The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
20 moments that define Angus links
After first reporting on the Craw’s Nest Tassie of 1987, Steve Scott has covered golf at Carnoustie for The Courier for more than 30 years. Here he picks 20 moments which define the world-renowned links.
1 The conversation on the train and the grand bazaar
In 1892 the links was owned by the Panmure Estate and played over by several clubs. Secretly the Factor of Estate, David McCorquodale – also Provost of Carnoustie at the time – was organising a sale of the course to the Dalhousie Club for their sole use. However discussions of the plan were overheard during a train journey to Dundee and reported to Duguld Colquhoun, another town councillor. The conflict of interest was exposed, and the secret sale thwarted. Instead a Grand Bazaar was held in Dundee to raise funds to buy the links for the town in perpetuity. £2,700 was raised, more than enough for the purchase. 2 South America Carnoustie has many myths and legends, but one of the best is how (allegedly) the 10th hole got its name. The town famously sent golfing sons all over the globe to teach the game of golf in the early part of the 20th Century, and reputedly one was due to go to Argentina. However his farewell party went some distance, and he’s said to have attempted to stagger home but lost his bearings and fell in the Barry Burn at the 10th. So it was renamed South America because that’s as far as he got to that continent. 3 James Wright and the committee go to Walton Heath Well, this was awkward. Carnoustie Links Committee chairman Wright led a delegation to Surrey to see James Braid, the five-time Open champion, and tell him the redesign of the Championship Course they commissioned from him was not good enough and they had decided to tear it up. The great man seems to have taken it quite well. Not only did he endorse Wright’s changes to the finish (the same as played today), he travelled back to Carnoustie to finetune, adding bunkering, and creating the classic sixth and 15th holes. Very little has changed at the course since then. 4 Tommy Armour and Jose Jurado The Open finally came to Carnoustie in 1931, and the new finish played just as
brutally as it has done until the present day. Armour, an exiled Scot (and winner of the US Open in 1927 and PGA in 1930) shot a 71, then the course record, and waited as player after player came to grief trying to catch him. The most tragic was Argentina’s Jurado, who mistakenly believed he needed a five up the last to tie. He played short of the burn and got his five thinking he’d secured a play-off, but then was told he was a shot light.
5 Cotton weathers the storms
Ben Hogan and Tom Watson apart, Americans have tended to struggle at Carnoustie. In 1937 the entire US Ryder Cup team showed up at Carnoustie having won at Southport and Ainsdale a week before, and Sam Snead and Byron Nelson were heavily favoured to win. But the cold weather and storms in Angus wrecked the US stars and it was home hero Henry Cotton who swept to his second of three Open victories. Nelson never forgot Carnoustie, though; it was he and Walter Hagen who convinced Ben Hogan to come and win 16 years later.
6 Hogan at the fifth
Even though it was only 65 years ago, there are many disputed legends of Ben Hogan’s famous victory in 1953, on his only competitive visit to the UK (oddly, he never played or even visited St Andrews). The most decisive move was his chip-in at the fifth hole in the final round, which put him in the lead of the championship for good. Hogan was close to the leftside greenside bunker, on a bit of sandy scrub rather than actually in the hazard, but he made clean contact, pitched it perfectly and it rolled into the cup. A birdie followed at the sixth and the Claret Jug was effectively his.
7 Bonallack leads
In his final year as secretary of the R&A in 1999, Michael Bonallack (later Sir Michael) was the man who brought the Open Championship back to Carnoustie after a 15-year gap. Thirty years before, however, he was the best amateur player in the world, winning the Amateur Championship a record five times between 1961 and 1970. In 1968, his opening two-under 70 co-led the championship with Scotland’s Brian Barnes, and not until Ireland’s Paul Dunne at St Andrews in 2015 did an amateur next lead the championship at the close of a day’s play.
8 Player at the 14th
Gary Player had studied Ben Hogan’s 1953 win when the Open returned 15 years later, copying his preparation. However it was the long 14th rather than the other par five sixth that Player made his most famous move, sparring with playing partner Jack Nicklaus and Billy Casper behind them. After a downwind eagle in the third round, Player struck a three-wood into the wind, landing 20 inches from the cup for a tap-in eagle in the fourth round, beating Nicklaus’s birdie and Casper’s par. Player played the notorious final stretch in par figures to win his second Claret Jug by two shots.
9 Johnny Miller’s late charge
Best known now as an acerbic commentator on US TV, in the 1970s Johnny Miller was the Phil Mickelson of his time, a swashbuckling, charismatic player who took on everything. In 1975 he reached the last hole thinking he would need a birdie to catch playing partner Tom Watson and Jack Newton, although a par would have done. He drove into a fairway bunker and attempting a heroic recovery to reach the green, stayed in with his second. A bogey left him one out of the play-off, and the fateful bunker was renamed in his honour.
10 Jock Calder poaches John Philp
There are many reasons for Carnoustie’s limbo years without the Open from 1975 to 1999, but no questioning the move that changed everything. Chairman of the links Jock Calder was determined to re-establish Carnoustie’s historic credentials, went to St Andrews and poached head greenkeeper Walter Woods’ prized deputy, John Philp. The forthright Philp demanded, and was given, sole responsibility for the upkeep of the Championship Course, and within five years the neglected great was already one of the best conditioned courses on the circuit. The 11th hole has been renamed in his honour.