British Open (Golf)

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      Who Engraves the British Open’s Claret Jug on Sunday?

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      ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The good news for Garry Harvey is that almost no one in this year’s British Open field has a name quite as long as Severiano Ballesteros — Spanish master of the short game, three-time Open champion and unwitting menace to a man with minutes to engrave one of golf’s most sacred trophies.Harvey will face a foreboding stretch on Sunday anyway. Like his father, Alex, who was tasked with etching Ballesteros into history on deadline, he will have perhaps 10 minutes to add Rory McIlroy (11 letters) or Scottie Scheffler (16 letters) or someone else entirely to the claret jug.He will fret over spelling. He will fuss over spacing. For engraving efficiency as much as national pride, he would not have minded if the Scot Paul Lawrie had won again. But he began engraving when he was 14, has handled claret jug duties since Tony Blair was prime minister and has a large enough reservoir of on-demand tranquility that he played in the 1979 Open, one of three that Ballesteros won, forcing Alex Harvey to add the Spaniard’s name to the jug instead of his son’s.“When I get nervous, I remember what my father looked like and taught me,” Garry Harvey, 67 and soft-spoken, said along the Old Course at St. Andrews, the site of the 150th Open. “When I’m under pressure, I think about the old man, and then I just do it.”Harvey works with a tool he believes is at least a century old.Alastair Grant/Associated PressAnd so a letter, Harvey said, might take him eight seconds to add to a band on the jug’s base.Generations of Open winners handled the engraving of the jug, which is formally known as the Golf Champion Trophy. But after Roberto De Vicenzo, the 1967 victor at Royal Liverpool, failed to do so, the R&A, the Open’s organizer, took control and turned to Alex Harvey. Garry Harvey, born months after Peter Thomson won the first of his five Opens, began his engraving education around then.At the same time, he was emerging as one of Britain’s best young golfers, finishing as the runner-up at the boys’ amateur championship in 1971 and winning the following year. He put his own name on the trophy in the most literal sense, too.Other golf achievements followed, including a victory at the 1985 Kenya Open and a berth in an Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes, where he finished in a tie for 139th. All the while, Alex Harvey’s hands were evolving into a fixture of television coverage of the Open.Garry Harvey would often accompany his father, scrutinizing his patience and practices. Alex Harvey did not, for example, start adding Jean van de Velde’s name when he arrived at No. 18 at Carnoustie in 1999 with the three-shot lead that he soon squandered. He always waited for word from the leader of the R&A that the score was final.Now Garry Harvey, whose father died in 2008, a few years after retiring, has been around the Open so long that he cannot remember exactly whose name he was first charged with engraving.Alex Harvey, Garry’s father, engraving the jug in 1993.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto via Getty ImagesEven if the current craftsman typically prefers to work in the background, the ritual is seen as an element of the Open’s charm. Tom Watson, whose eight major victories include five British Open wins, said that rapid engraving had grown to become “part of the whole fabric of the Open Championship.”“It really doesn’t matter whether your name is on the trophy or not, honestly — you have the trophy in hand and you get to see that beautiful claret jug — but it’s a perk,” Watson, one of the first winners to raise a freshly updated trophy, said on Friday. “It’s a great perk.”In turn, Harvey has a well-settled practice for the final round, preparing certain parts of the engraving, like the tournament’s site and year, in advance. But he also avoids venturing onto the course on Sunday, rife with hazards — crowds, nerves, fall risks — that could conspire to keep him from being at his position when the minute comes. He mutes the television, uninterested in the commentary about his hands, and does not care for the clicks of a still camera’s shutter. He hopes a floorboard does not shake and interrupt his rhythm and concentration as he works with a tool he believes is at least a century old.“There are all types of things that can go wrong, but the spelling’s important,” he said. “You don’t want to slip, and that can’t happen.” (“The spelling of Padraig, you’ve got to be very careful with that one,” he said, referring to Padraig Harrington, the Irish golfer whose name he has twice added to the jug.)“It really doesn’t matter whether your name is on the trophy or not, honestly — you have the trophy in hand and you get to see that beautiful claret jug — but it’s a perk,” Tom Watson said.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersThe Open gig, of course, is a fraction of his work, which often brings other sports trophies and medals to his work area, whether it is at St. Andrews or closer to his home in Crook of Devon, a village about an hour’s drive from the Old Course. Along with his wife, Jeanette, he runs a jewelry shop in nearby Dunfermline, where it seems only a few customers know that he works on the jug.He expects to work with the R&A for as long as he can, and there is no prospect, he said, of another family member assuming the role.He will, eventually, get around to watching a replay of Sunday’s round. He has plans for Monday, though: a Senior Open qualifier. But before then, until the etching is done, he will wait and wonder what, exactly, he will need to do almost as soon as the last putt drops.“If it’s a long name — a really long name — it’s going to be tricky,” he said.He reassured himself, his voice trailing off.“If Severiano Ballesteros can get into that gap.” More

