You know you’re getting old when you are about to watch a ninth Open at the home of golf.
My love affair with St Andrews began 62 years ago when I first set eyes on the most iconic piece of golf real estate on the planet. I was still at primary school when my paternal grandfather introduced me to the delights of the oldest major. He was an accomplished player himself, a club champion with a low single figure handicap who had already tried - largely unsuccessfully - to teach me the rudiments of the game while I was still in short trousers (not at all a pretty sight).
I regret now that I didn’t pay more attention. Many times over the years I have wished that I could have another lesson from a man who was blessed with a perfectly calm temperament as opposed to his eldest grandson who is not at all blessed with a remotely similar mindset. But I suppose it’s a bit late now, given that my first golf coach left us in 1976.
The memories remain, though, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding by springs to mind every time I recall my first sighting of the Old Course on that fateful Friday. We had travelled from Arbroath to St Andrews by train (you still could in those days) only to come face to face with a version of Armageddon.
By the time we arrived water was flowing in torrents down the steps of the R&A’s headquarters after the Auld Grey Toon had been hit by the equivalent of a mini monsoon. Within minutes the third round had been postponed for the first time in over 50 years due to severe flooding and rescheduled to resume the following day.
History records that the relatively unknown Australian Kel Nagle subsequently triumphed over Arnold Palmer by a stroke. But don't ask me how Nagle performed overall because I didn’t see a single bloody shot being played.
I didn't have the good fortune to see champagne Tony Lema triumph four years later. But I returned to St Andrews in 1970 to witness a painful climax when The Peacock of the Fairways, the colourful Doug Sanders fluffed a two-foot putt and handed Jack Nicklaus a reprieve in the form of an 18-hole pay-off which he duly won the following day.
Regrettably, I was absent in 1978 when the Golden Bear completed an Old Course Open double and again six years later when Seve Ballesteros’ recorded a two-shot victory over Tom Watson and Bernhard Langer. The print unions had called a strike and I was warned that I’d be in big trouble if I set one foot in the media centre, so I had to settle for watching events unfold on the box.
But what wouldn't I have given to have been there to have witnessed close up Seve punching the air in triumph when his birdie putt dropped in what is generally considered the most iconic Open image of all time. The swashbuckling Spaniard, who sadly passed away in 2011 at the age of just 54, summed up what his triumph meant to him when he declared: “St Andrews is the greatest place for me, in golf, and the place where I lived the greatest moment of my career.”
Nothing that happened in the subsequent six Opens at the old Course, won by Nick Faldo (1990), John Daly (1995), Tiger Woods (2000 and 2005), Louis Oosthuizen (2010) and Zach Johnson (2015) could match such an outpouring of joy and emotion. But the sight and sounds of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, in 1995 and 2005, being applauded as they walked down the 18th for the last time in an Open like Caesers down the Appian Way were also pretty special.
Costantino Rocco’s reaction to sinking a 65 foot putt from the Valley of Sin to earn a four-hole play-off against Daly when he sank to his knees and punched the turf with both fists also ran Seve’s moment reasonably close. However, the popular little Italian was unable to produce another fairytale finish.
Now it’s onwards and upwards as I notch up seven-in-a-row at the home of golf and nine in total. This is also my 44th Open and my 41st as a working journalist since making my writing debut when Tom Watson beat the luckless Jack Newton in a Carnoustie play-off in 1975. I like to think that I may have one more St Andrews Open in me, but time’s marching on and none of us is getting any younger.
Read Jim Black's Open Diary in the Record every day this week.
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