GOLF BRITISH OPEN:THE Golf Champion Trophy, to give it its official name, although it is now commonly referred to as the Claret Jug, was made by Mackay Cunningham Company of Edinburgh at a cost of £30 and was hallmarked 1873.
TIGER WOODS made a salient point the other day. He cast his eyes down towards his empty hands as if he were holding the Claret Jug and talked with respect of all the names under its lid and all the way down to the base.
Those who get their names engraved onto the silver trophy are part of a unique club, as the winners of the oldest of golf’s major championships. But there is an even more elite club, those of players who have won successive majors in the same season; and Graeme McDowell, winner of the US Open last month, will seek to become its latest member.
Ironically, another Irishman, Pádraig Harrington, is the last player to join the very exclusive club. He did so in 2008 after adding the US PGA Championship title to his British Open win. Although that achievement is still fresh, it is noteworthy to point out it was the first time a European golfer accomplished such a feat.
So, that’s the task McDowell – whose breakthrough major win came at Pebble Beach last month – faces for the British Open at St Andrews, the home of golf, on this the 150th anniversary of the event’s first staging.
No pressure, then! G-Mac – as his friends and, increasingly, those involved in marketing such a saleable asset know him – has taken his elevated status in his stride and his fellow players on tour recognise an inner hardness which only those who truly believe in their own ability possess. As Harrington put it, “Do I believe Graeme is the type of player who can go out and win at St Andrews? Yes, I don’t see why not. He has the game to play any course . . . . he is very much that kind of player to carry on the momentum, where he gets spells of three to six months of form.”
In fact, Woods – who has 14 major wins, four behind all-time record holder Jack Nicklaus – is also a believer in the philosophy that players can kick on once the breakthrough is achieved.
“I think any time you win one, it only gives you confidence to get the second. You know what it takes. Graeme’s proven it to himself he can do it, and he certainly did all of the right things at the right time to win a championship like that.”
McDowell actually paid a reconnaissance visit to St Andrews last weekend – after flying in from Lake Nona and prior to heading down to the JP McManus Invitational in Adare – to get reacquainted with the Old Course and to see at first hands the tweaking and surgery which has been carried out, especially to the 17th tee, which gives the players a different angle off the tee and where the new tee box on the far side of the pathway has increased the length on the par-four to 495 yards.
He is no stranger to the links, that’s for sure. In the 2004 Dunhill Links championship, McDowell shot a course-record equalling 62, while in the 2005 British Open, he finished in tied-11th position. “I love St Andrews. It’s a golf course that’s been reasonably kind to me over the years. It’s in magnificent condition. It’s going to be firm and mega-fast. They have not tricked it up with rough at all. There’s very little rough on the golf course and it’s just going to be a real true links, a firm and fast test.
“So it’s going to be long-range putting and getting the pins tucked away.” He added: “I didn’t feel like it was a wasted trip but there were no surprises, nothing surprising about the golf course at all. It was very, very well set up from the point of view, what you see is what you get.”
Come next Thursday, when McDowell will be introduced on the first tee by Ivor Robson as the US Open champion, he can expect the hairs to stand up on the back of his neck. But, then, that’ll be nothing new. It’s always been so, from the very first time he visited the course. Only, this time, it’s different: he is a major champion.
Of that new status, McDowell claimed: “I think it’s very important I don’t become a victim of expectation, it’s a very dangerous thing. I certainly enjoy being the US Open champion and I’ve enjoyed everything that goes with it, but it doesn’t give me any God-given right to shoot 65 every day. I have to be realistic. It has changed my life but not changed me as a golfer. I have to focus and concentrate on the things that I’ve done well to get me to this point and continue to do them, and not to fall into the trap of expecting too much of myself.
“I’m going to approach St Andrews the way I approach any major. I’ll be as well prepared as any man on the first tee on Thursday. I’ll be ready to go. St Andrews is a very tricky golf course from the point of view of that it takes a little bit of getting to know, and we are very lucky that we go there every year and play the Dunhill Links.
“I’ll take the confidence away from Pebble Beach that I know I have the ability, if I get into contention on Sunday. I’ll try to give myself every shot at it.”
In all, only 11 different players have won successive majors in a season going back to Walter Hagen, who first achieved the feat in 1924 when he added the US PGA to the British Open. The last player to follow up a US Open win by claiming the British Open was Woods, in 2000.
We all know what happened after that, as Woods also went on to claim the PGA and, then, the following year’s Masters for what became known as the “Tiger Slam”.
THE CLARET JUG
The first British Open champion to receive the new trophy was the 1873 winner, Tom Kidd; but Tom Morris Junior’s name was the first to be engraved on it as the 1872 winner (the trophy was not ready in time).
In 1920 all responsibility for the championship was handed over to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Following the 1927 Open, which was won at St Andrews by Bobby Jones, the club took the decision to retain the Claret Jug in future years and to present the winner with a replica.
In 1990 a further replica was made for display in the new British Golf Museum at St Andrews. In 2000, a third was made for use in travelling exhibitions and a fourth was created in 2003 for the same purpose.
The original is on permanent display in The RA clubhouse. It sits alongside the original first prize, the Challenge Belt, which was donated to the club in 1908 by the grandchildren of Tom Morris Senior.
HOME THOUGHTS:
PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON will reconsider getting a new paint job done on his indoor practice area – but only if he were to win another Claret Jug at the home of golf.
Winner of back-to-back British Opens in 2007 and 2008 – he got the walls of his basement facility, where he has a flight scope for tracking shots among his training gadgets, painted to depict the 18th hole of St Andrews.
“It’s a nice 360-degrees panoramic view as if you were standing on the 18th tee. So you have the 17th green behind you and the 18th in front of you. It’s a nice scene if you sat there looking at it but unfortunately I do sometimes forget to smell the roses along the way. I am practising away and I might not take as much notice of it as I should. It is certainly one of the most iconic views in golf looking over the Swilcan Burn . . . I would love to win at St Andrews.”
What would the change depict? Why, Harrington holding the Claret Jug at the Old Course, of course.
BACK-TO-BACK MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS
1924: Walter Hagen (British Open-US PGA)
1926: Bobby Jones (US and British Opens)
1930: Bobby Jones (US and British Opens)
1932: Gene Sarazen (US and British Opens)
1951: Ben Hogan (Masters-US Open)
1953: Ben Hogan (Masters-US Open-British Open)
1960: Arnold Palmer (Masters-US Open)
1971: Lee Trevino (US and British Opens)
1972: Jack Nicklaus (Masters-US Open)
1982: Tom Watson (US and British Opens)
1994: Nick Price (British Open-US PGA)
2000: Tiger Woods (US and British Opens and US PGA)
2002: Tiger Woods (Masters-US Open) 2005: Tiger Woods (Masters-British Open)
2006: Tiger Woods (British Open-US PGA)
2008: Pádraig Harrington (British Open-US PGA) – PHILIP REID
