Page 3 - royal_liverpool_gm

As The Open returns to the north-westernmost tip of The Wirral for the twelfth time this July, it’s worth reflecting on just what an historically important club Royal Liverpool is, both for the professional game and even more so for the amateur game. For it was here back in 1885 that the Amateur Championship was inaugurated, with the club responsible for producing two of the very finest amateurs of the day in John Ball and Harold Hilton, both of whom won not only that title several times, but also The Open Championship itself, in Hilton’s case twice.
Indeed, it was Hilton who emerged victorious when The Open first came to town in 1897, with Tiger plotting his way to victory in the most recent staging over a famously parched landscape in 2006. In between, it has witnessed the only French champion in Arnaud Massy in 1907; JH Taylor’s fifth and final victory in 1913; the first Northern Irish champion in Fred Daly in 1947; and the first and only Argentinean winner in Roberto De Vicenzo in 1967.