The men who took down Royal St George’s to win The Open

open-winners

Open Championship winners’ tales. We talk to the five living Royal St George’s winners to find out how they tamed the Kent links to lift the Claret Jug.

There are four measures of success in professional golf – getting your card, making cuts, winning… and, the toughest of all, winning a Major championship. Since the first one at Prestwick in 1860, just 148 men have won an Open Championship, and 14 have done so at Royal St George’s – a venue with its own challenges.

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To find out how they did it, the shots they needed, how Royal St George’s tested their games and how winning the oldest Major changed their lives, we spoke exclusively to the five living St George’s champions – Bill Rogers, Sandy Lyle, Greg Norman, Ben Curtis and Darren Clarke.

DARREN CLARKE

52 years old | Northern Ireland | 2011 Open Champion 

14 European Tour wins and a member of four successful European Ryder Cup teams.

BEN CURTIS

44 years old | USA | 2003 Open Champion 

Won three PGA Tour titles and was a member of the US 2008 Ryder Cup-winning side.

GREG NORMAN

66 years old | Australia | 1993 Open Champion 

Ninety-one other wins, including the 1986 Open at Turnberry, and spent 331 weeks as World No.1.

SANDY LYLE

63 years old | Scotland | 1985 Open Champion 

He also won 1988’s Masters, 18 European Tour events and was a member of five European Ryder Cup teams.

BILL ROGERS

69 years old | USA | 1981 Open Champion 

He also won six PGA Tour titles, including four in 1981, and was a member of that year’s US Ryder Cup team.

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What was your form like going into The Open you won?

Bill Rogers I was having a very good year, brimming with confidence – I finished second to David Graham at the US Open a month earlier. It was the lightning in a bottle that a golfer just wants to catch. 

Sandy Lyle I had a few tournaments under my belt going into July, but I missed the cut in Ireland beforehand. I didn’t finish my first round, heading for a 90 in tremendous wind. I didn’t finish the last hole, semi-shanked my 4- or 5-iron over the stands, OB. So I said, “That’s enough for this week, young Lyle is going to retire gracefully.” That gives you an idea how silly the game is… a week later I was Open Champion.

Greg Norman It was very solid. I knew my swing was good. I’d worked extremely well with Butch Harmon and we had great practice sessions
in the days leading up to it. We were just fine tuning it every day, so I felt very comfortable, and confident.

Ben Curtis My form was pretty good. It was my 15th event that year and each time I felt it was getting better and better, making some decent money.
I went into The Open with the attitude of just having some fun.

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How did you prepare for Royal St George’s?

BR Playing, frequently, so I arrived in England on the Monday, young, energetic and anxious to have a chance at another Major.

GN Same preparation as normal – most of the time I’d go up to Skibo Castle in Scotland to practise before heading down on Monday.

BC I got there on Friday and played 18 holes on Saturday and Sunday. I spent a lot of time chipping and putting to get used to the different style of course. I was a links rookie so I had to learn how to hit 7- and 8-iron bump-and-runs, as well as getting used to longer putts – you could be 20 yards off the green and still putt it! It was weird standing on certain tees and not being able to see the fairway – just grandstands, or towers in the background. So it was vital to get familiarised with the layout and figure where to hit it. Then, on the Monday I took the train into London with my girlfriend (now wife) Candace to take in the sights aboard one of the big red buses. It was great to be a tourist for a day. It helped me relax.

SL Ian Woosnam offered me a MacGregor driver he couldn’t do much with, so I put another shaft in it, decided to use it in The Open… and drove the ball really well. That was key. Royal St George’s, like Carnoustie, can be brutal if you’re not quite driving the ball well, with tremendously heavy rough and a few long par 4s that you have to put full throttle on the driver to have some sort of sensible second shot in. I’ve still got that driver at home. 

Did you have any inkling it was going to be your week?

BR I was confident, but I never put myself in the frame of mind that I was going to win. I always took it as it came and wasn’t quick to disclose that confidence: a good frame of mind is the reason why you play and why you play a lot, so you can improve your chances.

SL Not particularly, no. I didn’t have a really great putting spell weeks before so there was no notification that something big was in the air. It just happened.

GN Not really, especially after opening my account with a double! I remember telling myself, walking to the second tee, “Look, you’ve got 71 holes to make this up, don’t worry.” I felt good, I liked the course, I liked the lines off the tee… there was nothing I felt uncomfortable about.

BC You never know – even after playing solidly in the first two rounds – whether the stars are aligned or not. But not teeing it up with Tiger helped me go under the radar a bit.

Darren Clarke Tom Watson’s caddie left a ‘Your locker is in the right place’ note on my locker (Clarke received the locker intended for Greg Norman, who had to withdraw through injury) and that inspired me.