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      Beauty of the Old Course Upstages LIV Golf Angst, for Now

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      Seven years is an unusually long gap, but the R&A, which runs the British Open, delayed a return to St. Andrews to ensure that it could host the tournament’s 150th edition, which begins Thursday.ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The ruins of St. Andrews’s once-majestic cathedral are a reminder that this gray town by the sea was a pilgrimage site long before golf came along.But there is no doubt about what attracts crowds now, and it has been seven years since the golf pilgrims gathered here for a British Open in their weatherproof gear and souvenir caps.Seven years is an unusually long gap, but the R&A, which runs the tournament, decided to delay returning the British Open to St. Andrews to ensure that it could host the 150th edition of what is known on this side of the pond as the Open Championship.Originally scheduled for 2021, the St. Andrews celebration got pushed back a year because of the pandemic-induced cancellation in 2020, and now the organizers might have to wonder whether it was worth the wait.Instead of an opportunity to revel in the history and hopefully windswept charms of the Old Course, the focus has remained on the elephant in the locker room: LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed, economics-be-damned breakaway circuit that has poached PGA Tour talent like the former British Open champions Phil Mickelson and Louis Oosthuizen, and is led by another former Open champion, Greg Norman, who for his sins and pains was not invited to this year’s dinner of champions at St. Andrews.Tiger Woods’s news conference on Tuesday was dominated by the subject (Woods held firm to his position against the defectors, inspiring British tabloid headlines like “LIV and Let Die”).Im Sung-jae, a South Korean player, teeing off on the Old Course on Wednesday.Robert Ormerod for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Martin Slumbers, the gray-haired chief executive of the R&A, tried unsuccessfully to address the topic “briefly” by making an opening statement at his news conference that made it clear that the R&A would not bar golfers from the rebel tour but could change its qualifying requirements to make it more difficult for them to play in future British Opens.Bring on the follow-up questions! “Do you think golf should be welcoming money from Saudi Arabia given when we know about sportswashing?”Evasive answer from Slumbers: “I think that’s a too simplistic way of looking at it.”The issue is not blowing away anytime soon in the Scottish breeze and could quickly resume being the dominant plotline if a LIV golfer, like Dustin Johnson or Oosthuizen, rises to the top of the two yellow scoreboards above the 18th green that are still manually operated in this otherwise digital age by students from rival private schools.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      Tiger Woods Has a Very Bad Day at the British Open

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      The three-time Open champion, including two on the Old Course at St. Andrews, was six over par after the first round that started with a double bogey on the first hole.ST. ANDREWS, Scotland —Tiger Woods was walking alone again on the 18th hole of the Old Course: a yellow scoreboard in front of him and the light fading behind him as locals and American visitors shouted “Tigerrrrrr!” from behind the barricades.But this was no victory march at the British Open. This was the end of one of the worst rounds that Woods has played in a major: a six-over-par 78 that was a stark reminder of how much water has flowed under the Swilcan Bridge since his days of domination at St. Andrews.Woods, who won the Open Championship here in 2000 and 2005, reacquainted himself with the water in a hurry in his return on Thursday. After getting the loudest round of applause of the day from the crowd gathered on the first hole, he hit his opening tee shot in a normally safe space (“a perfect shot,” he said) only to land in a fresh divot that turned his approach shot to the green into an adventure.“I told myself, ‘Don’t hit it flat and don’t blade it,’” Woods said. “I didn’t do either, but I still hit it in the burn.”A burn in Scottish parlance is a water-filled trench, and the trench in this instance was the Swilcan Burn that defends the first green. Woods’s shot splashed down after one bounce, and he ended up missing a short putt and starting his tournament with a double bogey.As omens go, it was an accurate one as he continued to struggle into the wind, bogeying the third and fourth holes and making another double bogey on the par-4 seventh before making his first birdies of the round on the par-4 ninth and par-4 tenth.But that was a false dawn as he resumed leaving important chips and putts well short of their targets.Asked what was most disappointing, Woods did not hesitate.“I think just the total score,” he said. “It feels like I didn’t really hit it that bad. Yes, I did have bad speed on the green, but I didn’t really feel like I hit it that bad. But I ended up in bad spots or just had some weird things happen. And that’s just the way it goes. Links golf is like that, and this golf course is like that. And as I said, I had my chances to turn it around and get it rolling the right way, and I didn’t do it.”