The
founding of England’s first major-championship golf venue might easily have been
dubbed the Great Escape of 1887. It was conducted by a group of frustrated
golfers from Wimbledon Common in the suburbs of London, where the game was
played by two golf clubs on the same course—in opposite
directions.
The
search for new ground was led by two players from the Wimbledon Golf Club, Dr.
Laidlaw Purves and Mr. Henry Lamb. The former fervently vowed to walk hundreds
of miles along the English Channel until he found suitable linksland.
Fortunately, Purves never had to make his arduous trek, thanks to a tip that
sent him to the medieval seaport of Sandwich.
One
of the famed Cinque Ports that defended the coast of southeast England, Sandwich
had seen Roman invaders and Canterbury-bound pilgrims in its heyday, but lost
much of its naval influence after the Great Storm of 1287 deposited enormous
chunks of silt in the harbor. As decades passed, sandbars grew and merged until
the harbor found itself a good two miles from the sea.
That
process also created acres of rolling sandhills, a wonderful sight that greeted
Purves. Within months, Purves, Lamb and Scottish greenkeeper Ramsay Hunter laid
out a course that gained immediate and high praise. They named their club St.
George’s in honor of England’s patron saint, and it has been a worthy rival to
St. Andrews ever since.
Known
colloquially as Sandwich, Royal St. George’s has been an undisputed championship
venue almost since its inception. The course has produced a remarkable number of
firsts while hosting the British Open and Amateur championships a dozen times
apiece, as well as the Walker and Curtis Cups.
Its
first major, the 1892 British Amateur, saw a battle between two English titans,
John Ball and Harold Hilton, with Ball emerging victorious. Twelve years later,
a non-Brit captured the title for the first time when Walter Travis, an
Australian immigrant to America, prevailed at Sandwich. Travis and his hosts got
along miserably, due to the champion’s use of an unorthodox center-shafted
putter called the “Schenectady,” which the Brits banned shortly thereafter.
Later
that same week, Sandwich became the first and only venue to host both the Open
and Amateur championships in the same year. The Open had never been held outside
of Scotland and no English professional had ever taken the title until John H.
Taylor claimed the prize that week.
One
cannot play Royal St. George’s, which took on the Royal designation in 1902,
without thinking of the greats who have walked its fairways, and no hole at
Sandwich is imbued with greater Open history than the par-4 5th. There in 1949,
genial Irishman Harry Bradshaw drove his ball into the broken end of a beer
bottle during the second round. Unsure of any relief, he played the ball,
smashing ferociously but seeing it squirt only a few yards forward. Now fully
distraught, Bradshaw took a double bogey, wound up in a 36-hole playoff with his
good friend Bobby Locke of South Africa, and took a terrible beating. To this
day, no player from the Irish Republic has ever won the
title.
The
most famous hole at Sandwich might very well be the 14th, a par 5 where a slice
at any point sails out of bounds onto neighboring Prince's Golf Club. It’s known
as the “Suez Canal” because a wide stream crosses the fairway and threatens the
second shot. This hole cost Sarazen the ’28 Open because he ignored his caddie’s
advice to lay up with a mashie and used a spoon to splash his ball into the
water. The Squire made double bogey and finished two shots back of Hagen.
There
were no such disasters for Greg Norman: So often disappointed in the majors, the
Shark vanquished rival Nick Faldo by two shots in ’93. Gary Player called
Norman’s final-round 64 “the best golf I ever saw played at the British Open,”
and Gene Sarazen went a step further, describing it as “the most awesome display
of golf I have ever seen.”