THE OPEN 2021: Royal St George’s course guide

What do you remember most about the week? 

BR I remember I almost missed my tee-time on the first day and would have done – and been DQ’d – if journalist John Whitbread hadn’t walked onto the putting green and said “Bill, what are you doing, I believe you’re on the tee box!” I’d got the times wrong. I panicked, ran off the green and made it on to the tee just in time. I owe John for that!

SL It’s always memorable walking down the 18th with the crowd behind you – they were behind me big time over the last four holes. This is what you dream about when you’re a young boy – walking down the 18th and seeing your name at the top of the scoreboard! Playing alongside Christy O’Connor Jnr made such a huge difference as he was such a nice guy to play with, a gentleman. I enjoyed his company, was relaxed and that enabled me to play well and build momentum.

GN Walking to the first tee on Sunday, I looked at the leaderboard and thought, “My God, that’s a who’s who of golf up there, you’d better make a bunch of birdies because everybody is going to go for it!” I think seven or eight of the top 15 in the world were on that leaderboard, but that inspired me. It made me up my game. 

BC After Saturday’s round, all I kept thinking about was that first tee shot on Sunday. “Find the fairway and I’m going to win”. I was just focusing on that, especially after Tiger lost his ball off the first tee and took a triple after having to walk back. A big turning point came midway through Friday’s round when I found a bunker on nine – my caddie wanted me to hit it out sideways, but I thought I could get it out and it came out like a bullet and allowed me to build momentum. It was probably stupid; if I’d have taken a six or seven there, I’d have struggled to make the cut.

DC After shooting a third round 69 to go into the lead, I went into the media centre and somebody asked if I could win. “Of course I think I can win, this is what I practise and play for,” I replied. Some were quite taken aback that a 42-year-old was leading The Open, thinking that he could win. A lot of them didn’t expect me to.

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What was it like down the stretch of an Open Championship?

BR Even teeing it up on the 72nd hole with a four-shot lead, you know things can happen so you remain focused. But the excitement of walking up
the last hole of an Open Championship on the brink of winning is reward for all the effort, work and investment you’ve made to get to that place.

SL It’s a schoolboy’s dream, but you’ve got to finish it. It’s not over till the ball’s in the hole. It wasn’t exactly stress-free in the last three holes – I had to make a good putt on 16 for par, the 17th is just a nightmare, trying to hit that fairway, and on the 18th tee I was waggling my club, but had to step back when there was a huge roar up ahead on the green… apparently Peter Jacobsen was rugby tackling a male streaker! Fortunately, I hit a reasonably good drive, though I finished with a bogey which probably meant a play-off with Bernhard Langer. It was an agonising 40 minutes, waiting for the last chip shot, which Langer had to make from the back right of the green and it just snuck past the hole.

GN It’s sad that they’ve stopped the galleries rushing in behind the final group, especially if you’re the winner. That was one of the most unique things about The Open. Yeah, you still get patted on the back and all that, but it’s not the same. I’ve always enjoyed playing in front of the British crowds – their appreciation of how to play these links courses is always evident. You don’t have to hit it to two inches every time; you can hit it to 45 feet and they know it’s a great shot.

BC I was very nervous. As I walked up 18, I figured I had to make birdie to have any chance, so when I missed the chip, I remember telling myself “Hey, if I can make this putt, I can finish second or third and probably secure my card for next year.” I didn’t know Thomas Bjorn was having trouble on 16. I was just focusing on what I was doing.

DC To walk down the last hole knowing, before I got onto the green, that I’ve won the biggest and best Major in the world was very special.

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What was your highlight of Open week?

BR Oddly enough, the fourth round double I made on No.7, because that was a wake-up call. I was playing very defensively as a result of having a five-shot lead and was just trying to protect my lead. It went from five to a one-shot lead after seven holes, but the double woke me up. Aside from the walk down the 72nd hole, that’s what I remember most.

SL The realisation that the pressure was off. I had won The Open and could try and enjoy the moment. Life changes from that point on.

GN Walking to the 10th tee with a one-shot lead, I reminded myself that a good friend of mine, Larry Bird, one of the great basketball players for the Boston Celtics, always wanted the ball in his hands with one point down and one second to go. He knew he was going to do it. Plus, the tee shot on 14 – my concentration was so acute for that tough tee shot, and when I hit that fairway I knew I had a very good chance of going on to win.

BC The putt on 18 obviously sticks out simply because that one shot made the difference, despite all the pressure. It’s really cool to sit back and think that I had to make a 12-footer to win The Open. Mind you, I do remember snap hooking my opening tee shot on Thursday into the left rough. Luckily, they found it but it was a horrible lie and I chopped it out through the fairway into more thick rough. This time the lie was OK and I managed to chop it out onto the green and make the putt for par.