“Yeah, it was a lot easier today, physically, than it has been the other two events, for sure,” Woods said.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressHe certainly did not, and it will take a sensational round and turnaround on Friday for him to even make the cut and land in the top-70 golfers.“Looks like I’m going to have to shoot 66 tomorrow to have a chance,” he said. “Obviously it’s been done. Guys did it today, and that’s my responsibility tomorrow, is to go ahead and do it.”He is already 14 shots behind the leader, the 25-year-old American Cameron Young, who shot an eight-under-par 64 in his first tournament round at St. Andrews after first playing the Old Course during a visit to Scotland with his family when he was 13.Woods first came here in his teens, too, playing the 1995 Open Championship as a 19-year-old amateur who was still coming to grips with the quirks and charms of links golf. He made the cut in his debut but faded and shot 78 in the final round: his worst round at St. Andrews until Thursday.But Woods learned quickly and when he returned to the Old Course in 2000, he was playing some of the finest golf ever played and completed the career Grand Slam with an eight-shot victory that was all the more remarkable in that everyone, including his rivals, expected him to dominate.He delivered, never hitting into a bunker and setting a record for a major by finishing at 19 under par. He delivered again in 2005 when the Open returned to St. Andrews as he won by five shots and then followed that up by winning the Open in 2006 at Royal Liverpool in bone-dry conditions that turned the fairways into fast-running thoroughfares. He responded by using irons off the tee for control and maintained it beautifully until he had finished off the victory and wept on the shoulder of his caddie, Steve Williams, overcome by his feelings for his father, Earl, who had died just a few weeks before the tournament.Sixteen years later, Woods remains golf’s biggest star even if he is only a part-time competitor, still struggling to find form after the single-car crash in February 2021 that left him with serious injuries and had doctors considering amputation of his right leg.Returning to St. Andrews was one of his primary motivations when he chose to resume his career, making a late decision to take part in this year’s Masters where he shot an opening-round 71 before fading to 47th. He then played in the P.G.A. Championship in May, withdrawing in pain before the final round after shooting a 79. He chose not to play in the U.S. Open with an eye on being ready for St. Andrews.Thursday was his first competitive round in nearly two months, and he looked and felt stronger, limping only slightly, if at all, for much of the afternoon.“Yeah, it was a lot easier today, physically, than it has been the other two events, for sure,” Woods said.Though the Old Course is not the most physically demanding course with its comparatively flat layout, the round turned into an endurance test, lasting just over six hours because of backups on the course that caused Woods and his playing partners Max Homa and Matt Fitzpatrick, the U.S. Open champion, to have to wait repeatedly.Max Homa, left, called the first round the “coolest” day he’s had on a golf course.Ross Kinnaird/Getty ImagesHoma, an American who finally fulfilled a career-long goal by playing a round with Woods, made the most of the extra time, chatting at length with Woods, who actually looked less grim on the back nine than he did on the front nine.“If there was anybody else in my group, if it was probably just Matt, I would have been complaining all day,” he said, adding it was the “coolest” day he has had on a golf course.“It was a dream-come-true type day minus some of the golf,” Homa said. “It really felt like fantasy.”Woods might have opted for nightmare, but he did sound content that he had managed to get healthy enough to play“Very, very meaningful,” he said of his return to St. Andrews. Woods added, “This was always on the calendar to hopefully be well enough to play it. And I am. I just didn’t do a very good job of it.”But Woods, even diminished at 46, still has the capacity to create goose bumps. You could see it and hear it all afternoon — and there was plenty of time to see and hear it — as he navigated the Old Course and fans lined up, often four rows deep behind the ropes with their cellphones held aloft to take pictures of him, even at a distance. Many of them were parents with children far too young to have watched Woods at his best. Some held up stuffed tigers.“They were fantastic, absolutely fantastic,” Woods said of the gallery. “So supportive.”But the poignant truth is that the Woods so many were roaring for was the Woods they remember not the Woods they were watching. For now, he is what he never wanted to be: a ceremonial golfer, a major star but no longer a major threat, walking the same fairways and greens but no longer making the same birdies and eagles.As he made his way over the Swilcan Bridge and toward the 18th hole late on Thursday after a long and deflating day, a woman on a third-floor balcony overlooking the course summed up the mood and reality as she screamed from on high: “Tiger!!!!! 2000!!!! 2005!!!!!”Woods will need to have a phenomenal second round if he hopes to make the cut.Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images More

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      A British Open Green With One Last Catch: A 150-Foot Putt

