the trick with a 71 that he brought in soon after lunch. But Woosnam sneaked past him in the early evening and then, as a pale sun began to dip towards the Mull of Kintyre, Gordon J. Brand, Robert Lee and one of that rising crop of young Swedish golfers, Anders Forsbrand, all came in with 71s as well.

Behind them, on 72, were another five, of whom the most significant was perhaps Bernhard Langer, who had prepared for this championship as diligently as anyone. Andrew Brooks, who limits his golf these days only to Scotland, was another, together with two Americans in Ron Commans and Sam Randolph, only recently turned professional, Derrick Cooper, an Englishman, and an Australian, Ian Stanley.

It had not been the most promising of days for the Americans. Gary Koch had managed a 73 and Andy Bean, Donnie Hammond and Bob Tway 74s. Hammond had in fact started sensationally, holing his second shot to the first for an eagle and following it with a birdie at the second. But it did not last and others never got going at all.

Jack Nicklaus took 78 and so did Raymond Floyd, which was hardly to be expected of the American Masters and Open champions. Lyle, the defending champion, kept them company and Seve Ballesteros, the clear favourite at 7-2, could do no better than a 76. No one had talked more confidently beforehand than Greg Norman and when he went out in 35 he was doing better than most. His 39 home hurt but it was not disastrous.

The odd thing about Woosnam's 70 was that there was very little sign of it for nine holes. Indeed it was the opposite when he started with bogeys at the second and third and followed with a four at the sixth, that always difficult short hole. It might even have been a five since he visited both the left rough and a bunker.

There was some cheer when he pitched to twelve feet for a four at the long seventh but a hooked drive at the next led to a six and, with an outward half of 39, the Welshman's thoughts were centred very much on trying to get around in 77 or 78. He knew others were having their troubles too.

Just as suddenly, things began to go right. Woosnam began to putt better. He holed from twelve feet for a three at the tenth, played the next two holes well and then saved par at the thirteenth. But it was without doubt the fourteenth, on the day the most difficult hole on the course, that made his round.

At 440 yards dead into wind, it was an absolute terror. All day there were only thirty-three pars from the one hundred and fifty-three players and no one, until Woosnam, managed to reach it in two. Furthermore he holed the putt for a birdie, the only one there all day, from twenty feet. "It was," he later reflected, "the best one iron I have ever hit in my life. I had watched Hubert Green take a three wood from just behind me and he finished thirty yards short."

That was the inspiration and though there was still a par to be saved at the fifteenth, from a bunker, Woosnam still had an ace card tucked up his sleeve. A drive and six iron to the seventeenth, downwind of course, left him twelve feet from the flag and in went the putt for an eagle. It was the seventh at that hole that day and against par it was the most vulnerable hole. With ninety-six birdies it came out with a playing average of 4.36. The fourteenth, conversely, averaged 5.14. Woosnam said later that he had dreamed all his life of one day leading the Open, though of course he would rather be doing it on the last day than the first. He had also come into the championship with some back trouble but a Troon osteopath, Jan Der Fries, had helped a lot and movement was getting less and less painful.

It was as tough a day as Faldo had known, in the Open anyway. There was another the first day of the Amateur Championship at Hoylake in 1975, that he was convinced was worse. "Every par you got was great and every birdie fantastic," he reflected. When in the rough he took nothing bigger than an eight iron to get out, just to be on the safe side.

Faldo always had his eye on the seventeenth to shore up his round but it was the birdies he also made at the sixteenth and eighteenth that made all the difference. They gave him an inward half of 33 and he got a 71 which, going out~ he had not thought possible.

Brand senior, as he has to be called since there is also a junior, came next with his 71 and very neat it all was too until he took six at the fourteenth. Like many another he had to hack his way through the rough before finding an ugly stance in a bunker from which he was thankful to extricate himself the first time.

Still, it did not matter too much since he finished with two birdies and, having been playing well all year, he felt confident that he could sustain his tempo, which is notable for a very deliberate pause at the top of his backswing. Then came Forsbrand, who had finished second the week before in the Car Care Plan tournament at Moortown, and finally Lee, of the 71s. Here is an engaging young man who made something of a mark at Royal St. George's in 1985 and who has gone from strength to strength since. He had two birdies and an eagle in his last six holes, the impetus having come with his birdie at the thirteenth and saving pars at the next two holes.

Langer's 72 was a good solid start but he was nevertheless irritated with himself. The night before he had experimented with a new sand wedge and thought he could get more stop on the ball. So he took it out with him and at once regretted it. He left a recovery shot in a bunker at the sixth and he could not remember the last time he had done that. Altogether he felt the club had cost him at least four strokes and, had he had a long enough throw, he might well have cast it into the waters of the Firth of Clyde.

