• October 17 down the years

The first ever major golf tournament

Louis Oosthuizen claimed the 2010 British Open © Getty Images

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1860
The first ever Major golf tournament. For the first 13 years, the British Open was staged at Prestwick in Ayrshire, on a course 'dodging in and out of lofty sandhills', with holes 'for the most part out of sight'. There were no cash prizes until 1863, just a red leather belt for the winner. Until 1892, the whole event was squeezed into a single day, starting now with three rounds of 12 holes each. Only eight players took part. One of them, William Steel, may have gone round in 232 strokes (records aren't clear) and was probably the unnamed competitor who took 21 strokes at one hole! Ahead of him, a group of three scored in the low 190s, while the top three places were taken by Andrew Strath, who went on to win the event in 1865, and the big two: Old Tom Morris and Willie Park senior. In weather that made low scoring difficult ('the wind being high and frequently blowing in fitful gusts'), Morris made 58 in the first round, but Park undercut him by three strokes. They both scored 59 in the second, and Park could afford to shoot 60 in the last and win by two. Their positions were reversed in the second Open (September 26, 1861), and they won the event four times each. Morris had a son who won it (September 16, 1887), Park a son and a brother (April 10).

On the same day in 1862, Old Tom kept Park Senior in second place again. And how. He began with a blistering 52 which was seven shots fewer than Park and everyone else, then made the lowest score in each of the other two rounds. His 163 beat Park by 13 shots, the widest winning margin in a Major until the US Open 138 years later (June 18).

Another Scotsman won a top tournament in 1999. In the final of the World Matchplay at Wentworth, Colin Montgomerie beat defending champion Mark O'Meara. Monty had reached the final in 1994, when Ernie Els won it for the first time (October 16), while O'Meara had completed a fantastic year in 1998: at the age of 41, he won the Masters (April 12) and British Open (July 19) before thumping defending champion Vijay Singh 11&10 at the World Matchplay, then beating Tiger Woods in the final. He wasn't in that sort of form this year, whereas Montgomerie had won five events. On a sunny but unexciting day, both players tightened up during the afternoon round. Monty led by five holes after the first 15 in the morning but only two with seven to play when O'Meara holed a 20-foot birdie putt at the 11th. The match was effectively over after the 15th, where Montgomerie hit an excellent three-iron from well over 200 yards to ten feet of the hole. He won 3&2, then the curse of the defending champions struck the following year, when he lost in the final.

While Monty was winning at Wentworth, Mika Häkkinen was being declared Formula 1 world champion. For a while. The Malaysian Grand Prix was included in the World Championship for the first time and gave us an eventful race. Michael Schumacher was back in a Ferrari after breaking a leg at the British Grand Prix, and it was if he'd never been away: he started on pole and set the fastest lap. But Schumacher had missed six races and couldn't win the title, so he concentrated on staying behind team mate Eddie Irvine and ahead of Häkkinen. Irvine finished first - but then both Ferraris were disqualified when 'their aerodynamic deflectors were found to have infringed the permitted dimensions' (i.e. their bargeboards were too big). But they were reinstated on appeal, which left Irvine leading the Championship with one race to go (October 31).

1964
Silver Saturday, they called it. Three medals of that metal for British track and field athletes at these Olympics. Two of them in events new to the Games.

The women's 400 metres was included for the first time, and Ann Packer was expected to win it. She improved the British record in every race: 53.1 in the first round, 52.7 in the semis, when she beat Australian comeback queen Betty Cuthbert, and 52.2 in the final today. But Cuthbert was one of the all-time greats (April 20, 1938). Eight years earlier, she'd won the sprint treble at the Melbourne Olympics (December 1). An injury held her back in 1960, but today she showed unexpected strength to go with her speed. Accelerating into the second turn, she opened up a big lead, then held on as Packer gained on her in the home straight. Cuthbert won by a metre in an Olympic record time of 52.0, leaving Packer to daydream of something better three days later.