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      The St. Andrews quirk of double greens offers thrills and aggravations whenever the world’s elite go to the Old Course.ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The wind can go from negligible to middling to mighty on the Old Course. It may very well rain, or look like it will, and for how long is anyone’s guess. People dressed in layers — this is Scotland in July, after all — pass sunscreen.But for all the tricks required of a British Open at St. Andrews, a constant always looms, perilous as a pot bunker: some of the largest greens to be found anywhere in the world, often because they are shared with another hole.“You don’t ever really get used to it,” said Ernie Els, who is playing his sixth Open on the Old Course, which has seven double greens.Just on Thursday, Els, a four-time major champion, stood on a green and confronted a putt of about 150 feet. “I was on the one side,” he said, “and the flag was on the other side.”It is a signature, though, of the rugged, mendacious charm of St. Andrews, the kind of place where a player can sometimes see only sky from a bunker. The double greens — and even the enormous ones that somehow serve only one hole — routinely make just getting to the green half the par battle (and, the BBC has noted, they can demand more than seven miles of walking to mow).Gary Player, the winner of three British Opens, but never one at St. Andrews, likes to tell a story about how, with his ball perhaps 80 yards from an Old Course pin one day, he asked a caddie for a line. He received an impish reply: “I cannot give you a line, but I can give you a yardage.”“It’s so difficult to play on greens that size,” Player said in an interview in May. “It eliminates a lot of chipping. So you have a lot of long putts, and when it’s windy, to have long putts is very, very difficult to knock it up close.”John Daly, who won the 1995 Open at St. Andrews and played the course on Thursday, said the day’s greens would have been daunting no matter the weather.“I’ve never had any more 70-, 80-, 90-foot putts in my life,” Daly said. “They put the pins in good spots. Those were Sunday pins. They were brutal. It’s hard to get the ball close with wind or no wind.”Part of Daly’s 1995 strategy hinged, as many St. Andrews schemes do, on lag putting, where a player considers not just a first shot at the pin but also a second.The approach has its scornful detractors. It also has a long record of powering victories.“You’re going to have some real long putts here no matter how you hit it, and you just have to get down in two,” Tiger Woods, a specialist in the art form, said in 2010. “So many times you can three-putt, you can go around here and hit 18 greens and shoot a number — a high number — because you’re just so far away from the hole. And if the wind blows, hitting a wedge 30, 40, 50 feet happens a lot.”Rory McIlroy lined up a putt on the 11th green at the British Open on Thursday.Peter Morrison/Associated PressBut Woods was an Old Course veteran by then, and many elite players have scant experience with double greens, which are found more commonly in Japan than in North America and Europe. That did not stop Takumi Kanaya, one of Japan’s most sterling players, from saying Thursday that the St. Andrews greens had left him dazzled.Asked how he tried to play them, he laughed.Dylan Frittelli, appearing in his fifth Open but his first at St. Andrews, noted the challenge of simply directing traffic on a busy green.“It’s kind of distracting when you’re trying to putt and you’re waving: ‘You? Me? Yes? No?’” he said. But he was pleased he had avoided the traps, with only a handful of putt attempts beyond 80 feet.“It can get pretty nasty there if you have the 150-, 200-foot putts,” said Frittelli, who said he could not recall ever facing a competitive putt of more than 120 feet. “I’ve got a little system that I’m not going to tell you exactly what it is in case other guys get it, but it’s pacing it off, just trying to feel it, see it and try to get it to the hole.”Danny Willett, who tied for sixth at the 2015 Open, the previous one to be contested at St. Andrews, was a bit more forthcoming. With few exceptions, he said, he saw each huge green as having two or three clearly defined sections.“You need to section them off pretty well and hit into the sections,” he said. “Otherwise, you can see some really funky 40-, 50-footers. So they are big greens, but if you’re obviously going to try and do well and play correctly, you need to narrow your focus and try to pick out what section you’re trying to hit it into.”Indeed, there are triumphs, even when golfers have struggles elsewhere on the course. Ian Poulter, the Englishman who has joined the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf series, began his Open with jeers that he insisted he did not hear before he shanked his tee shot.He arrived later at No. 9, where the green is merely a monstrosity meant for one hole, at one under par. His tee shot put the pin within distant reach, and then he turned to, by his own description, a bizarre strategy for a putt attempt that Open officials said was at least 160 feet.“I kind of hit it two cups out to the right,” he said. “If you can ever figure a line of two cups to the right, I knew it might wander a hair right to left through the middle of the putt.”It worked, good for eagle.“Look, anything inside 6 feet from 150 feet is a hell of a putt,” said Poulter, who shot a 69, three under par. “So for it to drop is beyond lucky.” More

