The course may feature the Open rota’s shortest hole, but the wins, wild finishes and historical twists? They’re always big.
1923 — Troon’s first Champion Golfer of the Year, Arthur Havers, remains the only Brit ever to have won an Open there. Even still, his moment was overshadowed by the absence of prohibitive favorite Gene Sarazen, who failed in his bid to qualify for the event.
1950 — South Africa’s Bobby Locke, the 15-time Tour winner and golfer laureate responsible for “You drive for show, but putt for dough,” was money at Troon, edging Argentinean Roberto De Vicenzo by two to win his second Claret Jug. He’d hoist it twice more, in 1952 and 1957.
1962 — Three months after his third Masters win, Arnold Palmer went back-to-back at the Open, defending the title he won a year earlier at Birkdale. His thrill of victory was captured on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, the first-ever broadcast of the Open on U.S. television.
1973 — Sarazen, at age 71, was a scene-stealer again, making an ace on the Postage Stamp 50 years after he flopped in his Troon debut. The Squire’s Open Championship farewell turned out to be, in rain-soaked course conditions, Tom Weiskopf’s major coming out.
1982 — With his triumph at Troon in ’82, Tom Watson joined a very short list of legends — Sarazen, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Lee Trevino (and, subsequently, Tiger Woods) — who won the U.S. Open and Open Championship in the same year. For Watson, it was major win seven of eight.
1989 — Greg Norman’s course-record 64 on Sunday earned him a spot in a three-way playoff. His meltdown thereafter — back-to-back shots into bunkers and a third out-of-bounds — on the final hole of a four-hole aggregate showdown helped Mark Calcavecchia sew up his only major.
1997 — A final-round 65 was enough for Justin Leonard to edge T2s Darren Clarke and Jesper Parnevik by three. Tiger Woods, playing in just his third Open, shot a round-three 64 to match Norman’s course record. Three years later he’d raise his first Claret Jug.
2004 — Todd Hamilton, a PGA Tour rookie at age 38, outdueled Ernie Els to become Troon’s sixth straight American winner and the Open Championship’s second consecutive Cinderella story. A year earlier, first-timer Ben Curtis, ranked 396th, was the belle of the ball at Royal St. George’s.
2016 — Phil Mickelson and Henrik Stenson’s seesawing Sunday duel ranks among the most thrilling in the game’s history. Both players carded a Troon record 63 that week, but Stenson’s 72-hole score of 20 under rocked the Open record book too — and made him the champion.
