Inside the yardage book — links golf, the long read

The story of British links golf begins on common ground. Sheep and gorse and salt wind shaped the courses long before greenkeepers did, and the gentlemen who founded the game in mid-19th-century Scotland did so in clubhouses that smelled of wool and tobacco. The Open Championship arrived at Prestwick in 1860, the trophy was first the Challenge Belt and then the Claret Jug, and Tom Morris won so often that for a decade it was as if the Championship was his to defend.

Then Bobby Jones happened. Three Open titles in five years, the 1930 Grand Slam, and a retirement at twenty-eight that cemented him as the standard against which every amateur since has been measured. After 1930, no amateur has won The Open. The professional era took over — Hagen, Snead, Hogan, Palmer, Nicklaus, Watson — and the British coast became the place where the world’s best players prove they can play in weather. Today the field is global, the broadcast is twenty-four hours a day, and the Claret Jug is still held aloft by hand.