ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — There’s a romance about St. Andrews that you cannot find anywhere else in golf.
It was as present as it’s ever been around the Old Course on Monday, three days before the 150th British Open commences with the first competitive tee shots struck shortly after dawn Thursday in front of the majestic Royal & Ancient clubhouse.
Monday began with Jack Nicklaus, who’s in town this week for the first time since he bid farewell to the Open Championship in 2005, to be welcomed as an honorary citizen of St. Andrews in a ceremony Tuesday.
It ended with the Celebration of Champions, a four-hole exhibition involving past Open champions playing together in foursomes on holes No, 1, 2, 17 and 18 in front of crowds that rival the atmosphere that awaits Sunday afternoon for the final groups of the tournament.
The majesty of St. Andrews is the Old Course being bordered on one side by the North Sea and on the other by the town. It’s symbolic because everything about St. Andrews revolves around the golf. It’s not called the “Home of Golf” for nothing.
“I’ve never been to a golf course or a golf club like this where I think really just the entire town is encompassed around St. Andrews,’’ Collin Morikawa, the defending Open champion, said Monday. “The love for the game, the love for the sport, I think kind of breathes and lives through the town. I’ve never been in a place like that. Places we go and play normally, golf is the highlight of that week, but there’s also other things going on.’’
Not in St. Andrews, where it felt like the entire town stopped what it was doing on Monday to watch that Celebration of Champions. You’d have been hard-pressed to get your car filled up with gas or find a cup of coffee around town on Monday.
The final group of the champions exhibition featured Tiger Woods, who won two of his three Claret Jugs at St. Andrews in 2000 and 2005, Rory McIlroy, 82-year-old Lee Trevino, who was as chatty and funny as ever, and English women’s golfer Georgia Hall, who won the 2018 Women’s British Open.
With spectators jammed 10 deep against the ropes along the fairways and hanging out of windows and balconies in the buildings along the 17th and 18th holes, Woods delighted them by carding birdies on No. 2 and No. 18, where he drove the green and two-putted from about 80 feet.
When the group got to the second tee box, Trevino quipped to Hall, “At the Father-Son tournament my tees were about 100 yards in front of his,’’ speaking of Woods.
On 17, the “Road Hole,’’ McIlroy sliced his tee shot into the famous Jigger Inn, next to the Old Course Hotel, much to the delight of the revelers clinking pint glasses with glee. Adam Scott quietly watched in amusement from a stoop outside the hotel.
On the 18th, there was a backup on the tee so Woods’ group waited along with past champions Nick Faldo, John Daly, Louis Oosthuizen and Zach Johnson, the past two Open winners at St. Andrews (2010 and 2015, respectively). Meanwhile, Nicklaus was on 18 chatting with his contemporary, Trevino, who was rapid-firing one-liners like he was working a room in Vegas.
After they all teed off on 18, Woods, Trevino, McIlroy and Hall posed for photographs on the fabled Swilcan Bridge with Nicklaus. With the grey afternoon sky and the sea as the backdrop, the scene was positively magical.
“I always said St. Andrews looked like an old grey town until the Open came around,’’ Nicklaus said. “All of a sudden it just lit up like a light, and it was beautiful. St. Andrews always the week of the Open Championship is always beautiful. I imagine actually probably from anybody who makes a pilgrimage here to play this golf course feels that way.’’
Nicklaus said he’ll never forget seeing St. Andrews for the first time.
“When I [first] stepped on it in ’64, all of a sudden to step out of the clubhouse, step here, look at the first tee, look at what was there, see the town, see everything, I fell in love with it immediately.” Nicklaus said. “And I’ve had a love affair with it ever since.’’
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