• Rewind to 1970

Jacklin beats moaning Americans at own game

Tony Jacklin and wife Vivien pose with US Open trophy © Getty Images

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ESPN will be providing live commentary during all four days of the US Open from Congressional CC - along with all the news, views and opinion when it gets underway on Thursday

2011 US Open Preview

The 111th US Open gets underway at Congressional Country Club this week, with Graeme McDowell the defending champion after his memorable victory at Pebble Beach last year. The last time Congressional hosted the event, in 1997, Colin Montgomerie finished second (yet again) to Ernie Els - but we're going back even further in time, to the last British player prior to McDowell who managed to lift the famous trophy...

Once upon a time, when golf was making the slow but steady transition to become as much a fixture in the United States as it was east of the Atlantic Ocean, British players dominated the newly-created national championship as they did their own.

This was hardly surprising - Scottish players in particular were paid handsomely for the spreading of their expertise at the country clubs that sprung up around the emerging American nation at the turn of the 20th century, and were encouraged to compete in big events to bring extra kudos to their club and thus, by association, the white-collar members that presided there.

As a result, from the first US Open in 1895 at Newport Country Club until the 1910 iteration in Pennsylvania at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, all the events were won by British natives.

Eventually, belatedly, the domestic game caught up - the first wave of American youngsters who had spent nearly their whole life around the game were coming through - and John McDermott became the first home winner of the US Open in 1911. He won it again the next year, before an unassuming teenager by the name of Francis Ouimet shot the game into national recognition - transcending class barriers that already governed the sport - by seeing off the vaunted British duo of Ted Ray and Harry Vardon to win in a playoff at Brookline in 1913.

From there the trophy swapped sides of the Atlantic with regularity, but the heyday of Ray, Vardon et al was fading as talented Americans like Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen were coming to the fore. After such early domination, in almost no time the hunter had become the hunted.

By the time the 1970 US Open rolled into town at Hazeltine, in fact, Willie Macfarlane's victory at Worcester Country Club in 1925 was still the last time a British player had won the tournament. American domination was almost total - only South African Gary Player ("the more I practice, the luckier I get"), in 1965, had briefly broken the monopoly.

In that time the British sense of superiority had been downgraded to simply hope - and even that had been all-but eroded. Englishman Tony Jacklin turned up in Massachusetts as the reigning Open champion that year, but even so was not considered an obvious contender for the second major of the year.

Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino: the usual suspects were widely considered to have the best chance. Although the unusual nature of the Hazeltine course - something akin to a traditional British links, with blind tee shots and approaches to contend with, not to mention a use of bunkering that departed from the identikit formula followed religiously elsewhere - hinted at the troubles to come for many of the home challengers.

"If anybody shoots 281 on this course, the Pope is a possum," said Trevino in the build-up, underlining the difficulty players were having. Considering 281 would be precisely the winning score come Sunday evening, presumably there was a shock at the Vatican that weekend.

Jacklin, a native of the links, unsurprisingly saw little to scare him in the layout - especially after a putting lesson from his friend's brother Jim Yancey, who encouraged him to look at the hole while practising, seemed to cure his ills on the green.

"That gave me an incredible sense of feel," Jacklin recalled. "And it lasted the week."

He made an early statement of intent with an opening one-under par 71 on a day that saw winds of up to 40mph, enough to lead the tournament by two shots. As a comparison, Nicklaus, Palmer and Player combined to average 80 for the day.

Julius Boros, a two-time winner of the event and three-time major champion, was his nearest challenger, although even he was only in touch thanks to a Jacklin double-bogey on his penultimate hole of the day.

That hole would provide the venue for a huge statement of intent on Friday, however. Jacklin made his intentions clear with a miraculous shot from trees on the 17th to close out the first two rounds with a three-shot lead. Putting the memory of his six on Thursday to the back of his mind, Jacklin hooded a five-iron that sent the ball desperately ducking under the branches that grasped at it, before hitting the fairway and jogging up to just seven feet from the hole.

The putt never looked like missing.

A round of 70 was concluded. His lead was only increased to three thanks to an impressive 69 from the volatile American Dave Hill, taking advantage of some conditions more conducive to reasonable (the US Open never offers better than that) scoring.

"You have to take some chances out there," Jacklin noted at the close of play. "I felt I had a good chance to get the ball out [on 17], so I went for it. It was one of those shots you need to invent from time to time."

The home criticism of the course was not waning, however. In fact Hill was the most vocal critic, inviting a $150 fine from the USGA for suggesting, among other insults, that 'someone should dig up this piece of land and build a golf course on it'.

He didn't have the market cornered on Hazeltine criticism, though. "There are so many doglegs, the course must have been designed by Lassie," another pro offered, with one crowing: "I'd withdraw, but I don't know how to get back to town."

