Product Description

When one thinks of the Open Championship (British Open), it’s hard not to think of the Old Course at St. Andrews as well. And no wonder. The Open Championship was first played at St. Andrews in 1873. Since then, the Open has returned to St. Andrews again and again. Each time, the game has been better for it.

St. Andrews & The Open Championship: The Official History, is a detailed, chronological record of all the Opens that have taken place on the Old Course in the past 130 years. The text, by third generation St. Andrean David Joy, is fully researched and highly informative. The color photography, by Iain MacFarlane Lowe, is some of the most beautiful of the Old Course — or any other course — that you will ever see. Plus, the book is filled with vintage photos and additional documents that help define the true importance of this historical event.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1075707 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 249 pages

From Amazon.com
The history of St. Andrews may not tell the whole story of golf, but it certainly provides the early chapters--as well as significant new episodes along the way. To help commemorate the Open Championship's return to the Royal and Ancient grounds in 2000, St. Andrews fetes the game's most hallowed pasture. With sprightly text and enough pictures to weigh down a caddie, it tells the stories of the 25 British Opens--from 1873 to John Daly's improbable triumph in 1995--that have gone out from the shadow of the intimidating stone clubhouse and returned, after battling winds, bunkers, gorse, and all kinds of troubles big and small, to the beckoning arms of the legendary Home Hole. --Jeff Silverman

From the Inside Flap
St. Andrews—it is the Home of Golf. There is no other place in the golfing world like it. This hallowed site encapsulates the spirit of the game and these fairways have been witness to all of the highs and lows that the Open Championship has had to offer.

Many golfers over the years have tried to tame the undulating links of St. Andrews. Old Tom Morris and his son, Young Tom, came as close as anyone could to mastering the majestic course with eight Championships between them. A list of extraordinary champions—Taylor, Snead, Thomson, Locke, Lema, Nicklaus, Ballesteros, and Faldo—are a true testament to the course’s greatness. It toyed with Jones before sharing the secrets of victory, and eternally kept Palmer at bay, though the crowds were always on his side.

St. Andrews & The Open Championship: The Official History contains the finest collection of photographs ever assembled, with stories intertwined that read as if Old Tom Morris wrote them himself. The course photography by Iain Macfarlane Lowe will set a new standard of quality, artistic merit, and sheer beauty. His six years of studying the course with his camera has captured the many moods of this temperamental, stunning, rare, and always changing, but ever-appealing home they call St. Andrews—The Old Course.

About the Author
David Joy, a fourth generation St. Andrean whose reverence and knowledge of the Old Course and its past champions is beyond measure, has been committed to the preservation of St. Andrews history for his entire life. He is involved in many of the town’s art activities, as he is himself is an actor, playwright, artist, and author. David is known around the world for his compellingly accurate portrayals of Old Tom Morris, and, in addition to St. Andrews & The Open Championship: The Official History, is coming out with Old Tom Morris’s Scrapbook sometime in the new millennium.

Iain Macfarlane Lowe, trained in photography in his many years in Her Majesties Royal Air Force, has studied St. Andrews from a five iron away from the Home Hole at the Old Course for over six years. Known for his 40-foot high tower that he uses to capture precise and uniquely sharp images, Lowe has covered nearly all of the British Open Championship courses, as well as the other great courses in Scotland, England, and Ireland. His single challenge—to photograph the Old Course and capture its ever-changing light, atmosphere, beauty, as well as its moods; to do justice to the lure that has drawn golfers for centuries.