2020 VISION
Sky have the solution for golf fans missing their fix of The Open this weekend... Arnie, Jack, Seve, Rory and Tiger go for glory in a fantasy final round at the Home of Golf
Things happen at St Andrews. On 17th, there may be birdie or double bogey
WHEN it comes to memories of Opens past, Ewen Murray can boast a couple of classics. Like being so nervous, following a personal highlight moment in front of rapturous home galleries, that he literally couldn’t balance a golf ball on a tee.
Something of a drawback for a professional playing in the greatest event on the calendar.
Or the unfortunate moment when a drive at the Home of Golf missed the widest fairway in the game — and he felt like leaping into the Swilcan Burn. He can laugh about it now, at least.
In all the things Murray has seen, done and described for the watching public during his long association with the game, however, nothing prepared him for one unique broadcasting experience this week.
You’ll be able to judge for yourself, from 11am tomorrow, whether the Sky commentator is overhyping the one-off Open for the Ages production pitting the greatest golfers of the past half century against each other in as-live competition.
On paper, it sounds like the kind of ambitious crossover that would make the folks at Marvel think twice. On film, according to Murray, it’s a work of wonder.
He certainly loved providing the commentary for a bold experiment in time-warping stroke play, getting entirely caught up in the ‘competition’ between Tiger and Jack, Arnie and Rory, Seve and Mr Watson… the list goes on.
The fact that these titans of the game were going head-to-head over the Old Course? Well, that just made it all the more special.
For Murray, a golf fan right down to his Arbroath roots, an Open Championship at St Andrews will always be special. No matter who wins. Or, for those providing the supporting cast, how you play.
Recalling his own two Open outings over the most famous stretch of links in golf, the Scot continually had to pause for laughter — on both ends of the phone — as he told Sportsmail: ‘Oh, I can tell you some stories.
‘I hit it out of bounds at the last. That’s a terrible thing to admit, although you have to remember we had wooden drivers and different balls back then. I hit it out of the neck.
‘I was playing with Hale Irwin in the final round, 1978, and I’d played rubbish all week. I don’t know how I managed to make the cut.
‘But I hit it out of the neck, it was moving left to right — and it bounced on Grannie Clark’s Wynd, cutting across the middle of the fairway.
‘It finished an inch out of bounds. And, of course, then you have to hit another ball.
‘Do I go with driver again or just take three wood? Because there’s 20,000 people watching.
‘The right-hand side of the fairway is covered. The grandstand at the back is full. And the massive stand at the right of the first tee is full. I had to walk up there — and everyone knows you’ve hit it out of bounds.
‘Walking over the Swilcan Bridge, I almost felt like jumping in the Swilcan Burn. I felt I didn’t deserve to go over the bridge!
‘I took a six, I think I shot 78 and finished last out of the ones who made the cut.
‘I thanked Hale for his company and he said: “Yeah, same here — I hope you get your game back soon”. I mean, I walked off that green and felt about an inch high. It was terrible!’
Roaring with amusement at his own misfortune, all these years later, Murray makes no attempt to big himself up in telling old war stories. Even his moments of glory have a self-deprecating twist in the tale.
‘In ’84, I played with Ben Crenshaw in the last round,’ he said, accepting Sportsmail’s invitation to brighten up an Open week proving tough for all who should be at Royal St George’s right now.
‘At the eighth, the par three, I hit a six-iron to about a foot. Of course, being Scottish, a massive roar goes up. It was the opposite of my experience on 18 with Irwin.
‘Anyway, Ben tees up and holes it. And you know how popular he was, so the noise was incredible walking up from the eight tee to green, him picking up his ball and waving to the big grandstand over by 11, then I holed mine.
‘The noise was deafening, absolutely deafening, to the point where the hairs on my neck were standing up and my body was shaking.
‘Ben teed off first on the ninth and I found, when it was my turn, that I couldn’t get the ball on the tee. My hands were shaking.
