Labeling a British Open a major golf tournament is like calling the World Cup final a big soccer match.
Or saying the Tour de France is an important bike race. The America’s Cup is a noteworthy regatta.
A supreme golf tournament? Maybe. Blue-chip, king-deluxe, perhaps?
A really-big-tournament-and-none-other-comes-close?
That’s getting there.
With apologies to Pebble Beach, all events pale when compared to a British Open played on the Old Course.
It doesn’t even need a title beyond the simple name, The Open Championship, and those players with the requisite credentials are teeing it up there this week.
This year’s third major is the 150th anniversary of a tournament first won by Willie Park in 1860. The Americans were thinking about starting a war amongst themselves around that time, but a collection of eight players got together to contest the first British Open.
The Swilcan Bridge and 18th and 1st fairways at St. Andrews.
Aside from a detour in 1865, when Andrew Strath won the Open, Park and Old Tom Morris traded victories in the event until Young Tom Morris got into the act.
They awarded a championship belt in those days, but after Morris the younger won his third straight in 1870 and an argument prevented the tournament from being played the following year, the belt was retired in favor of a claret jug, which Young Tom Morris also won and has been presented to the British Open champion ever since.
A Scot won the first 29 Opens while the first 12 were played at Prestwick Golf Club before St. Andrews came upon the scene for the first time as a championship venue in 1873.
It was time for a golf course that is so old that no one can really put an accurate date on it.
Records peg St. Andrews’ heritage as a golf course to the 16th century, but the bridge across the Swilcan Burn (the stream that meanders across the 18th fairway) is estimated to be about 700-800 years old and it’s still there.
Bored sheepherders most assuredly played some form of the game and it’s believed that sheep created the first bunkers by burrowing into the ground to get out of the wind off the North Sea and exposed the sand of the natural seaside linksland.
It is widely regarded as the birth of golf and by that very designation St. Andrews lays within a realm of its own.
To win there is to carve a career among the golfing elite, to stamp the resume with the pinnacle achievement.
Jack Nicklaus did not consider his professional record complete without a British Open victory at St. Andrews. He won there in 1970 and again in 1978.
Park didn’t win at St. Andrews. A Morris can’t claim victory there either, Old or Young.
Bobby Jones can, and Sam Snead, too.
Tom Watson? No. The leading American with five British Open titles did not win at St. Andrews. He came the closest in 1984, when he fell two strokes shy of Seve Ballesteros.
Watson is now 60, but he’s in the field this week.
Arnold Palmer is not among the past champions at St. Andrews and neither is Ben Hogan (though the Hawk appeared in his lone British Open at Carnoustie in 1953 and won).
Champagne Tony Lema won there in 1964 and John Daly triumphed in 1995.
There have been great champions and those less noted, but the mark is indelible.
The defending British Open champion is Stewart Cink, who won last year at Turnberry in a playoff over Watson.
Tiger Woods is the reigning “St. Andrews” Open champion, having won at the Old Course the last two times — 2000 and 2005. Woods can become the first to win three Opens there.
Woods, who is sitting on 14 major titles in his quest to surpass Nicklaus’ 18, would seem well-positioned to secure another Claret Jug and he’s been in contention in this year’s first two majors.
He was in the hunt at both the Masters and the U.S. Open after 54 holes, but failed to capitalize. Woods last won in the United States at the BMW Championship in September.
It’s his longest winless drought to start a year since 1998, when Woods didn’t hoist a trophy until his ninth tournament.
Both winners of this year’s majors are in the field.
Graeme McDowell can add a British Open crown to his U.S. Open title and a win by Phil Mickelson would likely vault him to the rank of world’s best, if not No. 1 in the official rankings.
Past British Open champions in the field include Nick Faldo, Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, David Duval and Tom Lehman, but Watson will generate tremendous attention.
The man who won the hearts of British fans during his run as the top player from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, thrilled the gallery last summer when he nearly won his sixth Open.
A victory by Watson on Sunday would certainly resonate throughout the centuries-old university town.
Just playing there is an honor while a victory at the Old Course is historic.
Yeah, a British Open at St. Andrews is a big deal.
Major, in fact, but what’s in a name?
Mike Scarr is the editor of Golflink.com. He can be reached at golflinkeditor@demandmedia.com.
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