1993 Open Championship: Victories Against The Grain - Sharkive - Sharkwatch

Royal St George's has, with perhaps the notable exception of two players, produced winners of the Open Championship whose victories went against the grain both of precedent and of expectation.

Harry Vardon, who won the title over the Kent links for the third time in 1899 and for the fifth time 12 years later, and Walter Hagen, who returned to win his third Open here in 1928, six years after having done so for the first time, failed to conform to the pattern established before and since by the eight others. The maverick character of the examination they passed has been reflected in the quirky circumstances of their victories.

In 1894, when the championship was first held at St George's, a mere seven years after its opening, J.H. Taylor became the first English professional to win. Jack White, 10 years on, was the first winner whose total was less than 300 (by four strokes, in fact) and the three other championships played between the two world wars also had very distinctive outcomes.

In 1922 Hagen was the first American-born winner; in 1934 Henry Cotton brought Dr Laidlaw Purves an end to an unbroken sequence of 10 United States' successes; and in 1938 Reg Whitcombe steadfastly defied appalling conditions on the final day for his victory, the last to be gained at Sandwich until four years after hostilities had ceased.

Bobby Locke then had the first of his four victories, by 12 strokes after a 36-hole playoff with Harry Bradshaw. There was then an interval of 32 years before the Open returned to the course.

It is by no means overstating the case to say that had it not been decided in the late 1970s to build a ring road around the ancient town-historic in its own picturesque right as a Royal Cinque Port but also notorious as a bottleneck to traffic -- the Royal and Ancient Golf Club never would have restored Royal St George's to the championship roster. The links would have been left in their southern solitude to history, to the larks' song and, not least, to the members.

When the R&A learned that this asphalt equivalent of a heart-bypass operation was to be per- formed by the local authority, which itself saw how important a relief road would become to the area, reality changed thinking.

Some of the town's trades people thought they would lose business in normal times, but as one resident remarked: "You can't park in Sandwich anyway and the effect has been to make it a nicer place."

Pessimistic forecasts of traffic congestion reduced the predicted attendance in 1981, but although there were problems on the first two days in 1985 the flow subsequently improved, despite some 30,000 more spectators having to be channeled in and out.

Since the R&A had never completely given up on the idea of bringing the championship back to its only location south of Lancashire, so that it could again become more accessible to golf followers from London and its neighboring counties, the importance and value of the new development could not be exaggerated.

Complaints surface from time to time about the standard and availability of the accommodation nearby-although that is a perennial Open problem wherever it is played. The determination remained that this golfing outpost, comparatively isolated though it might be, should be encouraged to survive, and so it has, to the extent that it has been host now to three championships in 13 years, resurrection from a golfing graveyard if ever there was one.

The championship itself was willing to respond at once to this new lease of life by producing two winners, whose progress to the title and whose subsequent careers are in such stark opposition that the bystander could not but believe that, when the Open came back to Sandwich, old habits died hard.

Although Bill Rogers had to overcome a brief crisis in the final round, his victory carried an authority that was never later substantiated. Sandy Lyle, on the other hand, crept up on the title almost unawares, as he did so leaving at least one disbelieving observer to remark: "We are entering uncharted waters." - not navigated, that is, since Tony Jacklin, 16 years before, enshrined himself as the last British winner.

For Rogers, then 30, the year of 1981 was indeed his annus mirabilis. On four continents he won seven events and more than US$500,000, very serious money indeed in those days. Having won on the US PGA Tour in March, he gave advance warning in June of his potential for taking a major by finishing equal second to David Graham in the US Open at Merion.

He duly triumphed at Sandwich -- by four strokes from Bernhard Langer, having led by five strokes after three rounds-and again won five more times after that, twice back in America, subsequently in Japan and twice again in Australia, notably in that country's Open. In 1982 Rogers led with nine holes to play in the US Open at Pebble Beach, but was swept aside by Tom Watson's epic and victorious duel with Jack Nicklaus.

