1986 Open Championship - Sharkive - Sharkwatch

There is a general acceptance that the modern Open Championship did not begin until 1960The oldest championship in golf did not, to be sure, ever sink out of sight and, for those with ambition, it was very much a prize to be sought after. However, after the legendary Ben Hogan travelled to triumph at Carnoustie in 1953, the lustre of the championship dulled somewhat, particularly for those professionals pursuing their careers in the United States.

Indeed, after Sam Snead won the first postwar championship at St. Andrews in 1946, there was only one other winner under the Stars and Stripes banner until 1961, and that was Hogan. In 1953 the tough little Texan had already come first in the U.S. Masters and U.S. Open before heading for the coast of Angus to make his deliberate and meticulous preparations for the Open Championship, preparations that were to prove irresistibly sound. So superior was Hogan that year that there are many who will insist that the impregnable quadrilateral - the Grand Slam - would have been his had he been able to take advantage of the jet-age travel which so many globe-trotting circuit stars take so much for granted nowadays. Hogan could not even attempt the Grand Slam because the return journey from Carnoustie took so long he was unable to make it to Birmingham, Michigan, in time to challenge winner Walter Burkemo, or anyone else for that matter, in the U.S. PGA Championship, which was then still a match-play event.

Outside of Hogan the Open in the Fifties was very much a British Empire affair. Peter Thomson won four times, Arthur D'Arcy (Bobby) Locke three times, with Max Faulkner (1951) and young Gary Player (1959) also getting into the act.

Then came 1960. In that year a thirty-twoyear-old out of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, burst onto the American golfing scene in a big, big way. Arnold Palmer emulated Hogan in winning both the U.S. Masters and the U.S. Open before deciding to fulfill a life-long ambition and enter the Open. As a youngster he had longed to visit the home of golf and play the links courses he had read and heard so much about but finance, or rather the lack of it, had precluded such an adventure. But in 1960 he came, he saw - and he almost conquered. Despite a storming final round of 68 he lost out by the narrowest of margins to Australia's Kel Nagle.

That first Palmer Open, however, was to have a profound effect on future championships. On the way home from a rainlashed St. Andrews, Arnold vowed that he would return to Britain to win the oldest title in the game and he did so the following year at Royal Birkdale then repeated in 1962 at Troon. While his performances on the golf course were significant, it was Palmer's conduct off the course that was most telling. He never lost an opportunity, as his career took off in America hand in hand with the boom in purses and television interest, to persuade fellow American players that until they played and won in Britain they could not regard themselves as true champions or great golfers. In effect he became the greatest ambassador for the Open the Royal and Ancient Golf Club could ever have hoped to recruit. His influence was immeasurable.

The facts speak for themselves. Since Palmer's first victory in 1961 there have been twenty-six Opens, seventeen of them won by Americans. Indeed, between 1961 only Bob Charles (1963), Roberto de Vicenzo (1967), Gary Player (1968 and 1974), and Tony Jacklin (1969) were able to stem the American tide until Severiano Ballesteros won at Royal Lytham in 1979. American dominance was almost total- For a long, long time the rest of the golfing world firmly believed that the U.S. tour was the strongest in the world, that American players were virtually unbeatable. The rest of the world, so to speak, were in the minor league, at least one step removed from the very best who had the benefit of playing, we were lead to believe, on the finest courses, in the finest conditions and with the added bonus of excellent practice facilities on which to sharpen and fine-tune their swings.

Turnberry, 1986, proved that is no longer the case. There were only five American players in the leading twenty. Gary Koch was joint sixth, eight strokes behind Greg Norman, to be the highest-ranking American. The order of finish was instead filled by European, Australian and Japanese stars, not only major champions Bernhard Langer, Severiano Ballesteros and David Graham, but also such players as Gordon J. Brand, the runner-up to Norman by five strokes; lan Woosnam, Nick Faldo, Brian Marchbank, Christy 0'Connor, Jr., Jose-Maria Canizares, Tsuneyuki Nakajima, Anders Forsbrand and Jose-Maria Olazabal.

The third day of the championship this year was memorable for the comments of two of the most respected and influential voices in the world of golf over the last couple of decades. Jack Nicklaus, who languished sixteen strokes adrift of Norman with one round to play (and finished eighteen behind), refused to join in the criticism of the tough way the course had been set up. Said Nicklaus, "Most of the criticism seems to be coming from players with high scores. These are the guys you hear com plain and maybe they should keep their mouths shut." Somewhat more outspoken was Mark McCormack. He accused several players of being "cry-babies" and suggested that certain American players were "pampered."

Whether or not they were pampered crybabies is not for me to say. What is abundantly clear in the aftermath of Turnberry, 1986, is that American golf no longer sits impregnably at the top of the heap. And I do not think it is because American standards have fallen off. 1 am certain it is because non-American golfers have become better and better. They are no longer in awe of American golf. Reasons for this are not too hard to detect either. Around a decade or so ago European golfers, in particular, packed their clubs, collected a bundle of air tickets and escaped the harsh winters of Northern Europe by fleeing to any warmer clime where golf was played. They ventured to Africa, Australia, the Far East, South Africa. In doing so they were learning all the time. Learning how to cope with time zones, different foods, indifferent courses, enthusiastic but often bumbling officialdom. In short, they became better all-round players.