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      Furious at LIV Golf Defections, British Open Could Change Entry Rules

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      The R&A’s chief executive issued a stark warning to the players and did little to disguise his disdain for the new Saudi-backed series.ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The British Open’s organizer pointedly warned on Wednesday that it might change its entry rules for future tournaments — potentially complicating the claret jug prospects of players who defected to the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf series.Although the R&A, which runs the Open, has not made a decision about how players will be able to join the 156-man field in 2023 and beyond, the organization’s chief executive, Martin Slumbers, left open the possibility that the pathway to one of golf’s most hallowed tournaments could soon shift.“We will review our exemptions and qualifications criteria for the Open,” Slumbers said at a news conference at St. Andrews on the eve of the Open’s start on the Old Course. “We absolutely reserve the right to make changes” from past years, he added.“Players have to earn their place in the Open, and that is fundamental to its ethos and its unique global appeal,” said Slumbers, who did little to disguise his disdain for the LIV series, which he condemned as “entirely driven by money” and threatening to “the merit-based culture and the spirit of open competition that makes golf so special.”Still, he signaled that a wholesale ban of players was “not on our agenda.”Slumbers denied that the R&A was coordinating with the organizers of golf’s other major tournaments to potentially exclude LIV players, whose ranks include Brooks Koepka, Sergio García, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Patrick Reed. But the chief executive of the United States Golf Association, which controls the U.S. Open, said in June that the group would “re-evaluate” the criteria it uses to set that tournament’s field.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      Some Classic Golf Courses Have Fallen Off the Open Schedule

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      Clubs that were the foundation of this tournament no longer host. They are considered too small, too remote or too Trump.St. Andrews is hosting its 30th British Open starting on Thursday, in celebration of the 150th Open Championship. The Old Course there has hosted more Open Championships than any other venue, which isn’t too surprising. It bills itself as the birthplace of golf and is scheduled by the R&A, which oversees the Open, to host the event every five years.What is surprising is that the course in second place, Prestwick Golf Club, synonymous with the star player Old Tom Morris and the advent of the championship itself, has hosted 24 championships, but hasn’t had one since 1925.Prestwick is not alone in having been dropped from the rota, or schedule. Three other courses that have hosted Opens seem to be permanently removed: Musselburgh Links, Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club and Prince’s Golf Club. And there’s one more, Turnberry Golf Club, which has featured famous duels for the trophy, the claret jug.There is understandably a lot of focus on the courses in the rota. St. Andrews, Royal Liverpool, Troon, Royal Portrush, Carnoustie and Muirfield have all hosted memorable Opens. Still, what happened to knock those other, historic courses off the Open rota?Prestwick Golf ClubPrestwick, in Scotland, is where the Open began. Old Tom Morris, the first international golf star, designed Prestwick. He sent the original invitation to the best golfers in Britain to crown the champion golfer of the year. And then he won four early Opens there (though not the first one, which Willie Park Sr. claimed).The club helped steer the early formation of the Open, and it more than pulled its weight with 24 Opens from 1860 and 1925. It also played a role in creating the claret jug, which the champion takes possession of for one year. Limiting it to a year was important. Young Tom Morris, Old Tom’s son, after winning three Opens in a row at Prestwick, was entitled to keep the tournament’s prize: a red leather belt. Beltless, the organizers came up with the claret jug in 1872.Ted Ray playing in the 1925 Open at Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland. He tied for second place. The club has not hosted an Open since.Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis, via Getty ImagesBut in 1925, Prestwick’s run of Opens came to an end. It wasn’t dramatic; it was logistical. The storied club couldn’t accommodate the growing number of fans who wanted to watch in person.While Jim Barnes, an Englishman who lived in the United States, won the claret jug, it was more about who lost it — and how.“In 1925 it was horrible crowd control that cost Macdonald Smith a chance to win,” Stephen Proctor, a golf historian and author of “The Long Golden Afternoon: Golf’s Age of Glory, 1864-1914,” said of the Scottish player who was in contention. “He was loved to death by the crowd. They really wanted a Scotsman to win. The whole crowd followed him for the final round. The theory was the crowd just agitated him.”The problem of space, crowds and growing interest in watching the Open was an issue at a tight, small course like Prestwick. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which organized the Open at the time, saw that interest was growing. (In 2004, the golf club created a separate group, the R&A, to oversee its championships, including the Open.)