The women were also allowed a multi-event competition for the first time. Mary Rand had already broken the world record in winning the long jump (October 14). Now she exceeded her own expectations with silver in the pentathlon. It was never going to be any more than that. The second event was the shot putt, and Rand was genuinely bad at that. Her best throw of 11.05 was six metres - a full 20 feet - worse than Irina Press, who'd finished sixth in the individual shot putt behind her meaty sister Tamara. If Irina had just been a mastodon who could chuck an iron ball, Rand might have had a chance with her speed and jumping ability. But Press was also the reigning Olympic champion at the 80 metres hurdles, beating Rand into fourth place in 1960 (September 1). Here in Tokyo, the hurdles was the opening event, and Press ran 10.7 seconds to Rand's 10.9. Even when Rand cleared 1.72 metres in the high jump to Press's 1.63, Mary trailed by a massive 328 points after the first day. She beat Press in both events the day after, the long jump (of course) and the 200 metres, but never by very much - and Press broke her own world record with 5,246 points. Rand's 5,035 made her only the second woman to reach 5,000 - and she went on to add a bronze medal from the sprint relay. Fourth place went to her team-mate Mary Peters, whose big day was eight years away (September 3). The Press sisters withdrew from international competition when gender testing became mandatory in 1966.

The 3,000 metres steeplechase was always likely to be won by Mr Versatility. Gaston Roelants was the reigning World record holder and current European champion. He'd also won the first of his four International Cross-Country titles, and he went on to win European Championship medals in the Marathon behind British runners in 1969 (September 21) and 1974 (September 8). Today a typical piece of front running left him 50 yards clear at the bell. He tired in the last 300 yards but had too much in hand for Maurice Herriott, who may have taken too much out of himself in the heats, when he set an Olympic record of 8 minutes 33.0 seconds. He managed 8:32.4 today, but Roelants ran 8:30.8. He was the second of only two Belgian men to win Olympic gold in track and field. The other was also a Gaston whose surname began with an R!

1937
Strangely, considering all the decades of great backs and great flair, no-one has ever scored five tries in an official international rugby union match for France. In fact, only two have ever scored four, the fewest from any major country. And none since before the Second World War. Adolphe Jauréguy scored four against Romania at the 1924 Olympics, and today left wing Maurice Celhay did the same to Italy at the Parc des Princes. His unfortunate marker was Renzo Cova, who'd just become the first player to score four tries in a game for Italy (October 10). France converted six of their eight tries in a 43-5 win.

1968
A full day's track and field at the Olympic Games.

Medals available in the distance events. But the air's thin at this high altitude. So only East Africans need apply. In the 5,000 metres, Ron Clarke of Australia did well to finish fifth, but in a time nearly a minute slower than his world record. In 1964, Tunisia's Mohammed Gammoudi had beaten Clarke to the silver medal in an epic 10,000 metres (October 14). Here in Mexico City, Gammoudi won bronze in that event, and he took silver in the 5,000 in 1972. But today he hung on for gold. Taking the lead with two laps to go, he beat off challenges from 10,000 metre champion Naftali Temu and his famous Kenyan team-mate Kip Keino. In a furious last lap, Keino seemed about to pass him at any moment, but Gammoudi toughed it out to win by a yard. His 14 minutes 5 seconds was the slowest winning time since 1952. Keino saddled himself with a strenuous workload at these Olympics. He dropped out near the end of the 10,000 metres with a gall bladder infection, and had one last chance of gold in the 1500 (October 20).

Altitude played its part in the triple jump, but as a help not a hindrance. In the qualifying round the day before, Italy's Giuseppe Gentile had jumped 17.10 metres to break Josef Szmidt's eight-year-old record (August 5). When he reached 17.22 in the first round of the final, the gold medal seemed to be in his pocket. But all he'd done was open a hornet's nest. In the third round, Viktor Saneyev of the USSR overtook Gentile by a single centimetre, and the crushed Italian couldn't respond. Instead it was Brazil's Nélson Prudencio who came through with 17.27 - only for Saneyev to show what a competitor he was going to be. In the last round, he exploded out to 17.39, the fourth world record of the day. Thin air, an all-weather track, a suspicious wind reading of exactly two metres (the limit for setting records): the event was never the same again. Saneyev set another world record of 17.44 on the same day in 1972 and won two more Olympic gold medals (July 30, 1976). Here in Mexico, that wind was still blowing a gale during the men's long jump (October 18)...

In the swimming pool, Mark Spitz won his first Olympic gold medal. He'd gone to Mexico boasting about the six events he was about to dominate. But he struggled in the empty air and finished last in one of his finals (October 24). He won only two golds, both in relays, the first today in the 4x100 metres freestyle, when the USA broke the world record. Spitz did rather better four years later (September 4).

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