But Rogers ascendancy turned out to be as ephemeral as the star shell it so resembled. Seven years later - the boyish smile beneath the mop head of hair gone and his game and confidence undermined-Rogers departed the tournament grind. Since 1990 he has been the director of golf at the San Antonio Country Club in his native state of Texas, as remarkable an example of an idol fallen from grace as golf has known.

The lyricist who might have composed the phrase: 'Time hurries by, we're here and gone' with Rogers specifically in mind, would have had to think of a very different line for Lyle. A distinguished amateur career, 10 victories on the PGA European Tour, and three appearances in the Ryder Cup matches could not have been better preparation for winning an Open Championship.

Later there would be a three- year spell barren of achievement. Fortune also favored Lyle in 1985, for the draw protected him from the worst of the gale which afflicted the first two rounds, and he was in a challenging position with 18 holes to play.

Everyone remembers the agony of soul, which Lyle revealed, and which was shared by the silenced thousands in the grandstands beside the home green, when his chip from Duncan's Hollow failed to crest the slope. In the end, all was well, but the shots which put Lyle into a winning position were at the 14th and 15th.

At the 14th he hit a two iron more than 220 yards to the edge of the green and holed from 45 feet for the most improbable of birdie 4s, since he had hooked his drive into a wilderness. At the next, clearly inspired by that astounding advance, Lyle hit a huge drive and second shot to six feet for another birdie.

It was appropriate that it should be Lyle who restored spirits in the British camp after the title had 12 times crossed the Atlantic, once returned to South Africa, and twice, as a form of consolation and European solidarity, to Spain with Severiano Ballesteros. Lyle's pedigree, if not his actual golfing pedigree, is as Scottish as was that of the principal founders of Royal St George's.

When Scots were engaged in the Middle Easton oil exploration work, it was said that they 'pitched a tent, drilled a well, and then laid out line holes.' A similar philosophy, although not quite: he same sequence of method, appears to have accompanied the prolonged efforts of Dr Laidlaw Purves to establish a links far removed physically and architecturally from what were rapidly becoming overcrowded courses in the London area.

A leading ophthalmic surgeon at Guy's Hospital, Purves also turned out to have a perceptive eye when the task of finding suitable land began. Something of 10 exploration followed, as Purves and Henry Lamb traveled the south coast of England without finding the place they sought to emulate the links tradition of their homeland, where St Andrews, Prestwick, North Berwick and Dornoch had become established as superior to any form of inland golf.

The over-population on the courses at Wimbledon and Blackheath was rapidly growing intolerable, and the example set by the formation of the club at Westward Ho! in North Devon as the first English links was an added spur to them to persevere with their own search.

Just when it seemed as if the intrepid surveyors would run out of suitable possibilities and fail to have their patience rewarded, Purves, as the received account has it, climbed the Norman church tower of St Clements in the town of Sandwich, no act of penance or contrition, as it transpired, since once there he "spied the land with a golfer's eye."

The untamed duneland lying between Sandwich and the English Channel, was precisely what they had their hearts and minds set on. Not only was the Earl of Guilford prepared to lease to them 300 of those wild acres, but the club was instituted, a course was built, and within only seven years, in 1894, it was deemed ready to host its first Open Championship -- instant celebrity, indeed.

Every championship course has undergone some form of evolutionary process, as golf clubs and balls have changed character in material and manufacture, earth-moving machinery and agronomy have become more sophisticated, and, not least, opinion, expert and otherwise, has changed over what constitutes the best golfing challenge.

St George's, which attained its regality in 1902, proved to be no exception to this rule although, according to no less an authority than Bernard Darwin, for some time it was arguable whether criticism of the course fell under the description of blasphemous or merely treasonable. Eventually, of course, the tide of events and the persuasiveness of the better informed coalesced the conviction that changes were needed.

Central to the reservations about the original design of the course was the number of blind shots, caught in the vivid description of one writer in the last decade of the 19th century, Horace Hutchinson, that "golf should not consist in hitting a shot over a sandhill and then running to the top of it to see where the ball has finished."