“The holes are tightly packed together, so movement of the crowds between holes would have been impossible in the 1940s and onwards,” said Roger McStravick, a golf historian.Despite its short length for the modern game — just under about 6,500 yards — and its out-of-the-way location, Prestwick has its backers.“It’s a mistake that it hasn’t hosted a major since then,” said Ran Morrissett, co-founder of Golf Club Atlas, a golf architecture forum. “It has some of the meatiest, biggest par 4s in that stretch from holes six to 10. But tastes in architecture change with time.”Mike Woodcock, a spokesman for the R&A, said in explaining the rota that the Open “requires a large footprint to be able to stage it as well as an outstanding links golf course, which will test the world’s best golfers and the necessary transport infrastructure to allow tens of thousands of fans in and out each day.”“That’s a high bar to hit.”Musselburgh LinksMusselburgh, also a Scottish course, was home to the Park family. Willie Park Sr., who won the first Open in 1860, hailed from there. He won the Open three more times, with his last in 1875. His brother Mungo Park won it in 1874. And his son Willie Park Jr. won the Open in 1887 and 1889.Willie Jr.’s win proved significant: It was at the last Open held at Musselburgh. The course had significant limitations, even in the 19th century. It was only nine holes, and it was tough to get to. As the format of the Open expanded to 72 holes, it was just too small.Musselburgh, also in Scotland, last hosted the Open in 1899.David Cannon/Getty ImagesIt was also St. Andrews and the R&A exerting itself as the new home of golf that led to Musselburgh being removed from the original rota, which also included Prestwick and St Andrews.“In 1892 it was the turn of Musselbrugh to host the Open,” said Mungo Park, an architect and descendant of the Parks. “But in 1891 the Honorable Company [of Edinburgh Golfers] had bought Muirfield. They had the right of running the Open wherever they wanted, and they took it to Muirfield.”“My uncle, having won the 1889 Open, was a man of some influence in the golfing world,” Park added. “And he wasn’t afraid to challenge the gentlemen. He said this isn’t right. You can’t take it from Musselburgh. But they arguably had the rights to take it with them and they did.”Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club and Prince’s Golf ClubBetween them, they hosted three Opens. Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club nabbed two and Prince’s Golf Club one.Royal Cinque Ports is in Deal, an English town with small, narrow roads. The modern Open is a large production. And there are other, more amenable venues in England. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful golf course,” Morrissett of Golf Club Atlas said. “The fact that it can’t host an Open in no way detracts from the merits of the golf course.”In 1932, Prince’s Golf Club in England put on a show with its one and only Open: The great American player Gene Sarazen, who would win all four majors in his career, won his only Open there. He beat Smith, who had lost the last Open at Prestwick in 1925.TurnberryThe case of Turnberry in Scotland is different. It’s a stern test of golf that has hosted four championships. In 1977, the “Duel in the Sun” at Turnberry pitted Tom Watson against Jack Nicklaus, with Watson eventually prevailing. It last hosted an Open in 2009.But in 2014, Donald J. Trump bought Turnberry and renamed it Trump Turnberry. The course’s place on the rota was put on hold.In 2014, Donald J. Trump purchased Turnberry, a Scottish course that last hosted the Open in 2009. Its place on the Open rota was put on hold during his presidency.Russell Cheyne/Reuters“Turnberry will be missed because of the super television optics and sea views,” said David Hamilton, author of “Golf — Scotland’s Game.”While politics have often played a part in where the Open goes, today it’s also about convenience and infrastructure. And that’s what caused many of the other courses to be dropped.“The Open has got bigger and bigger, which ruled out courses over time,” McStravik said. “Some were too short. Some were inaccessible. Some clubs’ fortunes changed, so it went to a neighboring course.”He added: “You like to see the heroes of the day play on the same links that the legends played on. The magic of the Open is that it directly connects Old Tom Morris to Bobby Jones to Ben Hogan to Jack Nicklaus to Seve [Ballesteros] to Rory McIlroy.” More

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      To Win the British Open, You Have to Go Through the Road Hole

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      Some say the 17th hole on the Old Course at St. Andrews is the hardest in the world. Many championship dreams have died there.Forty-four summers ago, Tommy Nakajima of Japan was in the hunt during the third round of the 1978 British Open. On the Old Course at St. Andrews — where the tournament will be staged once again this week — Nakajima knocked his second shot onto the putting surface at No. 17, a par 4 known as the Road Hole. Mission accomplished.Nakajima would now likely make a par, or bogey at the worst, on one of the most intimidating holes in professional golf.His putt, however, made its way down the wrong slope, taking an unfortunate left turn into a pot bunker with remarkably high side walls. But his troubles were just beginning. From there, Nakajima needed four shots to get the ball onto the green. He ended up recording a nine on the hole, ruining any real hopes of winning the claret jug. He would finish the tournament in a tie for 17th.Tommy Nakajima’s putt found its way into the pot bunker beside the Road Hole during the 1978 British Open, ruining any real hopes of winning the competition.Peter Dazeley/Getty ImagesNakajima’s playing partner in that third round was Tom Weiskopf, who had won the 1973 British Open.Before Nakajima hit his first putt, Weiskopf said to his caddie, “He better be careful,” Weiskopf recalled.Nakajima’s collapse, as crushing as it was, has hardly been the only calamity on the Road Hole, so named because it’s next to a road.