It’s one of suburban London’s most beautiful areas, filled with heather and hardwoods, and marked by quiet mornings interrupted only by an avian melody or other rustles of nature. The encroachment of urban sprawl has dented some of that over the last 120 years, but not on the grounds of Walton Heath Golf Club. There, southwest of the city in Surrey and an easy trot to the ancient Roman ruins of Stain Street, a golf ball trundling into a bunker could prompt a dart from a resting hare, while a traipse through the purple flora of heathland knolls might well scare up a covey of quail.
That is no different from the environment Harry Vardon and John Henry Taylor found in 1904 when they played the inaugural round at Walton Health with the club’s head professional, James Braid. The threesome was known as The Great Triumvirate for their near-complete dominance of the game at the turn of the 20th century. Braid, a Scot from Fife, had only won the Open Championship once when he took the job at Walton Heath, but he would go on to win Europe’s biggest championship four more times, including back-to-back victories in 1905 and 1906, a feat not equaled by a European until Padraig Harrington won in 2007 and 2008.