It’s all happening at the Old Course — a modern-day Open Championship requires the kind of epic production process that the MGM big-wigs embarked on with Ben-Hur.
Grandstands are rising up here, scoreboards are emerging there and the clatters, batters and clanks of hectic industry are generating more racket than Charlton Heston’s chariot race.
Last weekend’s declaration during the Masters by Tiger Woods, meanwhile, that he’ll be at St. Andrews for July’s 150th showpiece whipped up such a flurry of excitement, the weather vane on top of the Royal & Ancient clubhouse just about birled itself crooked.
It should be quite the celebration of golf’s most cherished major. The Herald newspaper had already been on the go for 77 years when the first Open was staged at Prestwick in 1860. Since then, this fine auld organ has reported on every championship. The only omissions, for whatever reason, were the Opens of 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868 and 1870.
“One is tempted to suggest that the sports editor of the time should be retrospectively sacked,” wrote the late, much-missed Douglas Lowe in The Herald Book of The Open Championship. Funnily enough, some readers have suggested the current golf writer should be immediately sacked.
With St. Andrews gearing up for a major milestone this summer, let’s have a venture back in time to 1873 when the Old Course staged its first Open.
It was the first time too that the Claret Jug was officially presented. Young Tom Morris, the superstar of the day, had won the title for a fourth time the previous year but there was no trophy to give him. His name, though, was etched on to the spanking new silver pitcher prior to the 1873 championship.
“To win a trophy that Tommy Morris’ name was on was a real badge of honor,” said esteemed St. Andrews golf historian Roger McStravick.
In 1873, the badge of honor – and the Claret Jug – belonged to Tom Kidd, a 25-year-old Open debutant described as a “jut-jawed powerhouse” who won by a shot from Jamie Anderson. The Herald’s fairly modest report of affairs, which was shoehorned under news of a miners’ strike at the North Motherwell and Braidhurst collieries, suggested Kidd played “a strong game, but if deficient in any way it is when on the greens.”
“He was almost damned by faint praise,” added McStravick.
The weather in the build-up to the championship had been particularly foul with biblical downpours leaving pools of water all over the links.
“In those days, of course, you played it where it lay,” noted McStravick. “There was no distinction between casual water and water hazards. Players could lift out of water only under penalty. There’s a great photo from the late 1800s of Freddie Tait playing a ball floating on water. For some of us, it’s bad enough hitting a stationary ball let alone one that’s bobbing about in a puddle.”
The Open of 1873 was staged during the Royal & Ancient’s autumn meeting. It was very much second fiddle.
“The pros playing in The Open were all working class and they were, effectively, getting in the way of the gentlemen’s game,” said McStravick of this fairly slap-dash arrangement. “It would be like saying to Tiger, ‘can you please hurry this up, we’ve got our own golf to play.’ There were no course closures or big preparations back then. It could be all rather chaotic.”
Kidd won with rounds of 91 and 88. In something of a trail-blazing move, he’d etched basic grooves onto his iron clubs to generate more backspin. “That wouldn’t have sat well with the purists,” added McStravick of Kidd’s innovative efforts to steal a march on his rivals.
As well as the Claret Jug and the plaudits, Kidd’s Open win earned him about $15. Not quite the $2 million-plus that gets handed out today.
“He had to pay a deposit to receive the Claret Jug,” explained McStravick. “Officials would be worried that, because of his working-class status, he’d flog it.”
Kidd didn’t find much fame or fortune. He died 11 years after his triumph and is buried in an unmarked grave in St. Andrews.
As the Old Course prepares for a very special anniversary in July, however, a few bunnets will be doffed to the man who was both the first champion of a St. Andrews Open and the first to hoist the Claret Jug.
Nick Rodger is a correspondent for Newsquest, a subsidiary of Gannett and part of the USA Today Network.