The modern architect is at pains to ensure that the humblest rabbit should at least be able to see where he is going, even if his sense of direction is not equaled by his ability to reach the desired destination. As well as a new road system, course alterations were made before 1981 to celebrate the championship's return to one of its roots.

The former versions of the third and 11th holes were replaced, more of the driving areas at the fourth and seventh were revealed, and part of the sand dune in front of the 14th tee was displaced so that the fairway became visible.

All the same, the tee shots at Royal St George's are more rigorously examined than on most courses, particularly trying the patience of the professionals with the uneven lies and stances created by crumpled fairways, which often treat the most accurate drives with scant regard either for the player's reputation or for his mistaken presumption of the fairness factor.

The humps and hollows may not have created a lovely lie for a brassie -- a club now as extinct as the stymie -- but a century ago, when the total prize-money was £100, and the winner earned £30 of that, such niceties must have seemed just as minimal. Even so, professionals then had developed a sense of their own worth, not, obviously, pitched at anything like the levels of today.

That did not, however, prevent some players in 1899 threatening to strike over their perception of the inadequacies of the purse. They had, it appears, no allies among the Great Triumvirate of Vardon, Taylor and James Braid, and St George's second Open proceeded to Vardon's successful defense.

Five years later White not only had a total of 296 but he was the first of still only four players -- the others being Braid, Ben Hogan and Gary Player -- to win with the score for each round lower than the one before.

This achievement by a professional -- and, incidentally, by one who was almost the first club professional the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers has still never had-seemed to irk the perception of two of the day's foremost amateurs, Freddie Tait and Ted Blackwell, that carries from the tee could be as much as 150 yards, as well as being unsighted. The professionals are still playing a game with which even amateurs of the first rank are not by any stretch of the imagination familiar.

Since Vardon gained his fifth victory (of six) in 1911, when Arnaud Massy, seven strokes behind, conceded with one hole of their 36-hole play-off remaining, the Frenchman was equally out of his depth. Hagen's victory 11 years later was the first of four from only six attempts in eight years and, since he was second and third in the two others, his domination of the Open Championships of the Jazz Age was complete.

It was then left to Cotton, very different from Hagen in character and more fiercely dedicated to reaching the pinnacle and staying there, to staunch the hemorrhaging of the championship to America. Royal St George's, in 1934, provided the stage on which Cotton disclosed the first of his three class acts.

Cotton's 65 in the second round was not improved upon for 43 years and his 36-hole total of 132 stood until as recently as last year, when Nick Faldo beat it by two strokes at Muirfield. The longevity of these records led one cynic to remark dismissively: "Of course, golf doesn't get any better. It's like other sports, it's just attracted more money."

Since Cotton's prize was at the blunt end of three figures and the winner of this championship stretched between his fingers a check for £100,000, there might be some inclination to agree, not least by the last two winners before that long interregnum leading to the transformation of the game into the modern era.

In 1938 a gale devastating in its force afflicted the last day's play and, as the exhibition tent foundered like a dismasted schooner and everything from sweaters to golf clubs to sandwiches littered the surrounding countryside, Reg Whitcombe, one of only three players to break 80 in each of the last two rounds, stepped from the figurative lifeboat with a two-stroke victory.

This represented a visit to the rock-face of the game compared with Locke's resounding triumph over Bradshaw in 1949, forever to be remembered for having hit a shot out of the debris of a broken bottle off the fifth fairway in the second round. Bradshaw decided to play the ball, as it lay, which he need not, of course, have done, and took 6, a double bogey.

If the genial Irishman had taken 4 he would not necessarily have tied-a cheerful, if unsupportable, assumption-since he would have had to play the remaining 49 holes in the same total of strokes and there could never be a guarantee on that score. Thus Locke took the £300 prize from a total of £1,700, the start of the period when, lacking serious and concerted overseas opposition, particularly from America, he and Peter Thomson dominated the Open with four victories each over 10 championships.

Writers Robert Sommers Raymond Jacobs Michael Mcdonnell Michael Williams Marino Parascenzo Alistar Nicol John Hopkins	Photographers Lawrence Levy Michael Cohen
	Editor Bev Norwood