1897: Hoylake

John Ball and Sandy Herd led by a stroke after the first round with F G Tait and Davie Brown a shot behind. Trailing by two were Harold Hilton, James Braid and George Pulford. Bernard Darwin described Hilton, then 28, as ‘at his very best, with perhaps a greater command of his wooden clubs than anybody has had before or since’ and he returned a magnificent round of 75 on the first afternoon only to be surpassed by Braid’s 74. Going into the second day, three amateurs were in the first six.

Braid and Hilton both slipped up in the third round, scoring 82 and 84 respectively but Braid still led by two shots from Freddie Tait starting the final round. Tait was the first of the contenders to complete his final round which he did in 79. Hilton stormed out in 18 for the first five holes and in 38 for the outward nine, improving on this with 37 coming home. Braid was about to play the 14th when Hilton finished and, having taken 55 strokes to that point, had what looked like the simple task of finishing the remaining five holes in 22 (‘three under fives’ in the terminology of the day). A five and a four left him a five and two fours to win. A good tee shot, followed by a brassie to thirty yards of the green, seemed to make a five certain but a hard landing on the green shot the ball ten yards past the hole and he three putted. More putting difficulties on the 17th resulted in another five but good approach play left him a ten yard putt to tie. Braid wrote later ‘I did not consider the putt by any means a difficult one, having due regard to its length’. However, it did not go in and Harold Hilton won his second Open.