“There are a lot of things that can go wrong on this hole,” said Nick Price, who won the British Open in 1994. “It’s like walking through a minefield.”In 1984, Tom Watson found the road. He was aiming to win the tournament for the third consecutive time. Such a victory would be his sixth title in the Open; he would tie the record held by the British golfer Harry Vardon. However, Watson’s dream would soon be history.In 1995, Italy’s Costantino Rocca, in a four-hole playoff against John Daly, needed three shots to get out of the bunker. That was it for him.The first challenge for players at No. 17 — which was lengthened in 2010 to 495 yards from 455 — is to navigate a treacherous blind tee shot, meaning players can’t see the landing area on the fairway because the view is blocked by a green shed on the right.The preferred landing spot is on the right side of the fairway, but if the ball veers too far right, it might end up out of bounds. Players will typically set their target, depending on the wind, for one of the letters on a sign on the shed that reads: Old Course Hotel. Sometimes, balls hit the hotel itself.No wonder a lot of golfers play it safe by aiming left, but that approach isn’t foolproof, either.“There are a lot of things that can go wrong on this hole,” Nick Price, the winner of the 1994 British Open, said of the 17th hole. “It’s like walking through a minefield.”Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesIf you go into the rough on the left, “you’ve got a terrible angle to the pin and a terrible angle to the front edge of the green,” said David Graham, a two-time major champion.Wherever that first shot ends up, the next shot is just as daunting.“The last thing you want to do is go on the road,” Tony Jacklin, who won the 1969 Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club in England. “The best you can expect to do with a second shot is go for the front part of the green. I don’t care how in command of your game you are. You can’t guarantee hitting that green in two.”As Tom Watson knows too well.During the 1984 Open, Watson was tied with Seve Ballesteros when he sent his drive at 17 to the right. He hit it far enough to clear the wall of the hotel, but the ball wound up on a steep slope.“The shot you want to play to that green is a low-running shot,” Watson said. “You can’t do that from a severe upslope.”He flew his two-iron approach about 30 yards to the right, the ball coming to a rest on the road close to a stone wall. With an abbreviated backswing, Watson managed to get the ball to within 30 feet of the flagstick. He could still save par.Before he putted, however, Watson recalled, “All of a sudden, I hear this roar at the 18th hole. I look up and there’s Seve with his fist up in the air. I said, ‘Uh-oh, I’ve got to make this putt and birdie the last hole.’” When he didn’t make the putt, Watson knew it was over. He lost by two shots and never won another claret jug.Watson, who played in the Open at St. Andrews on eight occasions, strongly advises against challenging the back or middle part of the green.“If you really play it smart,” he explained, “you never try to hit it more than 20 or 30 feet onto the surface of the green. Try to two-putt for your par and get out of there.”Or maybe not go for the green at all.In the 1990 Open, which he won, Nick Faldo laid up short of the putting surface on 17 in three of the four days, including the final round. Leading by five shots and 215 yards away, he saw no reason to take any chances. Faldo walked away from the hole with a bogey. Earlier in that same round, Peter Jacobsen had needed three strokes to move the ball 30 yards from the rough at No. 17, recording an eight.In 1984, Ballesteros seemed to approach the hole as if it were a par 5, hoping to make no worse than a bogey. Price, the 1994 British Open winner, expressed a similar sentiment.“If it was really into the wind, I’d lay up with a four or three iron and then chip up,” Price said. “If I made 4, I made 4. I wasn’t going to make six, seven or eight, that’s for sure.”Players who strive to avoid the road over the green must also be wary of the pot bunker to the hole’s left.Andrew Milligan/PA Wire, via Associated PressThat the hole comes so late in the round, with a championship possibly at stake, makes the challenge even more formidable. In 2015, the last time the Open was held at St. Andrews, the Road Hole ranked as the most difficult hole, with the players averaging 4.655 strokes.Over the course of the entire tournament, there were only nine birdies on 17, while there were 217 bogeys and 32 double bogeys there.“It’s nearly impossible to make a birdie even once in four days,” Graham, the two-time major champion, said. “If you do, it’s a long putt.”Bernard Darwin, the English golf writer and accomplished amateur, perhaps put in best in describing the elusive green on the Road Hole. He wrote that it “lies between a greedy little bunker on one side and a brutally hard road on the other. Many like it, most respect it, and all fear it.” More

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      Q&A with the golfer John Cook about his near miss at winning the 1992 British Open.

