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The Open was scheduled for Birkdale in 1940 but the war intervened
and the club did not stage the championship until 1954, three years
after it became Royal Birkdale, when Peter Thomson won the first of
his five victories. I played in my last Open at St Andrews the
following year, so of the clubs on the current rota, the course that
now vies with Muirfield as Britain’s number one was one of the three
on which I never got to play in the Championship - my memories of
Birkdale are of that winter's day in May 1935.
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Leading amateurs at Royal Lytham went down to Southport to play the
new Birkdale course, designed by Fred Hawtree and J. H. Taylor and see
the imaginatively designed art deco style clubhouse resembling the
bridge of ships passing by in the Irish Sea. The amateurs were
impressed, as were R&A officials who also paid a visit to check on
the club’s suitability for the major championships - which
Birkdale’s new investment was designed to attract. The English
Amateur Championship was awarded to Birkdale in 1939, when Arnold
Bentley, one of the famous Bentley brothers from the nearby Hesketh
club won the title, beating Mere’s Bill Sutton - the first time that
brothers had won a national amateur championship; Arnold’s brother
Harry had won the title at Deal in 1936. 
he aced the ‘Postage Stamp’ on his last
appearance – and the 50th anniversary of his first Open on the same
course. On the second day he used his ‘blaster’ to hole out from a
bunker for a two. Matching par on the shortest, but arguably the
most difficult, par-3 in championship golf is good in one round, so
taking three strokes in two rounds was not a bad way to bow out of
the Open. His partners at Troon were another two Open Champions: Max
Faulkner and Fred Daly. Also present to be honoured by the R&A was
the 75-years-old Arthur Havers, the 1923 Troon champion.