BRITISH OPEN
Dramatic Open win for Ernie
Brad Morgan
22 July 2002
Ernie Els lifted the British Open’s famous Claret Jug at Muirfield on Sunday after becoming the third South African golfer to win the sport’s oldest major. It was a dramatic victory.
The Big Easy, who led the tournament after three rounds, was three shots clear with six holes to play, but a disastrous double-bogey on the par-three sixteenth nearly derailed his title hopes, dropping him from a one-shot lead to trailing three players by a single stroke.
Els, however, immediately hit back with a birdie on the seventeenth to pull himself into a four-way tie with France’s Thomas Levet and Australia’s Steve Elkington and Stuart Appleby.
After a par from Els on the final hole of regulation play, the four players, the largest playoff contingent in British Open history, moved on to a four-hole playoff. Levet put himself in position to win by knocking in a birdie on the sixteenth, but he, Elkington and Appelby all bogeyed the eighteenth. Els,
meanwhile, parred all four holes.
That left Els and Levet level, but the two Australians fell out of contention. The tournament then moved into sudden death.
Levet found a fairway bunker with his drive and was unable to come up with a decent shot out of the sandtrap. Els was safe off of the tee, but he found the sand with his approach to the green. However, he pulled off a super bunker shot to set up a short putt for victory. Cheers resounded around the green when he sank what must have been the longest five-footer of his career.
“I don’t know how I made that putt. I don’t want to know how I made that putt”, laughed Els afterwards.
He joined Bobby Locke, a winner on four occasions, and Gary Player, a winner in three different decades, as the only South African golfers to win The Open.
His caddie, Ricci Roberts, said Els had targeted the majors this year, hoping to derail the Tiger Woods’ machine and, after Woods posted his worst ever round as a
professional in the third round – 81 – Els got his wish. While most others struggled in terrible conditions in round three, he held his game together to take a two-shot lead into the final round. It proved to be just enough.
It was a five-year wait for Els to win his third major, after previous victories in the US Open in 1994 and 1998. With trophy in hand, Els admitted: “At times, I really thought I would never put my hands on this."
Now he hopes there are more majors to come, a sentiment echoed by his many fans all over the world.
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