Ben Wright: Aussie Cool
When the professional golf tours were still to many just a game rather than big business—this was less than 30 years ago—two Aussie mates of mine, Jack Newton and Bob Shearer, were about as wild as they come. Their idea of preparing for the final round of a tournament was to down a skinful of […]
Ben Wright: Greeted at the Gate
Euphoria marked my first-ever golf assignment, covering the 1954 British Open for the Manchester Daily Dispatch. Time can’t obscure the tingle I felt when the cab dropped me off at Royal Birkdale’s front gate that day. I had no qualms with our press headquarters, a nissen hut left over from World War II and outfitted […]
Ben Wright: Heroes In Harmony
Of the four major champions crowned in 2004, clearly the most unlikely winner was Todd Hamilton at the British Open at Royal Troon. As Hamilton holed out on No. 18 to finish off Ernie Els in a four-hole playoff, my thoughts drifted back some three decades, to a celebration at that venerable Scottish links that […]
Royal Lytham & St. Annes, England
A British Open Tradition
Letter from St. Andrews: A Closed Open
I’m not sure why—maybe I haven’t fully and truly expatriated, or maybe it’s just that I’m a congenital jackass—but I get uncommon pleasure from tweaking my fellow St. Andreans with a question. When the 19th-hole conversation turns to the game’s majors, I ask, “So who do you like in the LCSE?” “What?” they say. “The […]
The Royal St. George’s Golf Club, England
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 […]
Formby Golf Club, England
Scan the itinerary of any golfer on a pilgrimage to the British Isles and the chances are Formby Golf Club will be somewhere near the bottom, next to the reminder about buying presents for the family at the airport on the way home. There is one reason for this oversight and it has nothing […]
Panmure Golf Club, Scotland
No plaque exists on either the 2nd or 17th fairways at Panmure Golf Club commemorating the time spent there by a golf legend more than 50 years ago. And that’s just the way Ben Hogan would want it—keeping the focus purely on golf at one of Scotland’s finest yet lesser-known courses. Panmure was already […]
North Berwick Golf Club, Scotland
The vast majority of golfers, even those natives of the game’s homeland who ought to know better, mention of East Lothian generally brings the knee-jerk response of “Muirfield, magnificent Muirfield.” Yet in historical terms, the present home of the ancient Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers is a Johnny-come-lately upstart on the peerless stretch of […]
An Understated Classic: Timuquana Country Club
Long before David Duval soldiered to victory in 2001 over the hard-and-fast links of Royal Lytham and St. Annes, his father sagely predicted that son David’s first major title would be a British Open. Formidable on any course, Duval’s length, creativity and steely focus seemed particularly suited to the challenges of links golf. Firm, running […]