‘I wasn’t nervous. I guess it was just excitement, adrenaline. In the end, I just gave up, dropped the ball on the deck and hit three wood.
‘I didn’t actually tee it up. But, of course, that brought the bunkers into play…’
A prodigious junior whose professional career never quite reached the highest heights, Murray’s position as Sky’s voice of golf is built only partly on his knowledge of the game.
Like most great commentators, a great deal of his art lies in knowing when to shut the hell up.
After Shane Lowry hit his second into 18 at Portrush last year and began his victory march towards the green, for instance, Murray simply refused to tarnish the scenes with words from the broadcast booth, explaining: ‘I knew saying anything would spoil it.’
If it sounds easy, the judgment involved depends on professional skill, yes. But also an appreciation of the event. Murray knows how much it all means.
‘Playing in The Open, I wish I’d appreciated it more,’ he confessed. ‘I wish I’d enjoyed it more. I wish I could have these moments again, look around me a bit more and not take it for granted.
‘Because I was just out of school when I played in my first one, ’73 at Troon — the last one with the small balls still in play.
‘I remember taking 44 for the back nine, carding a 79. But I made the two cuts, one after 36
and then 54 holes. I was just out of school and thought: “This is the way it’s going to be. I’ll probably play in about 40 of these!”
‘I played the next year at Lytham, also played another one at Lytham — and St Andrews ’78 and ’84.
‘The Open was different. There were some great tournaments — but The Open was special. Standing on the first tee with Ivor Robson calling your name out, trying to be pleasant to you when he knows as well as you do that you’re shaking in your shoes.
‘I was talking about that with Nick Faldo last night, how he controlled his nerves, knowing he was expected to contend or win. I was never quite in that position.
‘It was a rush of adrenaline walking on to the first tee. More so at St Andrews — I remember both of those experiences, ’78 and ’84.
‘It’s the history of the place. When you get within five miles of St Andrews, there’s a different scent in the air and it’s as if you’re being guided by radar, right down to the Royal and Ancient clubhouse.’
In lieu of actually being there — or in Sandwich, where this year’s Open was due to take place — to watch the world’s best this weekend, the joint Sky-R&A production being beamed across the world tomorrow should provide a diversion from the sense of what might have been.
‘It’s quite remarkable,’ said Murray. ‘I’m not usually impressed by an awful lot of things, to be perfectly honest.
‘I couldn’t believe that anyone could put this together and make it look as it does. It was over a thousand hours of production. When you think, if we’d been at Royal St George’s now, you fire up the cameras and off you go — a big operation but all live.
‘But this is a thousand hours of editing, marrying pictures together to make it look like the final round of an Open.
‘I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Even now when I look at it, I can’t understand it — but somehow they’ve managed it.
‘To make the pictures digital when we go back 50 years, going back to 1970, adding computer graphics. Shot tracer — I don’t know how they did that!
‘When it comes on air, it will look like we’re heading off in the final round of the Open. We did it as live. Nick Dougherty, Iona Stephen, Butch Harmon and myself.
‘Butch was in Vegas, Nick and Iona were in different places. We only saw each other via Zoom.
‘It would have been great to do it live. To sit down on Sunday at 11 o’clock and just say: “Cue, off we go”. It features all of the great players and we focus on the last five or six groups.
‘Teenagers and those in their 20s, they will have seen clips of all those great players. But this will feel like watching them in The Open.
‘I think they’ll be impressed by what they see, the old wooden clubs and balata balls. It’s all the people who have contended or won at St Andrews.
‘The winner was kept a very closely-guarded secret, so we didn’t know right up until the end.
‘Because things happen at St Andrews, as you know. At the 17th, you could have someone making a birdie or a double bogey. Up until the last hole, you won’t know who is going to win the 2020 Open!’
Murray knows how big The Open is. Understands nothing can ever replace it. After all, he’s been there, done that. Missed the fairway. There’s a story about that...
Watch The Open for the Ages tomorrow from 11am on Sky Sports Golf and NOW TV.