SPECTATOR SPORT
Hit and miss
Frank Keating
DIPPING IN an oar rather late, this corner will resist the purple-braided quotation you must have read ten times already this week — you know, Bernard Darwin's line about the larks singing and the sun shining on the waters of Pegwell Bay and lighting up the white cliffs in the distance. In any case, when the Open comes to Kent, I always reckon Henry Longhurst's description more relevant: that of an exasperated American star practising on the sixth green at neigh- bouring Deal, hard beside the foreshore. Another boo-boo fails to drop, and he brandishes his offending putter aloft and cries, 'How the devil can a man be expected to putt with all this traffic going up and down the Channel?'
The Yanks do not, traditionally, like Sandwich — 'You can drive plumb down the middle, yet one bad bounce and you can lose your ball in the rough either left or right,' said Jack Nicklaus once, and certain- ly no whinger he. Nevertheless, the only Open winner at Sandwich to have broken par was the charming Texan, Bill Rogers, in 1981 — a victory mainly disregarded here, for it coincided with the very weekend Ian Botham began single-handedly turning around an Ashes cricket series with his heroic splendours at Headingley.
Four years later, Sandy Lyle won his nail- biter at Sandwich, but I suppose the most celebrated British victory in an Open down there was Henry Cotton's in 1934, almost 60 years ago. Well, we have all played with a 'Dunlop 65', haven't we? Those dimpled little onions are still being hooked and hacked around the courses of Britain. The manufacturers christened their ball after Cotton's second round 65 in 1934 had given him an unassailable lead in the champi- onship. When he was presented with the claret jug at the Saturday prize-giving, he had no time to fetch his jacket from his car, so he borrowed Henry Longhurst's camel- hair overcoat.
Do not believe this weekend the college- boy pros in their mix-'n-match pullovers and polyester pants as they hype themselves up with either, 'My game is in good shape,' or, 'I just can't hit a thing.' They never actu- ally know till they are out there, club-wag-
gling at the first. For a week before his tri- umph, Cotton told Country Life years later, he had practised on the course till he was dizzy: I had four sets of clubs and tried all the swings I knew and still could not get the ball to go properly. So, with a sort of feeling 'I might as well play now I am here, but I ought to quit', I put my clubs in my bags two days before the start and threw them in behind the seat of my red Mercedes cabriolet and decid- ed to forget golf for 36 hours.
When the time came — he waggled on the first tee, before playing '18 of the most perfect holes I had ever played'.
A particularly warm memory of following a favourite in a hike across the dunes was in 1981. On the morning of the first round, Nicklaus had been told that his son, back in the United States, had been injured in a motor accident. Jack went out and shot an appalling 83. No excuses. Next morning, with news of his son's recovery, Nicklaus made a 66 of utter grandeur, and the tumult of welcome they gave him in the steepling amphitheatre of the 18th remains heady in the recollection.
Oh, for one round like that from Nick- laus this time — just for memories' sake as the nonpareil takes his final bow at the championship.
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