The last time the Open came to Portrush golf was a very different game

Northern Ireland waited a long time to host the Open. It did so at Royal Portrush when George VI was king, Clement Attlee was prime minister and the Ulster Unionist Party ruled almost unchallenged at Stormont. Small boys who followed players round the course in 1951 are all either old age pensioners or dead. Of course, the Open would surely have returned to Northern Ireland before now if it hadn’t been for the Troubles. As it is, I would guess that there has been just a little anxiety among members of the R&A’s championship committee in case Brexit uncertainties stirred things up again. But so far all’s well and seems to be set fair.

There wasn’t much razzmatazz in 1951, no TV of course and little, if any global interest. The American amateur Frank Stranahan was probably the only dollar millionaire in the field; as an amateur he got a Mr in front of his name in the scorecard. None of the top American professionals took part, thinking it scarcely worth the expense and trouble of crossing the Atlantic. When Sam Snead won the first post-war Open at St Andrews in 1946, he complained that he was out of pocket, the championship prize not even covering his expenses.

The winner was Max Faulkner, a more colourful, even flamboyant character than most of his fellow pros. He was given to wearing loud clothes, and I always think of him behind the wheel of an open two-seater sports car, even with a touch of the late Sir Denis Thatcher about him. Faulkner was so self-confident that, finishing the third round six strokes ahead of the field, he reputedly signed a boy’s autograph book “Max Faulkner, Open Champion 1951”. He did however drop four shots to the Argentinian Antonio Cerda to win by two. His winning score was 285 – 71,70,70, 74. Only two players, Charlie Ward and Jimmy Adams, broke 70; Royal Portrush was a demanding course. It is clearly demanding still, one on which things can go horribly and suddenly wrong. Who would have thought then that Faulkner would be the last English Open Champion till Tony Jacklin won the title in 1969?

It will surprise many today that the Championship finished on Friday, two rounds being played that day. The fact is that all the British competitors were club pros, the name of their club appearing in brackets after their name in newspaper reports. (Faulkner, being temporarily between clubs, was described as “unattached”.) Peter Alliss has explained that club members expected their pro to be on hand at the weekend, and since their club salary was the largest part of their income, they naturally obliged, though I would guess that some found it difficult to get back from Northern Ireland on a  Friday evening in time for club duty on the Saturday morning.

For the Irish public the only disappointment at Royal Portrush that year was the failure of Belfast’s Fred Daly to repeat his Open triumph of 1947. Which thought brings one to Rory McIlroy now. Undoubtedly he is the home favourite and started as that. He was so determined to win on his home course that he was willing to attract criticism for taking a week off tournament golf and giving the Irish Open a miss in order to conclude his preparation last week at the Scottish Open in East Lothian. Sadly it was played at North Berwick in conditions quite unlike those at Royal Portrush. Rotten preparation, really.

Still, tournament golf is less predictable than any other sport. It couldn’t be otherwise for really, when you think about it, golf is a crazy game, one in which a 300-yard drive and a six-inch putt each count as one stroke. There have been unheralded winners of every major, sometimes players who just happen to play the best golf of their life that week. Betting on the Open is as chancy as betting on the Grand National. Even in his great years Tiger Woods finished behind the winner more often than he lifted the old Claret Jug.

The 1996 champion Tom Lehmann made an interesting point the other day. Older golfers, he said, had a better chance of winning the Open than any of the other majors. This was because length matters less than accuracy and intelligence on links courses, an opinion supported by Francesco Molinari’s victory at Carnoustie last year. Francesco isn’t of course a senior citizen in golfing terms, but he did drive straight and keep the ball on the fairway while longer hitters were spraying their shots and finding nasty rough. Likewise Nick Faldo was never the longest driver, but he was one of the straightest and became the first Englishman since Henry Cotton to win the Open more than once – in fact each of them did so three times.

Of course long hitters do win the Open, even when they may be erratic off the tee. These come in a different category. They tend to be masters of the recovery game. The outstanding example of this kind of champion are Tiger Woods and Seve Ballasteros, both capable of following an errant tee-shot with a scarcely believable recovery from an apparently impossible position.

There are Champions you rarely hear much of again, like Ben Curtis and Todd Hamilton or poor Ian Baker-Finch whose game went completely to pieces soon after his greatest week of golf. And there are others like Darren Clarke who win the Open when they were thought to have their best years behind them. There are some like the unheralded Paul Lawrie who kept his nerve to win at Carnoustie when poor Jean van der Velde lost his judgement if not his nerve.

In other words, just like the Grand National, the winner may come from any in the field. One might add such is the nature of the Open that the outstanding English golfer of his generation, Justin Rose, has scarcely come closer to winning the Open in twenty years than he did on his first appearance as a 17 year-old amateur.

It would be fitting if Rory lifts the Claret Jug on Sunday the twenty-first, but, even as I write, he has started disastrously with a quadruple bogey at the first and stands five over par after six. Still, one mutters, Lazarus rose from the grave. Alas, though a couple of birdies saw Rory beginning to clamber out of the deep hole he had dug for himself, he has slide back in the final holes, finishing with a 79, deep in trouble. Before he had hit a  shot, I was thinking that, given the way Irish sportsmen have been performing over recent years, his victory would scarcely be more surprising than seeing Aidan O’Brien leading in a  Derby winner. But now he needs a great round on Friday even to make the cut, something akin to a miracle like the 61 he scored round Royal Portrush at the age of sixteen to be in contention on Sunday. The pipes are playing, Rory boy, but it sounds awfully like a lament.