The game's grasp of language was obviously better back then; a British journalist would later describe Hill's comments (which went on to disparage both the Open Championship and links golf) as "monstrous impudence".

Jacklin had little sympathy for Hill and those who shared his stance - as Saturday welcomed heavy rain and a distinct chill to the course, he prospered by employing the very skills he had spent his whole life working on.

"Most Americans don't know how to play well in the wind," he noted at the tournament's close. "They are not conditioned to it. I might hit any club at all from 160 yards on in - even a two-iron. I practise that sort of thing all the time."

Meanwhile, as the famed golf journalist Dan Jenkins observed: 'What the American tends to do is look at his yardage card, see 160, hit his usual soaring six-iron and then wonder why his ball got blown across 40 acres of feed grain.'

Saturday was evidence of that theory. Jacklin submitted another round of 70, while Hill cobbled together a 71. Nicklaus, Player and Palmer all offered 75s - while Davis Love Jr, father of the future USPGA champion, was the worst of the day with a chastening 88.

The general consensus from the media was that the established guard had become complacent, that the new challenge in front of them was not any worse, simply different. An 18-year-old Ben Crenshaw, who'd have to wait another 14 years to win his first major at The Masters (before doing it again a year later), perhaps lent credence to that view when he let slip his own verdict on the layout.

"They say the greens don't hold iron shots," the amateur mused, "but they hold mine. Maybe I don't hit them right."

And they were holding Jacklin's. Sunday, then, saw him arrive on the tee with a four-shot advantage. He'd been there before, of course, but nevertheless admitted to nerves as he began his round. Advice from fellow professionals was frequent and well-meaning, but one word Johnny Miller posted on Jacklin's locker - 'Tempo' - stuck with him throughout the round.

1970 US Open - Final leaderboard

Tony Jacklin sinks the winning putt at Hazeltine © Getty Images

• -7     Tony Jacklin           (71 70 70 70)     281
• Par    Dave Hill                (75 69 71 73)     288
• +1     Bob Charles           (76 71 75 67)    289
• +1     Bob Lunn              (77 72 70 70)    289
• +3     Ken Still                  (78 71 71 71)    291

The turning point came on the ninth; with Jacklin coming off the back of two bogeys and Hill back on course with a birdie, the Englishman found his lead cut to three, with the prospect of another dropped shot opening the door to a tense back nine.

Instead, the opposite occurred - he found the green with ease with his second shot, before seeing his heavy-handed birdie attempt hit the back of the cup, rocket into the air and then obediently dive underground - "rattling around like all good birdie putts should", as Jenkins described it.

"Talk about luck. I'd have been left with a putt of the length I'd missed on the previous two holes and who knows, I might have missed that," Jacklin said. "But my confidence came roaring back, and the pressure just lifted."

If that was Jacklin's good fortune for the week, like Player before him he had certainly earned it. With nine holes still to go, that was the point he realised he was about to claim his second major championship.

"I knew then that it was mine if I just took it easy," he said afterwards. "I actually enjoyed playing the back nine. I thought momentarily about Palmer losing his seven-stroke lead to [Billy] Casper at Olympic [in 1966] and that such a thing could happen to me, but I put that out of my mind.

"I tried not to think that I was winning the Open or imagine myself at the presentation ceremonies."

One person who was reluctant to go to the presentation ceremony to see Jacklin's coronation was runner-up Hill, who continued to wage war against the course choice and setup.

"What has the USGA ever done against you?" USGA executive director PJ Boatwright was overheard demanding of Hill, when the man known as 'Mad Dog' initially refused to attend the final formalities.

"They put the tournament on this course," answered Hill bluntly.

At least one man was happy enough with the choice. Jacklin's eventual seven-shot winning margin was the biggest in the tournament's history, only eclipsed by Tiger Woods' Pebble Beach demolition 30 years later

"You play the course that's there," Jacklin would later put it, rather succinctly - and that, better than anyone else by quite some distance, was exactly what he did that week.

What happened next
Jacklin, despite appearing to have the golfing world at his feet, never managed to win another major - seemingly failing out of love with the game after spurning a glorious chance to win the Open again in 1972. He would go on to reinvent himself as one of the driving forces in the development of the Ryder Cup (after famously being the recipient of a generous conceded half in a singles match with Jack Nicklaus in 1969) as a captain, leading Europe on four occasions.

Something of a recluse, or at least not someone who has sought out the spotlight, Jacklin has spent much of his later years in America, working on various projects both inside and outside the game of golf. But he was on hand to congratulate McDowell on his success in 2010.

"I thought he did a fantastic job. He played really well on the back nine," Jacklin said. "He's now a member of a very exclusive club - just the two of us."

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