At Long Last, Some Truly Great Brits

“Brit Leads American Golf Open” used to be a headline to rank with “Snow Hits Key West,” “Ayatollah Hails Reagan,” “Gary Hart Joins Monastery.” It’s possible but it’s not the way to bet.

Not since Harry Vardon and Ted Ray have the Great Brits had a player who struck any terror into the hearts of the other golfers of the world. Not since that duo was beaten in the American Open by a graduate caddy have they been able to carry the flag with any success. The sun had really set on their golf empire.

Occasionally, a foray would be made. Henry Cotton came over with a big reputation as a three-time winner of the British Open and a ball-striker, in the mold of that other great Henry, he of the many wives, but in this country, Henry was eighth.

When he couldn’t win over here, he picked up and went home in a snit after an argument with some Americans that he was careless about some of the rules of the American game. The prevailing opinion in the mother country was that, if Henry Cotton couldn’t win over here, they didn’t have anyone who could.

Tony Jacklin caused a bit of a flurry in 1970 when he won, of all things, the U.S. Open, the first Brit to do that in nearly 50 years. But Jacklin had all but abandoned the European game by then, and the reaction of one longtime observer of the British scene when Jacklin won the ’69 British Open was, “Well, now, he’s really one of yours, now, isn’t he?”

The differences between the British and American games were more than accents and nomenclature. To be sure, a 3-wood was a spoon in merrie old Blighty, a 7-iron was a mashie niblick, and an all-purpose club was not a pitching wedge but a cleek. The sand-iron was invented in America, but the Brits couldn’t see why any self-respecting gentleman couldn’t get out of the sand with a hooded 9-iron, the way Vardon did. But the differences were more than implemental--or geographical. They were, in a sense, geological, agronomical.

You see, the Brits played the game the way the original Tudor kings did. That is to say, they contoured a course around a gale-swept coast where no trees would grow. They put stones in the ground where they found a level plot of ground, dropped some sand nearby to tee the ball up, then, 400 yards into the wind, they levelled another piece of land, put a hole and a flag in it and yelled “Fore!” This course was watered by God and cut by sheep. The lawn mower was the invention of the devil. Or an American, which was the same thing.

They played with wooden clubs and feather balls and the word par was not even in the language. That, too, was an American invention. The Brits’ term for competent play was level 4s.

The differences went so deep that, when Sam Snead first went over to Scotland to play in the British Open and he looked out the train window at this unkempt patch of real estate, he asked his hosts if this was a part of an old abandoned golf course he was looking at.

Of course, his hosts were outraged. What Sam was looking at was the cradle of golf, storied St. Andrews itself.

So, you played different games in the two countries. On this side of the water were the manicured, sprinkled fairways and greens, agronomy’s finest hour. Over there were the sheep-chewed, rain-watered natural treeless links lands.

The Americans hated it. The Americans liked to play this booming game where you aimed the ball for the horizon off the tee and then you swung for the pin on the green, knowing the ball would stop where it hit and even back up a spin or two. In Blighty, you had to land the ball several yards in front of the green and let it bounce on. If you landed it on a green, it might bounce into the Irish Sea.

I remember Miller Barber, no less, telling me at lunch once at venerable Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s, “I can’t play this funny little run-up game they have over here. You can’t make a proper swing.”

The Brits had even more trouble with the American game. They tended to want to surround the greens instead of firing right into them, like an Indian putting an arrow into a buffalo.

The Yanks were better able to adapt than their English cousins. The Yanks won any British Open they took the trouble to attend. Golf was just better in the colonies.

No one is quite sure when the pendulum began to swing the other way but last year the golf world was shocked when a Ryder Cup team made up mostly of the Queen’s own beat an American team on its own soil, for the first time. The times seemed to call for a new Paul Revere. These red coats were not only coming, they were here.

How did it happen? Why does it keep happening?

Here, after the first day’s play in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, a name on the leader board with an 8 under par had a decided highland burr to it. Alexander Walter Barr Lyle. To the guys in the kilts, Sandy.

Now, Brits of any description are not supposed to go around shooting 64s on the the American tour. But, Sandy Lyle is not your familiar run-of-the-mill par-shooting old guardsman. Sandy is the winner of the 1986 British Open and two American tournaments already.

Sandy feels the British renaissance is owing to a number of things. First of all, they now have the power mower, sprinklers, all the accouterments. But, most of all, they have golfers.

“We have a junior program in England now, as good as yours,” Sandy says. “We seek out the good young players and try to bring them along.

“You see, golf in England used to be considered just a kind of lark. You went out, played your game, then went in and had a drink with your buddies and called it a day. Your lot taught us about taking it seriously. Now, we work out with weights, keep fit. It’s not a game anymore, it’s a business.”

Golf in England also used to be as closed a corporation as the House of Lords. Pros were expected to use the side entrances like any other tradesmen. The American, Walter Hagen, changed all that. Today, a golfer in England can even be knighted. You used to have to conquer India for that. Now you just have to conquer Augusta.

“We even concentrate on nutrition,” Lyle says. “Like the American tour, we’re getting lots of young men who can really play. There really isn’t that much difference anymore between the American and the European tour.”

Of course, one of the great unspoken stories is how many potentially great young English players died on barbed wire in France. The Brits are now proving they can close the gap if they can just get a full lifetime to grow up, a full generation to reach 40.

Sandy Lyle, bless him, is making up for a lot of guys who had a lot tougher 18 holes to play in life, a lot of guys who never got to the back nine. Who knows how many Harry Vardons missed that cut?