1979 British Open Winner and Scores
The 1979 British Open was the 108th time the tournament was played. Seve Ballesteros was just 22 years old, and he had already made a name for himself. But this is the tournament at which he became a major champion.
Winner: Seve Ballesteros, 283
Where it was played: Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club in Lytham St. Annes, England
Tournament dates: July 18-21, 1979
Leader after first round: Bill Longmuir, 65
Leader after second round: Hale Irwin, 136
Leader after third round: Hale Irwin, 211
What Happened at the 1979 Open Championship
At the 1976 British Open, when he was 19 years old, Seve Ballesteros finished second and signalled to the golf world that a great new talent was emerging. Over the next couple years, Ballesteros won in Europe, America, Japan, New Zealand and even Africa. And then, three years later, what seemed inevitable in 1976 happened at the 1979 British Open: Ballesteros won the Open Championship.His victory at the 1979 British Open was his first in any major, and the way in which he won it helped cement Ballesteros' reputation for creativity, daring, originality, and resourcefulness on the golf course.
Ballesteros fired a second-round 65 to get within two strokes of leader Hale Irwin, who opened with back-to-back 68s just a month after winning the 1979 U.S. Open. Ballesteros and Irwin matched 75s in the third round, keeping Irwin's lead at two. Ben Crenshaw and Jack Nicklaus were in the mix, too.
In the final round, Irwin collapsed, shooting 78. He wound up in sixth place. Crenshaw (71) and Nicklaus (72) were solid, but they tied for second, three strokes behind.
Ballesteros was not "solid" — he sprayed drives all over the place — but he somehow wound up with the best score among the fourth-round leaders, a 70. He did it despite missing eight of nine fairways when using his driver. One of those wayward drives even bounded into a temporary parking lot.
But every time Ballesteros got himself into trouble, he got himself out of it with imaginative shotmaking. Seve found that parking lot on the 16th hole of the final round. After a free drop, he hit a pitch shot onto the green, then made birdie with a 20-foot putt. Ballesteros hit the kind of recovery shots that caused Crenshaw to remark, years later, that "Seve plays shots I don't even see in my dreams."
And ultimately, Ballesteros' ability to recover from trouble, his short-game creativity, gave him his first major championship trophy. It also made him the first Open Championship winner from Continental Europe since Frenchman Arnaud Massy won the 1907 Open.
This year marked the final appearance in any major by Roberto de Vicenzo, the 1967 British Open winner. And 5-time British Open champ Peter Thomson made the cut for the last time this year, finishing tied for 26th. For Nicklaus, this was the last of his record seven second-place finishes in the Open.
1979 British Open Final Scores
| Seve Ballesteros | 73-65-75-70—283 |
| Ben Crenshaw | 72-71-72-71—286 |
| Jack Nicklaus | 72-69-73-72—286 |
| Mark James | 76-69-69-73—287 |
| Rodger Davis | 75-70-70-73—288 |
| Hale Irwin | 68-68-75-78—289 |
| Isao Aoki | 70-74-72-75—291 |
| Graham Marsh | 74-68-75-74—291 |
| Bob Byman | 73-70-72-76—291 |
| Jumbo Ozaki | 75-69-75-73—292 |
| Greg Norman | 73-71-72-76—292 |
| Bob Charles | 78-72-70-72—292 |
| John O'Leary | 73-73-74-73—293 |
| Wally Armstrong | 74-74-73-72—293 |
| Terry Gale | 71-74-75-73—293 |
| Simon Owen | 75-76-74-68—293 |
| Lee Trevino | 71-73-74-76—294 |
| a-Peter McEvoy | 71-74-72-77—294 |
| Orville Moody | 71-74-76-74—295 |
| Sandy Lyle | 74-76-75-70—295 |
| Ken Brown | 72-71-75-77—295 |
| Gary Player | 77-74-69-75—295 |
| Nick Faldo | 74-74-78-69—295 |
| Tony Jacklin | 73-74-76-73—296 |
| Toru Nakamura | 77-75-67-77—296 |
| Ed Sneed | 76-75-70-76—297 |
| Peter Thomson | 76-75-72-74—297 |
| Jerry Pate | 69-74-76-78—297 |
| Tom Watson | 72-68-76-81—297 |
| Armando Saavedra | 76-76-73-73—298 |
| Tom Kite | 73-74-77-74—298 |
| Simon Hobday | 75-77-71-75—298 |
| Bobby Verwey | 75-77-74-72—298 |
| Mark Hayes | 75-75-77-71—298 |
| Bill Longmuir | 65-74-77-82—298 |
| Lee Elder | 75-72-76-76—299 |
| Raymond Floyd | 76-73-71-79—299 |
| Peter Cowen | 79-72-72-76—299 |
| Christy O'Connor | 79-73-71-76—299 |
| Michael King | 75-70-73-81—299 |
| Philippe Toussaint | 76-75-74-75—300 |
| Martin Foster | 77-75-74-74—300 |
| Hugh Baiocchi | 72-73-78-77—300 |
| Peter Oosterhuis | 75-74-73-78—300 |
| John Schroeder | 74-75-72-79—300 |
| Denis Watson | 75-70-76-79—300 |
| Hubert Green | 77-71-73-79—300 |
| Noel Ratcliffe | 79-73-72-76—300 |
| Dennis Clark | 72-69-76-83—300 |
| Carl Mason | 77-72-76-76—301 |
| Garry Cullen | 72-74-77-78—301 |
| Brian Barnes | 78-71-77-75—301 |
| Dewitt Weaver | 73-71-80-77—301 |
| Geoff Parslow | 75-75-76-76—302 |
| Ian Richardson | 75-73-77-77—302 |
| Kosaku Shimada | 75-74-75-78—302 |
| Yoshitaka Yamamoto | 76-74-77-76—303 |
| Johnny Miller | 77-73-77-76—303 |
| Jack Newton | 76-73-78-76—303 |
| Guy Wolstenholme | 77-75-71-80—303 |
| Robin Fyfe | 74-73-79-81—307 |
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