The Johnian who founded The Open
To mark the beginning of The Open Championship 2019, St John’s celebrates the story of James Ogilvy Fairlie (1827), who was instrumental in the foundation of The Open nearly 160 years ago. Ian Roberts (1975), a member of the Cambridge University Alumni Advisory Board, brought to our attention this article, which was written by Professor David Purdie of Edinburgh University.
James Ogilvy Fairlie, the man regarded in the golfing world as the ‘Father of the Open Championship’, was born at Calcutta on 10 October 1809 to William Fairlie and his wife Margaret née Ogilvy. His father belonged to an old land-owning family in Ayrshire, but, like many younger sons of the Georgian era, he sought — and made — his fortune in India. Known in Bengal as the ‘Prince of Merchants’, he ran a company that traded throughout the sub-continent and the spice islands in rice, cotton, indigo — and opium. William Fairlie provisioned the Hon. East India Company’s army in the Anglo-Maratha Wars, returning to Britain with his family shortly after James’ birth. Fairlie Place beside the Hooghly River in modern Kolkata still bears the family name.
Educated at Charterhouse and then Harrow, James Fairlie was still ‘on the Hill’ when his father died in 1825, his mother then purchasing the Ayrshire estate of Coodham, which lay close to Prestwick on the coastline of Ayrshire.
The seventeen-year-old James Ogilvy Fairlie was admitted to St John’s College as a Fellow-Commoner on 5 July 1827, matriculating in the Michaelmas Term. After Cambridge, Fairlie was commissioned into the 2nd Life Guards, serving with this famous cavalry regiment until the death of his mother forced his retirement, with the rank of Captain, to manage the family estate.
A keen sportsman, he was an expert horseman, a crack shot and a fine golfer. He rode to hounds and kept a stable of steeplechasers who competed in classic race meetings on both sides of the Border. In the summer of 1839, he collaborated with his friend and neighbour Archibald Montgomerie, thirteenth Earl of Eglington, in the organisation of the spectacular Eglington Tournament. This was a full-scale mock medieval tournament held in honour of Queen Victoria’s accession two years previously. Competing as ‘ The Knight of the Golden Lion’, Fairlie was one of thirteen fully armoured knights who jousted in the lists before a crowd of one hundred thousand, among whom was Louis Napoleon, later to be Emperor of France.
In 1840 Fairlie married Anne Eliza MacLeod, daughter of the twenty-fourth Chief of Clan MacLeod, who died in 1843. Two years later, he married Elizabeth Craufurd, with whom he had six sons and three daughters. In 1850, Fairlie was elected Captain of The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, which had been founded in 1754 and remains the governing authority of golf worldwide, save for the United States.
Now a Major in the cavalry division of the Ayrshire Yeomanry, Fairlie convened a party of his brother officers and local gentlemen in the Red Lion coaching inn at Prestwick in July 1851. Here the Prestwick Golf Club was founded, the Earl of Eglinton being elected Captain. This was the first golf club to be established in the west of Scotland, the game having been played since the fifteenth century almost exclusively around Edinburgh and the coastline of East Lothian.
Fairlie brought the famous golfer Tom Morris Sr from his native St Andrews to lay out and superintend the new course, where, in 1860, he proposed to the Club’s executive committee that a tournament be held for professional golfers. The stimulus for this novel idea was the premature death in St Andrews of Allan Robertson, professional to the Royal & Ancient and the player generally agreed to be the best of his time. The question now arose: who should be hailed as his successor? The solution was to invite the contenders to Prestwick and let them fight it out in open competition across the links.
Thus it was that at the stroke of noon on Wednesday 17 October 1860, the now Lt. Col. James Ogilvy Fairlie of Coodham, together with Officials from the Club and a vast crowd of spectators, assembled around the first tee of the Prestwick club. They then watched Tom Morris strike away the very first shot in what would become the greatest individual golf competition on earth. In four pairs, the eight contestants, each pair with a marker to count the shots, went round the 12-hole Prestwick course three times between noon and dusk. The winner, with a score of 174, was Willie Park Sr from the town of Musselburgh in East Lothian, who won by two shots. There was no monetary reward for Park, who was awarded the title of ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’ and invested, or rather encircled, by a handsome red morocco leather belt, its silver buckle inlaid with golfing scenes.
It will be noted that, strictly speaking, the first Open was actually ‘closed’, since only professionals competed. Lt. Col. Fairlie moved quickly to propose that the Prestwick Club should literally open up the competition to include gentlemen amateurs. Hence the press advertisement for the 1861 tournament stated that the event was now ‘Open to the World’. There was an increase in the field, with twelve contestants, including Fairlie himself, completing the three rounds. The belt then returned from East Lothian to Ayrshire with Tom Morris winning the first of his four Open Championships. Fairlie led the gentlemen and was thus the Open’s first ‘leading amateur’. That title remains greatly prized to this day, the Open’s presentation ceremony each July always beginning with the award of the Silver Medal to his latest successor.
The Open remains a strokeplay competition in high Summer over a great Scottish, English or Irish link (the oldest style of golf course). The number of Open rounds has increased to four, the holes played to 72 and the prize fund to a value inconceivable to those early competitors. Indeed, monetary prizes were only introduced for the fourth Open in 1863, the first winner to be paid being Tom Morris in 1864 who received the princely sum of £6.
The prize is now The Golf Championship Trophy, popularly known as ‘The Old Claret Jug’. Commissioned from Messrs. Mackay Cunningham of Edinburgh, goldsmiths to Queen Victoria, it was first presented to Tom Kidd at his home course of St Andrews in 1873. At Carnoustie Golf Club, in 2018, it was kissed by Francesco Molinari of Italy as ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’, the title conceived 159 years ago by Col. James Ogilvy Fairlie, father of The Open — and alumnus of St John’s.
