Description
The Official DVD film of the 1977 Open.

Later to become known as The Duel in the Sun, this, so far, is the greatest ever Open.

"Near 5pm on that second Saturday of July 1977, not a soul in that vast amphitheatre around the eighteenth green of Turnberry's ancient links would dare to say they were not witnessing the most colossal head-to-head encounter in the very history of the game. Head-to-head? But this was the Open; well over a hundred of the world's best had entered, hadn't they? And not only that, these two Americans had been head-to-head to all intents for the past two and a half days of the four-day championship…All square at the sixteenth. Sandy-haired challenger looks at the older blond champion. He smiles and says: 'This is what it's all about, isn't it?' And Jack smiles back: 'You bet your life it is.' They level the sixteenth.

Two to go. You could hear the deafening silence twenty miles away in Ayr…Challenger one-up, one hole left. It is excruciating. Who will have the courage? Watson, ahead for the first time proper, twangs his second shot to the eighteenth straight and true to the very pin. Perfection! An arrow surely that's pierced the champion's heart. But wait…for at the very last, Nicklaus takes an unconscionable time and then - Alleluia! - he sinks a dramatic and defiant putt of forty feet to leave Watson more to do. Watson kept his nerve…and ended it. They embraced. So with the utterly immortal HURRAH! of it, did 100,000 all around them. Old Scots wiped tears from their eyes…and then young men borrowed the hankie." - extracts from Frank Keating's excellent Sporting Century book.

This is the outstanding film that shows the stars of international golf playing the holes television could not cover, and stands as the official record of Turnberry's first Open. It is a championship that produces a climax without precedent.

The phenomenal Jack Nicklaus takes on Masters Champion Tom Watson as the two greatest players of the year battle it out in a head-to-head virtual match-play situation.

"Elementary" as Peter Alliss once said.