THE WAY THE OPEN WAS .... JULY 1954

No Open grandstands but spectators at Royal Birkdale were happy to surround the 18th green

By COLIN FARQUHARSON

Our flashback picture today shows the cover of the "Golf Monthly" for the August, 1954 issue.
The cover picture (if you click on the image, it will increase in size) caption says:

“THE TRIUMPH OF ROYAL BIRKDALE

“The last green of the Royal Birkdale Golf Course with Bobby Locke putting. The ground sloped slightly up towards the clubhouse and round the green, which formed a perfect grandstand for the crowds to watch the closing scenes.
“Congratulations are due to the Royal Birkdale Club for the magnificent arrangements they made and for the whole general organisation of their first Open championship. There is no doubt that all felt that they had been cared for well.
“Although it was their first Open, Royal Birkdale have had considerable experience in the running of big tournaments and as long ago as 1936 they housed the Boys’ Amateur Championship which was won by Jimmy Bruen, and, in 1951, the Walker Cup was played over their links.”

Incidentally, Royal Birkdale Golf Club were due to host the Open for the first time in 1940 but the outbreak of World War II the previous September delayed their big week for some 14 years.
NO TV COVERAGE UNTIL 1955
The first thing that strikes me about the picture is the absence of the spectator grandstands around the 18th green, which have been part and parcel of an Open championship for as long as I can remember. Obviously, they were introduced over the years since 1954.
No television towers, either. It was not until the following year at St Andrews that the BBC cameras covered the last day's play only.
My other observation is the lack of a mention of the R&A’s part in putting the whole show together. Surely, Royal Birkdale Golf Club didn’t do all the organising off their own bat, although in an article inside this issue of “Golf Monthly” it refers to an army of volunteers - "hundreds of local amateurs acting as stewards and 300 ladies as markers" - being well trained.
Open championships still run like clockwork these days but it’s all due to the efficiency of the R&A’s championship-organising team.
THREE-DAY OPEN FINISHED ON FRIDAY
The “Golf Monthly” devotes another page to the final scores because “we feel that many of our readers, both at home and abroad, would like to know the figures for the four rounds of the fifty players who qualified for the final day’s play.”
Which would suggest that the Saturday morning newspapers of that week did not give the Open championship the blanket coverage it receives today when every paper worth its salt has all the final scores available to its readers.
In those days, after a 36-hole qualifying contest for ALL the competitors, the Open championship proper was contested over three days, starting on a Wednesday and finishing with two rounds on the Friday, a relic of the era when the professionals had to be back at their club shops for Saturday morning to attend to the members’ weekend needs. Changed days indeed.
TOP FINISHERS IN 1954
Can you remember the top finishers in the Open of 1954? Probably not,
so here they are:
283 P W Thomson (Australia) 72 71 69 71.
284 S S Scott (Carlisle City) 76 67 69 72, D J Rees (South Herts) 72 71 69 72, A D Locke (South Africa) 74 71 69 70.
286 J Adams (Royal Mid Surrey) 73 75 69 69, A Cerda (Argentina) 71 71 73 71, J Turnesa (USA) 72 72 71 71.
287 P Alliss (Ferndown) 72 74 71 70, S L King (Knole Park) 69 74 74 70.
289 J Demaret (USA) 73 71 74 71, F Van Donck (Belgium) 77 71 70 71.
290 H Bradshaw (Portmarnock) 72 72 73 73, T W Spence (Dartford) 69 72 74 75, A Angelini (Italy) 76 70 73 71.
291 R Halsall (Royal Birkdale 72 73 73 73, Mr P Toogood (Tasmania) 72 75 73 71.
292 C Kane (Royal Dublin) 74 72 74 72, G Sarazen (USA) 75 74 73 70.

An Australian - Peter Toogood from Tasmania - also won the leading amateur medal with a total of 291 - four shots better than Frank Stranahan (USA), the only other amateur to survive the halfway cut. Stranahan finished with a 76 to Toogood's 71, a five-stroke swing that cost the wealthy American the coveted medal.
Frank’s father was president, founder and owner of the Champion Sparking Plug Company, so Frank was never short of a dollar or two as he pursued a full-time amateur golf career. Believe it or not, in this issue of “Golf Monthly,” a half page was devoted to a picture (black and white, of course) of Frank Stranahan and his wife “visiting the Feltham factory of the world-wide Champion Sparking Plug organisation.” The managing director and the deputy managing director are pictured either side of the Stranahans. Talk about a free advert!
FIRST OF PETER THOMSON'S FIVE
It was the first of five Open championship wins by Peter Thomson – the “Melbourne Tiger” as he was called, and, according to a full-page advertisement in the magazine, he used a Dunlop 65 golf ball. More than one, I am sure.
Peter was 24 at the time and the first Aussie to win the Open title. He had played in the championship twice previously.
Thomson completed an Open hat-trick by winning again at St Andrews in 1955 and Hoylake in 1956. His fourth win was achieved at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 1958 and his last one at Royal Birkdale again in 1965.
Ben Hogan, winner of the Open at Carnoustie in 1953, did not defend the title at Royal Birkdale 12 months later. Although there were one or two Americans in the 1954 Open field, it was not until Arnold Palmer came over to win the next Open to be staged at Royal Birkdale (1960) and retain the title at Royal Troon in 1961, that Arnie’s contemporaries on the US Tour followed suit.
SCORING IN RELATION TO PAR
I cannot remember when we started accepting a player’s scoring in relation to par – i.e. So-and-so was 10 under par for the tournament. Certainly in 1954, the scores had been talked about in relation to the now “old fashioned” level 4s. So that Peter Thomson had been five under 4s at the finish of the fourth round at Royal Birkdale.
The trouble with on-the-course scoring in relation to level 4s was that it did not take into account that the player might still have three par-5s to play on the inward half.

ANY COMMENTS?
E-mail them to colin@scottishgolfview.com