Englishman's Major wins and impact on Ryder Cup must be recognised
Tuesday 23 September 2014 12:03, UK
Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe Sir Nick Faldo’s knighthood thoroughly deserved.
I wasn’t so impressed when someone adjusted his records in the Majors to show that Sir Nick won three Opens and three Masters at a time when he was only Nick Faldo from Welwyn Garden City.
It is just I don’t think he should have been first, not of this modern golfing generation. I have long felt Tony Jacklin should have had that honour.
Tony may have only won two Majors, compared to Nick’s six, but he won them in widely differing circumstances.
He won them at a time when there was no European Tour, no body of fine players from this side of the Atlantic champing at American hegemony of the high ground.
He was out there on his own and from a nation with little or no expectation of success. Every two years in the Ryder Cup America reminded us just how inferior we were at a game we invented.
Tony was very much the Andy Murray of his day; by no means the best or most gifted player, but possessed of an iron will to succeed and an unquenchable belief that he could win one of golf’s great prizes.
As it turned out he won two, the other being the US Open, which no other Brit had won since Tommy Armour in 1927. To do that, with the entire weight of expectation and desire of a nation on your shoulders, the only person British journalists and TV wanted to speak to, these were heroic deeds of the highest order.
Contrast that for a moment with the world into which Nick Faldo came.
Greg Norman and Seve were just beginning to show the Americans they weren’t unbeatable, with Seve in particular starting his own collection of Majors with that enigmatic win in the 1979 Open. Then, Sandy Lyle won both The Open and The Masters ahead of Faldo, thus showing him the way.
The year Tony won the Open, 1969, he was also the pivotal figure in that year’s Ryder Cup. That we even came close was in part due to his success earlier in the year, a win that elevated his British peers into greater self-belief in that notoriously one-sided contest.
For a year or two there were fleeting hopes it would be the first of more even matches, but the ‘70s brought more thumping defeats. As Tony’s powers began to wane no one came forward to replace him.
And so we come to the real reason Tony Jacklin should have been given one of our highest honours: The Ryder Cup. The arrival of Seve and the embarrassing nature of the most recent meetings between our two sides had prompted Jack Nicklaus to suggest a widening of our team to include some Europeans.
They played four matches together, winning one and losing the other three; neither won their singles. Two years later and Seve, by now a Masters Champion as well, was locked in an unseemly row about appearance money – why should American Major winners be paid to play in Britain when he, also a Major winner, wasn’t.
He withdrew his services from European events and despite being by some way the best of our players wasn’t picked for the 1981 team. Jacklin also could now no longer be selected, having finally run out of golfing steam. That year America just happened to bring over their best team ever and another thrashing ensued.
Tony imbued his successive teams with exactly the same steel; there was no longer such a thing as a gallant try that came up just short.
It was into this gloomy international scene that Jacklin became Ryder Cup captain. By now, having fallen out with everyone this side of the Atlantic and openly scornful of all matters golfing in Europe, he was amazed to be approached.
With a decade’s experience of golf in America he knew exactly where they excelled and we fell down. He also had an innate understanding of how second-class facilities bred second-class attitudes and in a two-horse race that meant always coming second.
With nothing to lose his shopping list to those in charge was considerable. Underpinning it all was equality of status and appearance: first class all the way and the best of everything for his players. 1983 was a nearly year and 1985 the breakthrough at the Belfry.
When he landed back in America for the return contest in 1987 one of his greatest moments was, on shaking hands with his opposite number Jack Nicklaus, to have Jack feel his cashmere jacket, raise his eyebrows and swiftly get replacements for his own team. The baton had passed.
Jacklin brought to has captaincy exactly the same beliefs that underpinned his own playing career. No concept of failure and no thought given to the consequences of failure, of spending all that money and having nothing to show for it. And he imbued his successive teams with exactly the same steel.
There was no longer such a thing as a gallant try that just came up short. It was success or… nothing. And in Seve, Lyle, Faldo, Langer and Woosnam he had just the tools to give Europe the chance.
Almost singlehandedly, but wisely having got Seve to believe in his dream too, he picked European golf up by the scruff of the neck and turned a moribund, embarrassing and one-sided contest into arguably the most eagerly anticipated event in golf, if not the whole of sport; an event that has had us on the edge of our seats for 30 years now.
Surely now is the time for Someone to reach for their sword, tap him on the shoulder and cry ‘Arise, Sir Tony’.
