Open 2009: Remarkable finish rewarded Price for fine form

Published on Tuesday 14 July 2009 22:49

THE fairness of the test at Turnberry, with no tricks or sleight of hand to muddy the waters, has consistently rewarded the game's most accomplished golfers over the past 30 years or so.

If Tom Watson in 1977 and Greg Norman in 1986 could be singled out as form players when they lifted the Claret Jug, Nick Price was also an imposing figure when he arrived in south Ayrshire for the 123rd Open in 1994.

In the period between 1992 and 1994, the Zimbabwean won no fewer than 16 of the 54 events he entered around the world, including the Players, the Open and two US PGA titles. Of all those successes, none was more dramatic or improbable than the astonishing denouement of the championship at Turnberry.

Having decided at 52 not to tee up on the championship's return – he feared the recent course changes would make the links too long for him to contend – Price still regards that victory on the Ailsa as the proudest moment of his career.

"After coming close in 1982 and 1988, to actually have the Claret Jug and take it to Mum the morning after was special," he told Golf Digest this month. "She lives in Norfolk, and I told her: 'The main reason I got this is because of you.' She's such a great Mum. My Dad died when I was ten, so my Mum and I became very close and still are."

Trailing Sweden's Jesper Parnevik by three strokes with three holes to play, Price conjured up a remarkable 3-3-4 finish against the card of 4-5-4. A drive, 4 iron and 50 foot putt for eagle on the par 5 produced scenes of excitement to compare with any staging of a major in recent times and even left the golfer himself breathless.

"I was jumping out of my skin," recalled the runner-up to Tom Watson at Troon and Seve Ballesteros at Lytham. "That putt felt like 100 feet and it was just a case of trying to get the pace right. It's a wonderful feeling when you need to do something special and then you pull it off. My heart was racing and I was trying to slow it down as I came up the eighteenth.

"I had my left hand on the trophy in 1982, my right hand on it in 1988 and then I had both hands on it (in 1994]. It was the fulfilment of a dream. I surprised myself. When I really needed something, deep down it came off for me. That did not happen before."

Golfers can only control their own ball, but it surely helped Price's cause when Parnevik made a glaring mental error on the home hole. Playing in the group in front of the Zimbabwean, the Swedish golfer ignored the scoreboards and, hell bent on carding 13 under, tried to fly the ball to the flag rather than play safe for par. He made bogey and spurned the one chance of his career to win a major.

"I should have aimed to get par and that would have put pressure on Price," he admitted. "I heard a lot of roars and thought everyone, or at least someone, was beating me. I thought I was doing the chasing not the leading."

Price, who learned from Max Faulkner's advice that you have to be bitten by the Open a few times before you can bite back, made no mistake at the last and his 12-under-par tally of 268 was good enough to edge out Parnevik by a stroke.

Coached by his compatriot David Leadbetter, Price brought a sound swing to Turnberry which didn't crack under pressure. The fact the breeze never amounted to more than a zephyr that week also worked to his advantage since, in strong winds, Price was prone to become too steep and hit the ball higher rather than lower.

Always a modest and engaging man, Price was a wonderfully accurate driver of the ball. In advance of that Open he was reluctant to promote his own chances of glory. I remember him saying he didn't know if his game was ready and that if he was having a wager on a winner then it would be on Tom Watson. Price and Greg Norman had been dusted by Watson and Jack Nicklaus in a practice match that week and the 1977 champion made every putt he looked at.

As my colleague Ian Wood cautioned sagely, golfers are no more reliable than jockeys when it comes to tipping winners. If only Price had taken a closer look at himself, the Zimbabwean might have carted away even more from Turnberry than the Claret Jug and a cheque for 110,000.

That said, Watson was in the thick of things after the first round, carding 68 to lurk within three shots of the mark established by New Zealand's Greg Turner. By the time the world's best golfers had completed 36 holes, Watson was even better placed, signing for 65 to lead by a stroke from Parnevik. "Not bad for a 44-year-old has-been," he said.

Although Price was ready by this stage to concede he'd been ready to win an Open since 1988, the Zimbabwean was still content to heap the attention on Watson. "If Tom makes the putts then he can do it because his long game has never been better," he said.

The reason Watson remained such a powerful story was because the American stood so tantalisingly close to matching Harry Vardon's record of six Open victories. After 54 holes, he lay a stroke behind Fuzzy Zoeller and Brad Faxon. Price and Parnevik were a stroke adrift of Watson. In the end, the five time champion was betrayed by the putter and his quest for a place in history was undone over the front nine on Sunday when he took 6s at the eighth and ninth holes. Watson's 74 was good enough only for a share of 11th.

In those days, Price was managed by the back row forward John Bredenkamp. The former rugby internationalist paid a warm tribute to the conditioning of the links while Price himself was grateful for the relatively gentle pace of the greens which made that monster of a putt on the 71st possible.

This was a polite observation from someone who had shot 12 under par, but the presentation was far from what the Royal and Ancient had in mind.

Had the world's best golfers arrived in Ayrshire a week earlier, they would have encountered a firmer and more daunting test than the one which produced 148 rounds in the 60s and prompted Nick Faldo to claim the true par was around 67.

"I remember taking part on the Friday before the Open in a match between the Turnberry championship committee and the Royal and Ancient," recalled George Brown, the course supervisor on the Ailsa .

"I was playing with Sir Michael Bonallack and in those days we were still wearing spikes. When we walked onto the eighth green you could hear the spikes crunching. The putting surface resembled a mirror and was very fast.

"Sir Michael asked if I'd be getting some water on. I replied 'we'll see'. It was so dry, even the tented village resembled a dust-bowl. Then it all changed. We had 17mm of rain on Saturday; 11mm of rain on Sunday; 9mm of rain on Monday and by Thursday morning the links was like an oasis.

"If the championship had been held a week earlier, it would have been a hard, fast Open…"