England - The West Country

published 5 June 2008

A century ago there was a dominant factor in the game of golf just as powerful then as Tiger is today. But it wasn t one man, it was three; a trio of players who dominated the game for more than two decades before the start of the First World War. They were two Englishmen from very different backgrounds and a gangling, softly-spoken Scot and they were all but invincible. Harry Vardon, John Henry Taylor and James Braid were The Great Triumvirate, superstars before the term was invented.

Their pre-eminence made them household names that were as big as Jack Nicklaus or Woods and crowds literally flocked for miles to see them play. Across the land no new course or clubhouse opening was complete without the presence of one or other or, often, all three. Between them they won 16 of 21 consecutive Open Championships and they moulded the future of the game.

In some ways the current focus on one or other in isolation has the effect of fragmenting the Triumvirate, which fuelled my desire to find a way to reconnect with this remarkable and yet so diverse trio. I could think of no better way than to follow in their footsteps to a beautiful part of the country where the three great Open champions of the early 20th century left their mark and are well remembered.

The West Country, land of Camelot and Arthurian legend, of Tintagel, Dartmoor, Exmoor and Bodmin, of classic literature such as The Hound of the Baskervilles, Lorna Doone and Jamaica Inn, pirates and wreckers and the gastronomic empire of my favourite television chef, Rick Stein. These were the images that flooded to mind with the prospect of a journey to this Celtic outpost of mystery and magic to follow a Great Triumvirate Trail.

In his own way each member of the Triumvirate made huge contributions to the game: Vardon is best remembered for his record of winning more Open Championships than anyone in history six in total as well as capturing the fledgling US Open in 1900; Braid as the first player to win five Opens, a feat he accomplished inside 10 years and which included three victories in a row, but now even more for his wonderful legacy of golf courses; Taylor as a five-time Open champion and founder of the PGA who also turned to golf course architecture in his later years with the two layouts at Royal Mid-Surrey his most famous creations.

Braid was a big man who thought big when it came to designing courses, and yet he was also renowned as a kindly and thoughtful man, a gentleman to whom decency and fairness were the very essence of his being. Wherever Braid built courses, and he built more than 250 in his long career, they were challenging but fair, always offering the poorer player hope. Boldly positioned greens and subtly-placed bunkers that often blurred perspective by their location just short of the green and fairway hazards which clearly proclaimed that to venture there was to indeed flirt with something hazardous, were the hallmarks of his work.

Across the county line in Devon the third member of the Triumvirate, Taylor, is still king. Royal North Devon, better known the world over as Westward Ho!, is the oldest links in England and the course on which the great man learned to play as a youngster. This is golf laid bare, the way it was in the beginning, the purest form of our game and the one that many believe is still the model for all else.

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