Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007150173
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND LENGTH: Long
Its history is counted in centuries. A visit to The Old Course, on the windswept coast of Fife, north of Edinburgh, is a walk with the ghosts of golf.
Arnold Palmer first took that walk 30 years ago. This year, he will take his last as a player in the British Open.
He is a part of the history that surrounds this course.
There's the great stone pile of the Royal and Ancient clubhouse behind the first tee and the 18th green. Over there, in the row of bleak old buildings facing the course, is Tom Morris' golf shop. Auchterlonie's is just around the corner. The Niblik, a favorite watering hole, is a niblik shot away.
"There are ghosts here," Lee Trevino says.
There's the course, originally nine holes reaching along the coast to a little hook of land; nine holes until someone centuries ago decided to play back in - rather than walk. That accounts for the eight double greens and the fact golf is now an 18-hole game.
And, the marvelous names given to the features of what English golf historian Bernard Darwin called "a vast, flat plain." There's the Swilkin Burn and the Beardies, the Valley of Sin and Hell Bunker, the Principal's Nose and Walkinshaw's Grave, the Hole o' Cross and the Road Hole.
The Old Course is golf's mecca.
Palmer is making a final pilgrimage this week in the 119th British Open. It will be, he says, his last competitive appearance in the oldest of all the world's golf tournaments.
"Unless something happens that I don't know of, this will be my swan song.
"It will be a sentimental journey back to St. Andrews, 30 years to the day that I went to my first British Open Championship."
Palmer finished second to Australian Kel Nagle in 1960 but won the trophy, an old silver claret jug, the next two years.
"Winning those two British Opens was an important step for me, an important part of my career, something I'll always cherish," he says.
It was of equal importance to the Scots, the Royal and Ancient and the British Open.
Palmer, 30 years ago, was at the height of his powers. He was the Masters and U.S. Open champion, and the most famous, most popular player in the world when he made that first trip to St. Andrews.
He went to a tournament in trouble.
At that time, American players were the dominant forces in the game. Except for Sam Snead's victory in 1946, and Ben Hogan's in 1953, leading American players rarely journeyed to the British Open. The purse was modest, the trip long and inconvenient. It could take a month out of a player's schedule - a month at the peak of the American season.
With the absence of the Americans, the British Open was declining in importance and prestige. To Americans, it was little more than a curiousity. Few, if any, leading American players competed.
Palmer, and his enormous personal popularity, changed all that. His victories in 1961-62, quickly followed by the successes of Tony Lema, Jack Nicklaus, Trevino and Tom Watson, restored the British Open to the front rank of golf's great championships.
The Scots have not forgotten Palmer's contributions to the game they originated. Palmer's final walk up the 18th, before the grandstand on the left, could produce one of sports' most emotional farewells.
Palmer looks forward to it with mixed emotions.
"I'll have the same caddy I had 30 years ago. I'm sure we'll do a lot of reminiscing, remembering old times, shots played 30 years ago."
"It isn't that I wouldn't like to continue playing the British Open; it isn't that I don't still enjoy it. But it's time," says Palmer, now 60, with a smile and a shrug. "I'm getting older . . . "
In sharp contrast to his first trip to St. Andrews, almost four dozen Americans are expected to hold places in the 156-man field. They'll be playing for a purse that is more than $1 million.
There's another change.
When Palmer first went to the British Open, the visiting Americans, the kings of the game, were expected to have the winner in their ranks.
Now they are not.
Nick Faldo of England, winner of the past two Masters and the 1987 British Open, is the early favorite among Britain's legal bookies.
Seve Ballesteros is not far behind. The Spaniard, a two-time Masters winner, scored the second of his three British Open triumphs the last time the Open was played at St. Andrews, in 1984.
Greg Norman, the dashing Australian who took the 1986 Open title and leads the American PGA Tour in money-winnings this year, is the third choice.
Some other major non-American threats are Ian Woosnam of Wales, Bernhard Langer of West Germany, Jose-Maria Olazabal of Spain and Sandy Lyle of Scotland.
Americans, who once dominated this tournament, have won it only once since 1983. Mark Calcavecchia broke that victory drought with his playoff decision over Australians Norman and Wayne Grady last year.
In the months since, Calcavecchia has fallen in love with St. Andrews, where he led Tom Kite and Curtis Strange to an American victory in the Dunhill Cup team competition last fall.
"I hated it when I first played it, but now I absolutely love it," Calcavecchia said. "I can't wait to get started. I've been thinking about it, looking forward to it all year."
He's also been second a lot. He hasn't won this season but has recorded six runner-up finishes in American competition.
Some other leading American contenders include PGA title-holder Payne Stewart, Paul Azinger, Ben Crenshaw, Peter Jacobsen, Fred Couples, Mark O'Meara and Curtis Strange, who is trying to rebound from the unsuccessful and emotionally draining defense of his two consecutive U.S. Open titles.
Wayne Levi, the only three-time winner on the American tour this year, will not play.
But Hale Irwin will. Irwin, who has not competed in this event in several years, has been the central figure in the recent revival of older players, a revival that has put the average age of winners of the last eight American tour events at 40. Irwin, 44, followed up his third U.S. Open title with a victory near New York the following week.
His example provided encouragement for such veterans as Tom Kite, 40, a frequent contender but never a major-championship winner; Tom Watson, 40, a five-time British Open winner; Lanny Wadkins, 40, a recent winner in Williamsburg, Va., and Ray Floyd, 46, a playoff loser in the Masters who needs this title to complete a career sweep of the Grand Slam tournaments.
by CNB