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      He was leading late in the 1992 Open, but ended up losing by a stroke.In the 1992 British Open at Muirfield in Scotland, John Cook had his first major win within his grasp. Leading by two strokes in the final round, all he needed was to make a two-foot birdie putt on No. 17 and par No. 18, and the claret jug would, in all likelihood, have been his.He missed the putt and bogeyed 18, finishing a stroke behind the champion, Nick Faldo.Cook, who tied for second a month later in the P.G.A. Championship, won 11 PGA Tour events but no majors.An analyst for Golf Channel, Cook, 64, reflected recently on the 1992 Open.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Can you bring me back to that week in Muirfield and what it felt like to come so close?I felt very confident. I was second or third on the money list and playing good. The problem was when I got over there, my clubs didn’t make it for two days. I walked around, hit shots out of Mark O’Meara’s [the American golfer] bag. Just kind of relearned the golf course. I played there in 1980, but hadn’t played any of the Opens from then on.Why didn’t you go during those years?I either wasn’t exempt or wasn’t high enough on the money list to take three weeks out, spend $20,000 to go. I had a young family. They couldn’t travel with me.When did the clubs arrive?I got them Tuesday evening, so I did get to practice on Wednesday with them. I was ready to go.Maybe not having your clubs took a little pressure off?You might be right. I felt refreshed. I felt like I knew the course by just kind of walking around, seeing things. Maybe, in a roundabout way, that’s the way to prepare. You’ve know what you got to do. You’ve got to keep it out of the bunkers, keep it out of the heather and go from there.So the key is to call the airlines and have them lose your clubs?Just make sure they’re there Tuesday night.On the green at 17, did you think you needed to make an eagle?I’m thinking, if this [30-foot] putt goes in, great. If it doesn’t, not a big thing. Just go up, tap it in and move on to 18. I hit a good first putt, just missed on the right edge. It went by a couple of feet. I went up and marked it. This was just a little two-footer that normally you pay attention. I didn’t. I took it for granted.What does that mean?I got up and didn’t think about exactly where I wanted to hit it. I hit it too hard. It went through the break and missed. There’s some pressure there. I didn’t really feel it, but when I think about it, I got out of my routine, and that’s part of not handling the pressure. Part of handling the pressure is you stay in that routine. The same walk, the same marking of your ball, the same putting it down. For some reason, I took it for granted that this was already given to me.How did you deal with such a heartbreaking loss?That night was not comfortable. I got back to the house we were renting with Mark. He came out and handed us [Cook and his caddie] a couple of beers. He didn’t really say anything. He was busted up.Thirty years later, is the pain still there?Quite honestly, it is. Everyone keeps reminding me: “You’ve had a wonderful career. You’ve won 20 plus times on both tours. You can be proud of yourself.” Yeah, I’m very proud of that. I’ve won a lot of golf tournaments.But I’m disappointed I didn’t win a major. I thought I had the game to win any of the majors.Who you picking for St. Andrews?I think Rory’s [McIlroy] game is just right. You’ve got to keep it out of bunkers, and you’ve got to stay away from hitting that one [disastrous] shot. He has that one shot in him. He can’t afford to have that one shot. And I think Xander [Schauffele, who has won his last two starts]. Those would be my two. More