Three bogeys in a row from the thirteenth had not helped either and the German described the fourteenth as "impossible"; not even two career-best drivers would have got a him home in two. But just as his round seemed to be collapsing about him, so he pitched to twelve feet at the sixteenth, struck a four iron to nine yards at the seventeenth and holed both putts, the first for a birdie and the next for e an eagle.

Norman had talked as confidently before the championship began as he has ever done and fielded the inevitable questions about his having thrown away great chances in two U.S. Opens and one U.S. Masters (two of them this year) with a nice smile and a shrug as if they had not mattered at all.

It was no surprise therefore to see him start with two birdies in his first three holes. This was more like it but at once he got tangled up with the long grass to the left of the sixth fairway, careered across to the other side and I ended up taking three putts for a six. Normality returned and level par to the turn was good going.

But he made silly mistakes at the eleventh and twelfth, the latter of which led to another double bogey, due in the end to another three putts. There were times when he felt utterly humiliated by the weather. "We were reduced 1 almost to nonentities, hacking along and tryring not to take more than five at a par four," he said.

There was a 74 too from Tsuneyuki (Tommy) Nakajima, who was later to play central part in the championship, but this was a day that made many a giant wilt at the knees. Nicklaus was one. He was rather down in the dumps when he took three putts on each of the first; two greens but he steadied and was no worse off as he came off the eighth green.

But then came a quite disasterous run as he stumbled into five successive bogeys, immediately followed by a double-bogey six at the fourteenth and then another at the sixteenth, where he was in Wilson's burn. A score in the 80s therefore beckoned until, with a late flourish he managed to eagle at the sevenr teenth and birdie at the eighteenth.

If such a finish was reminiscent of that marvellous confrontation between Nicklaus and Watson in 1977, that was about all. Nicklaus was already calling it a "survival tournament", (Americans are generally quite unable to distinguish between a championship and a tournament) and there was nothing from Watson to suggest that he was being motivated by a return to the scene of one of his most famous triumphs. He took 77 and, as has been the case more than once in his career, it was largely a case of bad driving and an equally indifferent short game. Such is hardly the best of combinations.

Watson maintained that the fairways were too narrow and the cross wind made them even harder to find. On reflection he felt that he had used his driver too often but learned from Brand, who used his more sparingly. The American's putting also disappointed him. If it had been better it could have been a 73, he thought; but how many golfers do not come in thinking that?

Floyd's 78 included an eight at the fourteenth and he could not remember the last time he had had one of those. The gorse bushes to the right of the fairway were quite magnetic to a number of players and when Floyd drove into them, he received a cheerful wave from some spectators that his ball had been found. In fact it was not his. Nor were three others unearthed in the same area. So back he went on the lonely trudge to the tee and proceeded to take six with his second ball.

The American champion described the conditions as bad as anything he had experienced and Ballesteros was not very happy either after his 76. What upset the Spaniard particularly was the lamentably sluggish speed of play. He claimed that it had taken him five and a half hours to get round and that, he complained, was ridiculous.

"When it is cold and windy and you have to wait, it is impossible," Ballesteros said. "We spent half an hour standing on the sixth tee," though there may well have been some exageration in that. The point he did make, which was a valid one, was that too many players are not ready to play when it is their turn. Too many players do stand around watching their partners and only "wake up" as it were after they have hit.

But the early days of an Open Championship are not only about leaders. They are also about dreams and shattered dreams. Into such a category fell Andrew Broadway. He had only been a professional for six months and this was his first Open. He had qualified most respectably at Western Gailes with two 70s. Unfortunately, however, he was suffering from some back twinges and had fixed an appointment with a physiotherapist after his round.

A consoling shoulder might have been of more help, for Broadway, 25, from Peacehaven in Sussex, had found no haven of peace in the Turnberry winds. By the tenth hole he had asked Bruce Zabriski, one of his partners, to stop marking his card. It was getting altogether too embarrassing. A succession of early bogeys were disappointing more than alarming. But then came a five at the short (supposedly short!) sixth and, much, much worse, a ten at the seventh when he began to wonder whether he might ever emerge from the rough.

Out in 49 was bad enough but when Broadway then followed with an eight at the tenth, it was altogether too much. "Tear it up," he instructed Zabriski, but he could not resist playing on, just for the fun of it. In fact he played a bit better and at least he had the experience of coming to the eighteenth and a round of applause from the grandstands. All that was missing was his name on the scoreboard. It had been taken down.

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