1986 Open Championship - Sharkive - Sharkwatch

The memories of the world's best golfers and the ways of nature are equally fickle. In certain stressful situations they can make a volatile brew. So when Turnberry mixed the two, and did the stirring with a thirty miles-an-hour wind, trouble was inevitable. Greg Norman, the eventual winner, rated the result an intimidating, humiliating, hacking, brutal experience. He heard no arguments from the other one hundred and fifty-two challengers who toiled to limit their torture to just 1,251 shots over par for this first day of the 115th Open Championship. They were content to survive as their recollections of the course from nine years before suffered a variety of violent deaths.

Turnberry, 1977, inspired a great many misconceptions. As a newcomer to the Open rota Turnberry gained immediate immortality by producing one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, championship of all time. Tom Watson, the winner at twelve under par, and Jack Nicklaus, second by a shot, had stretched an incredible duel to the extent of matching birdies at the seventy-second hole. The winning total of 268 set a record, as did the secondround 63 by Mark Hayes. As time passed, memories pigeon-holed Turnberry as a lowscoring venue. How wrong can you be! Turnberry made its Open debut in a drought and the rough was so sparse that even the rabbits moved away. The wind came from the less-troublesome north-east, and by Ayrshire coast standards, rarely got above the strength of a breeze. Yet only Watson, Nicklaus and Hubert Green, a faraway third on 279, finished under par. The signs were all there to heed for the return of the Open, but the world's best golfers only like to remember the good things in life. It's part of the religion they call Positive Thinking.

One look at Turnberry, 1986, was enough to jolt them back to reality. The rough was so thick and tall that the rabbits must have had awful trouble finding their way back home. The Championship Committee narrowed the fairways sufficiently to revive Lee Trevino's joke about the need to walk in single file. And, slowly but surely through the practice days, the wind mounted. In the final hours before the real action it became strong enough for Trevino to make a prophetic prediction. Scores of 80 or worse were possible, he thought, if the wind persisted. It did persist and he was among the forty-seven first-round players to take 80 or more. Norman ranked Turnberry as "probably the toughest golf course I have played for any championship." But Norman insisted that he liked the course, the tougher the better, and he hoped the wind would blow for at least two or three days. He got his wish.

Setting up a championship course is often a thankless task. Among one hundred and fifty-three players there will always be those who think the greens are too fast, those who condemn them as too slow, and others who will be critical of the narrow, wide, hard, soft fairways. Turnberry was no exception. Michael Bonallack, who mastered Turnberry well enough to make it the scene of the first of his own five Amateur Championship wins, answered for the Royal and Ancient: "Setting up a course, particularly in this country, is something fairly imprecise. You don't really say how long the rough should be because that is under the control of nature. It's not unfair. But it will be difficult. They will have to play with their heads." And with that advice, unsolicited and therefore within the rules, he stood aside for the Open to start.

The first round began at 7.30 a.m., finished close to 10 p.m., suffered a westerly wind, the most demanding, gusting up to thirty-five miles an hour, and favourite Severiano Ballesteros was made doubly unhappy by his sixover-par 76 having taken over five hours to complete. Everybody seemed to be searching everywhere for golf balls lost in the rough. Some, like the one U.S. Open champion RaymondFloyd hit at the 44O-yards fourteenth, were never found. It cost him a quadruple-bogey eight and score of 78. More unfortunate on the same hole was former U.S. Masters winner Craig Stadler. The wrist he damaged playing a recovery shot became so painful that he withdrew after shooting 82. To add to the general grief, it was bitterly cold. On the tee at 8.30 a.m. to endure the worst of the conditions, Norman looked more massive than usual in layers of protective clothing that included thermal underwear and a couple of cashmere sweaters. Oh, to be in Scotland now that summer is here, they tried to whistle through gritted teeth.

More audible were the cries of anguish as the pain of chilled fingers on the tee, strained wrists in the knee-high rough, and, most of all, wounded pride everywhere, replaced the favoured memories of a sun-blessed Turnberry from 1977. Golf this day, decreed Nicklaus with all the authority of his twenty major championships, had become a game of survival. But there was nothing wrong with that, he opined. The course was the same for them all. Others, choosing to ignore this paramount fact, shifted their arguments about it being unfair on to the shoulders of the spectator. It wasn't the kind of golf he wanted to see for his money, they suggested. What a joke. Since when did the average tournament professional care tuppence for Joe Public? To put that thought to the test and a swift death just propose that he be given full value for his gate money by being allowed inside the ropes, back on the fairways along with the television cameras and boom microphones.