How did you celebrate winning the Claret Jug? 

BR It was somewhat low-key. My agent arranged for us to stay in London that night and we had a dinner, nothing crazy, though we certainly had some champagne. My wife was not with me. I had to celebrate with her over the phone! 

SL I teed it up the next morning at Sunningdale in a European Tour pro-am… I held on to my promise that I’d play. Unbeknown to me, my wife had arranged a marquee on the lawn at the house and, along with members of the press, we had a proper celebration, champagne and nibbles in the afternoon. Neil Coles came out of his house and Nick Faldo came down, too. Trouble was, we soon ran out of champers and nibbles and ended up phoning the local Chinese to ask if they could do a takeaway for 40 people! They thought it was a piss-take, but I assured them I was serious and Faldo, who hadn’t been drinking, drove me to pick it up. Former Tour player Michael King went round all the tables apologising for their late meals owing to our huge order, explaining it was my fault for winning a “little golf tournament!”

GN I celebrated with my friends and I think we flew home straight away, that evening. It was nothing over the top. I’ve never been that type of person… you’re doing your job, you’ve got your job done and you move on. 

BC With pizza, beer and some cocktails at the house. Candace and I stayed up until 2 or 3am with my two cousins who came over from the US and two agents from IMG. Then it was off to the airport early the next morning – the real party started when I got back to Ohio.

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What qualities do you need to win The Open?

BR Great mental poise, composure and a lot of experience. It also requires a lot of skill because, more often than not, you’re subjected to some pretty adverse conditions so you had better be finely tuned otherwise Open golf will expose any weaknesses you have.

SL In this day and age, you’re not getting many of the shorter hitters winning – it’s all about the power game now and you wonder, say, in 10 or 20 years whether we’ll be seeing 8,000 yard courses. The players are athletes, they have the strength and fitness and are capable of doing that. You’ve got to trust yourself: you can be surrounded by sports psychologists or whatever, but in the end you’ve got to answer your own questions, and be at peace with your inner self. There is no one route to take if you want to be a champion. It’s having a strong mind that will pull you through.

GN You’ve got to have great visualisation. You’ve got to be able to throw the yardage book out of your mind and be able to feel the shot, weighing up the strength of the wind all the time. Knowing those little details, how the ball is affected, the bounce of the ball and the spin off the clubface off that tight turf. Understanding that stuff is critical and comes down to hand-eye co-ordination, flighting the ball, feeling the elements. That’s what makes a great links player.

BC You need patience and discipline in most tournaments, but especially The Open because the weather can dictate everything. You never know what you’re going to be walking into and sometimes making a par or bogey isn’t a bad thing. You’re hitting all the clubs in the bag, sometimes a 5-iron off the tee… and sometimes driver! 

DC When I won, I was unbelievably calm as the round progressed, nothing really bothered me. I heard the roars from what Phil Mickelson was doing – making eagles and birdies for fun – but they were of no relevance to me.

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Did winning change your life?

BR Within an hour, life as I knew it, would never be the same. Suddenly, you’re in a new realm.

SL You can’t say it doesn’t. It plays a huge part and some guys have suffered from it because of the demands on your time. I think you need good management to look after you and keep everything under control. Golf and life itself can be unpredictable things and you never know what’s around the corner, so it’s a case of making hay while the sun shines. When Tony Jacklin won the British and US Opens in successive years, he was out there chasing the dollar. Others took on kamikaze schedules which wore them out.

GN When you win your first Major, you want to win your second and keep on. We practice, train and prepare ourselves for those moments and even the best players in the world have had 15 or 18 of those moments so they don’t happen that often. There are a lot of great players out there who have never won a Major.

BC One day you walk into the grocery store to get some milk and nobody knows who you are. Then, after winning The Open, it takes you an hour to get the milk… only to return home minus the milk!

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Who do you think will win the 2021 Open at Royal St George’s?

BR That’s so hard. I pay attention to what goes on these days, but there are so many players capable of winning The Open Championship and I don’t know if I’d like to name just one of them.

SL I think Rory McIlroy almost has the perfect game for Royal St George’s. He’s obviously not short of power, is a terrific ball striker and he’s a previous Open winner. 

GN It depends on weather conditions, but guys like Dustin Johnson because of the way he flights the ball and drives the ball really well, I’ll put him right up there along with Brooks Koepka if he can stay strong and fit. They’ve got effortless power and if its windy, that’s critical.

BC Did anybody expect Darren Clarke to win in 2011? No. Nobody expected me either. It’s The Open and it’s unique, but basically you’re looking for somebody who hits it straight, is disciplined and is in decent form. And if you can keep it out of the thick rough and fairway bunkers, you’ll have a great chance.

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