Even in the comparatively narrow confines of the European Tour a multitude of variations had to be faced and overcome. Some weeks, say in Spain, they would play American-type courses with fast and true putting surfaces, the next on some inland course in Britain where a cold winter followed by a poor spring meant putting on greens that resembled corrugated iron. Some grumbled, groused and groaned, But on the whole they buckled down and bit the bullet. Some threw in their lot with the "major" league to further improve their technique. Ballesteros, Langer and Faldo, to name but three, crossed the Atlantic, taking with them the skills learned round the globe and proved they could win in golf's Valhalla as well as in some golfing versions of Hades.

Perhaps the big turn-around came at Augusta in 1980 when the supremely-talented Ballesteros, harshly called the "Car Park Champion" following his Open success some months previously at Royal Lytham, became the first Spaniard to don the green jacket. When he won the U.S. Masters again in 1983 it was an enormous fillip to Tony Jacklin's Ryder Cup side, who came within a point of beating America on captain Jack Nicklaus' home territory in September of that year. Indeed there is a school of thought that had Bernard Gallacher not been running a temperature of more than one hundred degrees that humid final afternoon in the last singles against Tom Watson, Europe's long-awaited first win on American soil would have been achieved three years ago.

The signs were there then - the second division players were on the march, hungry for promotion.

In 1984 Ballesteros danced an unforgettable fandango of joy on the eighteenth green of the Old Course after holing a putt for the birdiethree he knew had earned him his second Open, having seen Tom Watson's bid for a record-equalling sixth come to grief on the road at seventeen following an over-bold approach. The Pretenders were growing in strength almost by the hour it seemed. Came the U.S. Masters in 1985, and Bernhard Langer was the first German to win. On to Royal St. George's for the Open, and Scotland's Sandy Lyie emerged as the winner. He and Langer joined Ballesteros to help Tony Jacklin's European team win the Ryder Cup. The American team had no Nicklaus or Watson but, as Lee Trevino said before the historic match at The Belfry, what he did have was a team comprised of the best twelve golfers on the tour at that time qualified to play for Uncle Sam.

When the golfing circus came to Turnberry in 1986 they found the most perfectlymanicured course in recent Open history, probably the bcst-ever in fact. The rough, however, was ferocious and far too many players, it seemed to me, were at least three down as they stood on the first tee. It was certainly un-American. But, going back to 1960 and the advent of Palmer, it was that very unAmericanism that was the charm, the appeal of the Open. Over the years the Nicklauses, Watsons and Crenshaws, have not wanted watered fairways and soft, holding greens. They have looked forward eagerly to testing their skills on natural linksland, keenly anticipating the fullest examination of their abilities to overcome new challenges.

By the same token, however, Turnberry 1986 was something else for non-American players as well. The yelps of anguish from Ballesteros and many others proved that the Royal and Ancient Championship Committee had not by any means come up with a course which favoured those not reared on American-style golf. And Tsuneyuki (Tommy) Nakajima, fancied by many to win until he three-putted the fifty-fifth hole from nowhere, could not find words to express his feelings after his first practice round. Not even in Japanese!

Oriental golf is nothing new, despite Nakajima's run at Norman for three rounds at Turnberry. Back in 1971 at Royal Birkdale an ever-smiling Lu Liang Huan (Mr. Lu to the world) hunted Lee Trevino right to the line, and in 1985 only a drastic double-hit robbed Chen Tze Chung of the honour of becoming the first Taiwanese winner of the U.S. Open. For a long time Jumbo Oxaki and Isao Aoki led the charge of the Japanese onto the links. There can be little question that Nakajima is now the main man from the land of cars, raw fish and saki. In Japan alone Nakajima has won more than two million pounds sterling and is a genuine superstar. Had he held on to oust Norman he would, in all probability, have been awarded his country's Master of Sport honour. That is an award made only twice before, to a baseball player and a judo expert.

Nakajima's previous best finish in the Open was seventeenth at St. Andrews in 1978 when, having forced himself into contention, he hit the Road Hole in two super shots in the oftenfateful third round. He then putted into the Road bunker and proceeded to flail away tike a dervish. A birdie-three had seemed possible, but poor Tommy eventually signed for a nine. That, though, was not his highest score of the season, for in the U.S. Masters his inscrutability was tested to the full when he took thirteen at the thirteenth. Nevertheless, Far Eastern golf is coming ever closer to uncovering a player capable of winning a major title and giving American golf even more problems. A total of fifteen million golfers in Japan, eighteen thousand courses and more than six thousand driving ranges would appear to be ideal conditions for breeding an Open champion. Golfers round the globe are truly crowding onto the platform which has launched three nonAmerican Open champions in three years,

I will not accept any arguments that Norman won only because he has been playing in the States these last few years. Like Ballesteros, Langer, Nakajima and a host of others, the 1986 champion has been a member of the "Have Clubs, Will Travel" brigade.

Maybe Mark McCormack was right, maybe the current U.S. crop is pampered. Maybe they will have to broaden their horizons if they are once more to dominate. Let's wait and see.

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