The Open Championship at St Andrews

With a new era came a new icon. The Claret Jug carries the hallmark of 1873, the year of the first St Andrews Open Championship. Until then 12-hole Prestwick held the monopoly on the tournament, awarding a belt or a medal to its champions. With Musselburgh donating a £10 share, the most famous trophy in the world of golf was bought for all of £30.

There have now been 27 Opens held on the Old Course, and 22 different winners. Each has walked in triumph up the final fairway into the great arena surrounding the Home Green. Many thousands have been in their footsteps, but fewer than two dozen people have walked off the 18th as Open Champion.

The first seven Old Course Opens were played over 36 holes and St Andrews residents won five of them. Tom Kidd has the honour of being the first, and he was joined by Jamie Anderson, two-time winner Bob Martin, and Hugh Kirkaldy. This carried on the tradition established by Old Tom Morris and his son, Tommy, who won eight tournaments at Prestwick. Club and ball makers had an advantage, and the success of these player-craftsmen helped to foster an interest in the mechanics of their game, driving on further improvements. Bob Ferguson and Jack Burns were the other 19th century Open Champions on the Old Course.

The double success of Fifer James Braid continued the tradition of local men winning at St Andrews. Only England's JH Taylor, who was taught by St Andreans, could equal Braid on the Old Course, and he also won twice at the Home of Golf. Even after the war, Jock Hutchison, born in St Andrews but an American citizen, came out on top. His victory pioneered the way for his adopted countrymen to sweep to domination in the inter-war years, with Bobby Jones and Densmore Shute taking the title across the Atlantic from St Andrews during this period. Dick Burton of England was victorious in 1939.

Following the resumption of the Open, in 1946, half the winners have been American, starting with Sam Snead and including the most successful player of them all, Jack Nicklaus (right), the fourth double-winner on the Old Course. Two other champions were Australian, including Kel Nagle who won the Centenary Open in 1960. South African Bobby Locke won in 1957 despite famously walking under a ladder in the days before the tournament. The jubilant Seve Ballesteros from Spain triumphed in 1984. Only one Briton has won at the Old Course since 1939.

St Andrews caddie Tip Anderson guided Tony Lema to victory in 1964, but the main contribution the residents make to The Open today is in helping it to run so efficiently. The whole town seems somehow to participate in this grandest of sports events.

The Old Course itself has been a patient witness to the vicissitudes of time and its tides of humanity. In the beginning, scores of 80 plus were championship-winning totals. Kirkaldy lowered the record to 73, considered par for the Old Course for many years (the 17th being a par 5). Bobby Jones brought the record down to 68. His aggregate score of 285 was 11 better than Hutchison's, and was not bettered for 28 years, when Peter Thomson shot 281. In the second half of the twentieth century aggregates of around 280 have been enough to close in on the trophy. The exceptions have been two of the modern greats, Nick Faldo (270) and Tiger Woods, whose 269 total was 53 better than JH Taylor's in 1895. But it should comfort those who fear the demise of the Old Course as a championship challenge that John Daly's 1995 win was achieved with a 6-under par total of 282.

There have been holes in one and other great feats of shot making, but the memory of disasters befalling players in the Swilcan Burn, Hell Bunker or at the Road Hole, of missed putts and wind-blown shots, remain as fresh as many a victory.

What all St Andrews champions have in common is that they learned to plot their way around the hazards that litter the links and prey on the mind. The Old Course remains the toughest challenge to golfers because not only must its champion defeat the best of his contemporaries but also force his way through the gates of history.

As Tiger Woods said in 2000, 'to win at St Andrews is the ultimate.'

The 2010 Open collection is now available.

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