5 Probable Contenders of the 2024 Preakness Stakes
May 10, 2024Generous Legacy Honors Lost Loved Ones
May 13, 2024It’s become something of a challenging pub quiz question: who was the last Scot to win one of golf’s majors?
The answer, for those with decent memories, is Paul Lawrie, who took advantage of a calamitous collapse from Jean van de Velde on the final hole to win the Open Championship of 1999.
Here’s a reminder of how that stunning victory at Carnoustie unfolded…
A True Underdog Tale
These days, Scottish golf has fallen on hard times.
Only one Scot, Robert MacIntyre, features inside the world’s top 100 in the rankings, so those that bet on US PGA golf and other majors won’t have many options to call upon.
The golf odds are typically dominated by Americans – Scottie Scheffler, Brooks Koepka, Collin Morikawa and co, plus a handful of Europeans like Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm. Scottish stars, alas, are thin on the ground.
But towards the latter part of the twentieth century, the game was in rude health in Scotland. Sandy Lyle was a two-time major champion, while Colin Montgomerie and Sam Torrance were mainstays of the European Ryder Cup team.
They would be joined in golf’s hall of fame, in extraordinary fashion, by Lawrie, whose epic comeback win at the 1999 Open can be summed up in one sentence: he started the final round ten shots adrift of the leader, making his victory the most extraordinary in the entire history of golf.
French Folly
Any discussion of Lawrie’s win has to come with a sizeable side order of reminiscence about poor old Jean van de Velde.
The Frenchman had been more at home on the intimidating Links of Carnoustie than anyone else, holding a one-shot lead at the halfway stage and then a whopping five-shot cushion after 54 holes. He almost had one hand on the trophy.
Lawrie had put in an outstanding final round of 67 – that four under par score, in the context that every single player in the field finished over par for the tournament, helping the Scot to catapult up the leaderboard.
But France still appeared to be the likely destination for the Claret Jug, with Van de Velde enjoying a commanding three-shot lead heading into the final hole.
Rather than nursing a long iron into the fairway, he eschewed the safe play and instead took out driver – slamming his tee shot so far right that it ended up on the fairway of the seventeenth hole.
Curiously, Van de Velde decided to attack the green with his second, rather than laying up, and merely succeeded in planting his ball into thick rough.
Heartrate quickening, the Frenchman could only nudge his next shot out of the long grass and into a burn. That created the iconic image of Van de Velde, shorn of socks and shoes, contemplating his next move from the water.
He decided to take a penalty stroke, before hitting his fifth shot into a greenside bunker. At this point, his brains must have been scrambled – he did manage to chip out and sink the subsequent putt, however, to card a seven and just about force his way into a play-off with Lawrie and the American, Justin Leonard.
The physical and mental toil had proven too much for Van de Velde – his race was run, while Lawrie outplayed him and Leonard in the four-hole play-off to win by a comfortable margin and celebrate the widest comeback victory in major golf history.
Who will be the next Scot to win one of golf’s biggest prizes?
