Happy Birthday: The Open Turns 157
/The day consisted of 36 holes, three trips around the 12-hole Prestwick designed by Old Tom Morris. The Earl of Eglinton sponsored the event featuring eight professional golfers, including Willie Park Sr., Andrew Strath, Robert Andrew, George Brown, Charlie Hunter, Alexander Smith, William Steel and of course, Old Tom. Some competitors seen in identical lumberjack shirts given to some to mask what might have been deemed inappropriate attire. Apparently lumberjack was the new tweed.
Josh Morris summarizes the event for Golf History Today and Kevin Cook's Tommy's Honour re-created the events quite nicely. But in a nutshell, Park Sr. edged Old Tom by two strokes in a nail biter and professional tournament golf was born!
Sheila Walker on Old Tom kicking off the proceedings...
And while there is no film, we do at least have this final Open at Prestwick in 1925 to sense what Prestwick means to the game and what a golf tournament looked like long ago--warning, people walk in lines and the sacred through lines!
The anniversary is a nice reminder that tournament golf owes much to the efforts of those first eight who teed it up sixty-five years prior to this:
The plaque commemorating the old first hole...