Fortunately, the hysterics were tempered by sufficient voices of reason. The understanding and maturity of Floyd stood out. He could easily have bleated about losing a ball at the fourteenth, where the head-on wind had the green out of reach in two shots for a lot of the day. Instead, he took his punishment, joking about how he found four golf balls lost by others. " Any time I was in the rough it was penal. In the situation, a championship, wind, cold, these are the hardest conditions I have ever played in. Unfortunate, but that's the way it is." Floyd's exemplary, sporting acceptance of a cruel day stretched to the point of refusing a proferred excuse. What was the real par for the course he was asked at his post-78 conference? "The card says 70 and 70 is what it is for me and the rest," Floyd insisted. He is a good ambassador.

Floyd recognised and put into perspective what a championship is all about. It certainly isn't about target. golf, pitch-and-putt stuff with mile-wide fairways and greens given the monsoon treatment every night. The Open Championship has to be the ultimate challenge of talent, mental capacity for the game, resolution and adaptabilityWhen a thirty-five-milesan-hour wind is howling up, down or across a twenty-four-yards fairway bordered by more hay than some farmers see at harvest time, then trying to read a yardage chart through eyes wet and running from the cold has to be nonsense. It's all "feel" sensing that a seven iron is sufficient to cover 209 yards downwind, and having the confidence to use it.

Norman did at the short fifteenth, on the way to his starting 74 alongside Floyd in the worst of the early morning weather. "A very brutal day for golf," was his verdict with the thoughtful rider: "You can feel a non-entity out there, hacking around the rough, shooting a 74 that feels like a 64 at the finish." The strength of the wind made it always extremely difficult to control the ball, close to impossible at times, and as a result some of the best players in the world were being humiliated. It didn't matter whether you were a good tournament professional, an amateur or just a week-end hacker, you have to know where the ball is going, he said. And at cruel Turnberry this day, they couldn't be sure. The conditions created guesswork. "Today was the kind of day when you walk off the course with a headache from concentrating and fighting the wind."

But the Open Championship is meant to be about mastering tough courses, humps and hollows, rough thick enough to punish, wind and rain. It is supposed to be an examination for all fourteen clubs in the bag while placing equal demands on power and finesse. Headaches are the rewards for refusing to surrender and cry about the unfairness of it all. There are hundreds of "Have Fun at Happy Valley" tournaments. The Open is different. It has to be, and Norman accepted this to become champion.

The Open Championship never produces an unworthy or bad champion, a compliment that bears any amount of scrutiny. At the outset each year the object is simple enough: to create a golf course and attendant circumstances which will allow and encourage the best player in the field to win the title. The Royal and Ancient Championship Committee, whose powers of forceful authority and gentle persuasion bow only to the whims of nature, has been incredibly successful in this respect. Golf has no greater record for sheer consistency. The start of the 1986 Open saw Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer and Norman being recognised by the Sony Ranking as the top three golfers in the world. It was therefore as much a victory for the R&A as it was for them that they finished in the top six. Once again the objective had been achieved.

Along the way, however, there had been a multitude of suffering. The computerised scoreboards worked almost as hard as the players to keep pace with the bogeys, double bogeys and worse -1,224 in all. The worst disasters came at the fourteenth, where Stadler moved his recovery shot in the rough no more than a few inches, Floyd found every ball but his own, and the average score for one hundred and fifty-two players one quit before he got there was an astounding 5.14 against a par of four. The mayhem on this hole amounted to one hundred and eighteen bogeys and worse. One solitary birdie, a drive, one iron and putt of twenty feet, belonged to Ian Woosnam, and it swept him to the first day lead. The 222-yards sixth was almost as fearsome. Against the wind it frequently called for a driver. An average score of 3.80 resulted as ninety-eight players failed to make par. So much for memories of Turnberry in the sun and low scores. Langer, heading for his third successive top-three Open finish, included a double-bogey five at the sixth in his 72. "I am delighted; it could have been a lot worse," he said. How wise, how true.

The severity level adopted for the setting up of an Open course will always be a contentious issue. Given that only some twenty players approach it with a chance of winning in the first place, the vast majority have grounds to object. They naturally command a more sympathetic hearing when the weather turns so foul that the scoring average soars to 78.19 against a par of 70. But does that justify pleas for the R&A to rush out and widen the fairways to reduce the brutality, the hacking, the intimidation and the humiliation of it all? Heaven forbid. The Open is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff without any waste of time. Certainly, those who would have had this done wore egg on their faces the second day when on an untouched course Norman scored 63, only a rush of blood and three putts on the home green denying him another record. Until such times as the Royal and Ancient finds a way to control the weather, some days will be fairer than others. In the meantime there will always be those, like Ian Woosnam the first day of the 115th Open Championship, ready to prove that there is a way to conquer no matter what. And, be assured, the last day will always produce a true champion to satisfy the fickle memories of the world's best golfers and the capricious ways of nature.

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