The first happened all the way back in 1861. The most recent occurred in 2018.
First, a disclaimer. We are not predicting future professional success for Charlie Woods, the golfing offspring of proud papa Tiger Woods. We’re enjoying watching him grow up right in front of our eyes alongside dad at the PNC Championship, but Charlie, like any young phenom, has a long road ahead before he starts hoisting trophies.
Nonetheless, it is fun to think of the possibilities. And if Charlie were to ascend to the Tour and starting winning on that level, those two would join a pretty exclusive list.
There are 10 father-son combinations to win on the PGA Tour. The first happened all the way back in 1861. The most recent occurred in 2018. Here’s the list.
From the castle and cathedral to the golf courses, there’s just something special about St. Andrews.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – No matter the direction one looks in this ancient, gray seaside town on Scotland’s east coast, which was founded in the 12th century on the legend that the bones of the Christian apostle St. Andrew were brought here, the eyes explode with lasting reminders from centuries past.
The ruins of St. Andrews Castle, built around 1200 A.D. and rebuilt several times during the Wars of Scottish Independence, still stand proud. The remains of St. Andrews Cathedral, established in 1158, continue to successfully battle harsh elements off the North Sea. The University of St. Andrews which was founded in 1413 continues to be a force in education.
There are markings on cobblestones scattered throughout the city indicating where executions took place. On the pleasant outskirts of the city by the massive beach is where Witch Hill resided, the unpleasant local where accused witches in the 16th and 17th centuries were taken down to the water and, with their thumb tied to the opposite toe, were submerged. If they drowned, they were deemed as witches. If they survived, they were deemed as witches and dragged to Witch Hill and burned at the stake (the odds were not in their favor).
Witch Hill is now Martyrs’ Hill, where the imposing Martyrs’ Monument commemorates the Protestant martyrs who were burned at the stake for purported heresy between 1520 and 1560.
“You go back in time when you are in St. Andrews,” said three-time Open Championship winner Sir Nick Faldo.
The journey into the past reveals history has a mighty ally to form the fabric of the Auld Grey Toon – golf. Just a few stones’ throws from Martyrs’ Hill is the headquarters of the Royal & Ancient, which was established in 1754 and lays down the rules of golf for all the world except in the USA and Mexico. In a small corner of the ancient ruins of the Cathedral of St. Andrews, golf royalty Old Tom Morris and his son, Young Tom, lay side by side in rest.
This is the Morris’s section of the cemetery at St. Andrews. Off the west wall, left of St. Rule Tower, is where Old and Young Tom are buried.
More than 30 golf shops are scattered across this town of roughly 20,000 year-round residents. There are seven public golf courses controlled by St. Andrews Links, including the New Course next to the Old Course. The New Course, incidentally, opened in 1895. Numerous pubs speak to the game with historic golf paraphernalia, vast collections which can be found at places such as The Dunvegan and Number 1 Golf Place.
And the jewel of the city, and the junction of Links Place and Golf Place, is the Old Course of St. Andrews Links, where some form of the game created in the 12th century has been played across the barren stretch of rumpled turf for hundreds of years – except in the 15th century when the parliaments of three successive Scottish kings prohibited the game.
“The hair on the back of your neck stands up when you are here, no matter where you are in the town,” said two-time Open Championship winner Padraig Harrington. “Everything that has happened here in the town, the game was born here, it’s spine chilling. There is no other place in the world like it.”
Aussie and 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy realized that on his first visit.
“It is the perfect place for a golfer,” he said. “I fell in love with the town before I fell in love with the golf course. At other great golf courses in the world, they might have a nice clubhouse but then you leave. Here at St. Andrews, it’s the town first, and then the course. You leave this course and you walk straight into this magical place.
“The first time I came here in 1993, people were walking the streets with metal spikes. It was just unbelievable to me. For a golf nut like me, it was the perfect place. All the golf shops with old and new equipment. The pubs, the restaurants, the buildings that have been here for centuries. When you’re here it’s hard to not love everything about the game.”
Or as three-time Open champion Tiger Woods put it: “This is as good as it gets.”
St. Andrews and the Old Course are the proper place – the only place, really – for this week’s 150th Open Championship, the oldest tournament in the world; the inaugural was held when Abraham Lincoln was campaigning to become president of the United States.
The celebration of the milestone will be marked by numerous festivities. The tournament is expected to lure record attendance.
“I’ve watched the Open Championships here at St. Andrews, and I don’t think there’s anything more special in golf than playing an Open Championship at the Home of Golf,” 2017 Open champion Jordan Spieth said. “I have vivid memories of the Old Course. It’s one of those courses you play where you don’t really forget much. There’s only a couple of those maybe in the world. I think here and at Augusta National are my two favorite places in the world.
“Playing in the town is so cool. On a daily round day, not in the Open, it’s pretty unbelievable when you have people walking their dogs on the course. It’s just a casual day, a great place to go for a nice walk. There’s nowhere else like it.”
Phil Mickelson, Open champion in 2013, said St. Andrews is a spiritual place.
“You can’t help but feel emotion come over you as you play, knowing that this is where the game began,” he said.
That’s one of the things that gets to Adam Scott.
“This is where it all began,” he said. “And generally Scotland has embraced everything about the origins of the game and St. Andrews, the town itself is pretty special. It’s a really fun, fun town. And you can feel the history.
“There are so many things about the golf course that are unique. But everyone loves playing it. It has some features that are hard, or almost impossible to replicate and not be criticized. It all works really well here.”
The Old Course is home to a puzzling collection: 14 holes share greens, some of the double fairways are 100 yards wide, there are 112 bunkers (by all means stay out of the ones called Strath, Hell, Spectacles, Principal’s Nose and the Road Hole bunker, which is located on the par-4 17th where a gravel road runs against the back edge of the putting surface and is in play. And there’s the deep depression fronting the 18th green called the Valley of Sin.
Tiger Woods chips onto the green on the road hole during his third round on day three of the British Open at St Andrews in Scotland, on July 17, 2010. (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Legend holds that many of the pot bunkers were carved out of the Earth by animals seeking shelter from harsh winters — and even summers.
The roster of winners in St. Andrews includes Jack Nicklaus (twice), Woods (twice), Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Bobby Locke, Peter Thomson, Sam Snead, Bobby Jones and James Braid.
Nicklaus played the Open in St. Andrews eight times, the final in 2005.
“When I came here in 1964, I couldn’t believe that St. Andrews was a golf course that would test golfers of that time. Now, that’s, what, 60 years ago? It still tests the golfers at this time. It’s a magical golf course.
“The conditions, the weather, where you actually choose to put the pins, whether the golf course gets dry, whether the golf course gets wet, all those things that make St. Andrews a magical place.
“The game of golf essentially started here, and it just absolutely is mind-boggling to me that it still stands up to the golfers of today.”
On Tuesday, in a special ceremony, Nicklaus will be honored as an honorary citizen of St. Andrews. Only two other Americans have been so recognized – Bobby Jones and Benjamin Franklin.
The Open of 1873 was staged during the R&A’s autumn meeting. It was very much second fiddle.
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.
