St. Andrews: Home to the runaway champion
By Bill Felber
The Old Course at St. Andrews, which is hosting the 150th playing of the British Open championship this week, is widely recognized as the “Home of Golf,” but it is also the home of the runaway.
On two of the three most recent occasions when the Open was contested at St. Andrews, the champion waltzed home by imposing margins.
In 2000, on his way to the Tiger Slam, Tiger Woods lapped the field by eight strokes. In 2010, Louis Oosthuizen staged a runaway of his own, winning at St. Andrews by 10.
The Old Course might produce drama this week such as it did in 2015, when Zach Johnson won a three-way playoff from Marc Leishman and Oosthuizen.
But history, both of the British Open generally and of St. Andrews in particular, also says do not be surprised if a runaway champion is crowned Sunday evening.
Across the vast span of Major Championship history, now embracing its 520th tournament, there have been only 35 in which one player lapped the field by as many as a half dozen strokes.
Yet 16 of those 35 – that’s nearly half – were British Opens.
And four of those 16 British Open routs were played at St. Andrews.
Only two courses in all the world have hosted more one-sided Major outcomes, Prestwick with six and Augusta National with 5. But Prestwick has not hosted a Major in nearly a century, and Augusta hosts one literally every year.
In fact, there have been 83 Majors played at Augusta, while this will be only the 30th at The Old Course.
Prestwick, Augusta, and St. Andrews are also the only three courses ever to have hosted more than one runaway outcome.
From its inception, the British Open has had a penchant for producing runaway champions.
The fabled Old Tom Morris won the third Open ever contested in 1862 by 13 strokes. Six years later his son, Young Tom Morris, equaled his dad’s winning margin…his dad was the unfortunate runner-up. One year later, Young Tom repeated, this time by 11. The following year he won by 12.
Of the 10 largest runaway outcomes in Major championship history, half were British Opens. And runaways weren’t confined to the game’s formative age.
Of those 10 most one-sided, five took place since the end of World War 1, four since the 1960s, and three since the dawn of the Tiger Woods era.
Here’s the list of the 10 most one-sided Major championship outcomes.
Year Major Champion Margin
2000 U.S. Open Tiger Woods 15
1862 British Open Old Tom Morris 13
1868 British Open Young Tom Morris 13
1870 British Open Young Tom Morris 12
1997 Masters Tiger Woods 12
1869 British Open Young Tom Morris 11
1899 U.S. Open Willie Smith 11
2010 British Open Louis Oosthuizen 10
1975 Masters Jack Nicklaus 9
1921 U.S. Open Jim Barnes 9
There have been eight Major championships in history decided by a margin of eight strokes. Four were British Opens. Two of those were played at St. Andrews: J.H. Taylor in 1900 and Woods exactly a century later.
It’s also worth noting that there are no fewer than six players in this week’s field who have won at least one Major title in a runaway.
That includes Woods and Oosthuizen, who as earlier noted both did so on this course.
The others are Rory McIlroy (by 8 at the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional and again one year later at the PGA at Kiawah Island), Martin Kaymer (by 8 at the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst), Shane Lowry (by 6 at the 2019 British Open at Royal Portrush) and Bryson DeChambeau (by 6 at the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot).
One final statistical note on the propensity for the British Open to produce a runaway champion.
Throughout those 519 previous Majors, only 15 produced a champion who bettered the field average by as much as 3.25 standard deviations.
That 3.25 standard deviation bar is a daunting one indeed, since in statistics there is only a three-tenths of one percent probability of a result even exceeding 3 standard deviations.
dark. Next. More 150th Open Championship Coverage
Since golf outcomes are performance-based rather than chance-based, there is some fluidity in the likelihoods.
Even so, eight of those 15 truly exceptional Major outcomes occurred at the British Open. More remarkably, six of the eight took place since 2000. Included on that list are Oosthuizen in 2010, Henrik Stenson in 2016, Jordan Spieth in 2017, and Lowry in 2019.