The Senior Open Championship 2021

There were household names aplenty in the running at Sunningdale, but none of them could match the unheralded Welshman, Stephen Dodd

Words: Andy Farrell

It was ever so slightly surreal, but very definitely wonderful. A drizzly old summer’s evening under the big oak tree at Sunningdale, like many before and yet unlike any other. Stephen Dodd faced a 10ft putt at the back of the 18th green of the Old Course to win the Senior Open Championship presented by Rolex. And, without any fuss or fanfare, Dodd rolled it in. He nonchalantly waved his putter aloft, bumped knuckles with his playing partner, Jerry Kelly, briefly hugged his caddie and was then enveloped in an embrace by runner-up Miguel Ángel Jiménez, cigar in hand.

Jiménez, the 2018 winner, had just scored a 65 and posted the clubhouse target at 12 under par, having earlier in the week made an albatross. Kelly, Dodd’s nearest challenger after three rounds, was at the time leading the Charles Schwab Cup season standings on the PGA Tour Champions. Darren Clarke, who lifted the Claret Jug in 2011, was hoping to become only the fourth after Gary Player, Bob Charles and Tom Watson to win both The Open and the Senior Open. The Northern Irishman finished two behind, while Bernhard Langer, the defending champion looking for a fifth win, was fourth and Paul Broadhurst, the 2016 champion, fifth.

Ernie Els and the newly crowned US Senior Open champion, Jim Furyk, both on their debut, were also in contention, as was Alex Cejka, winner of two of the Champions Tour’s Majors in 2021. The Senior Open had to be cancelled in 2020, but was rescheduled at Sunningdale for 12 months later and the field was as strong as it could be. Everyone was here and Dodd beat the lot.

Which was remarkable not least because the 55-year-old Welshman had barely been playing. While the Champions Tour in America had restarted after the pandemic in the summer of 2020, and been going strongly ever since, the Legends Tour

Easy does it: a relaxed Dodd acknowledges the applause

Dodd seizes the day

Bernhard Langer keeping dry on his way to a fourth-place finish (left): America’s Jerry Kelly (below) would come home sixth after keeping champion Dodd company on the final day

Northern Irishman, with two wins already behind him on the Champions Tour, opened with a 65 alongside South Africa’s James Kingston, who fell away on day two. Clarke threatened to do the same, with three consecutive bogeys on the front nine, but birdied four of the last six holes for a 67 to be one ahead of Langer and Kelly, and two in front of Els and Broadhurst.

After a 66 on Thursday to be one off the lead, Dodd fell five adrift with a one-over-par 71 in the second round. It was “pretty poor,” he said, and the turnaround on Saturday he put down to

in Europe had only resumed with the Farmfoods European Legends Links Championship the previous month in June.

Dodd was 43rd there after an opening 78. In 2020 he did not even have to cross the Severn Bridge for his only tournament of the year, when he missed the cut at the Celtic Classic at Celtic Manor.

“With no real competitive golf behind me, I didn’t know what to expect this week,” Dodd said. “I just wanted to try and enjoy it. I didn’t play great today, just ground it out. I did some good work on Monday with my coach, Denis Pugh, but it gradually got a bit worse as the week went on. Expectation-wise, I didn’t really have any. I just wanted to do myself justice, and I think I’ve done a bit more than that, luckily.”

Dodd is a modest man with a huge talent, albeit only seen in occasional glimpses. He was the BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year in 1989, after he won The Amateur Championship, the Welsh strokeplay and matchplay titles, and played on the Walker Cup team that won in America for the first time ever.

He won once on the Challenge Tour in 1992, but on the main tour had to wait until he was 38 in 2004 to win at the Volvo China Open. He suddenly burst into life, winning the Irish Open the following year and the European Open at the K Club in 2006, as well as the World Cup of Golf in 2005 with Bradley Dredge. After turning 50, he won three times in three years on the Legends Tour but not since 2018.

“He’s truly a great player who rarely gets motivated,” Dredge told Global Golf Post. “Nothing fazes him. On virtually every occasion he’s had a chance to win, he’s seized it.”

Dodd proved that again in the denouement at Sunningdale, but it was Clarke who led the way in the early going. The

“Expectation-wise, I didn’t really have any. I wanted to do myself justice, and I think I’ve done a bit more than that.”

On the regular tour, Dodd had played in The Open Championship three times and missed the cut in all of them

a “good night’s sleep and I suppose I got lucky once or twice early on”.

All that added up to six birdies going out, to turn in 29, and then following his only bogey at the 10th, three more in a row from the 13th. His 62 tied the Senior Open record, set by Harold Henning in 1990 and matched by Jim Colbert in 2003, both at Turnberry, and he also tied the Old Course record set by Sir Nick Faldo in 1986 and equalled by Shane Lowry in Open Qualifying in 2010.

Suddenly, Dodd, at 11 under par, was two ahead of Kelly, who had a 68, and three ahead of Clarke (70). Jiménez holed his second shot from 147 yards at the par-five opening hole for a two and his second successive 67 put him into a tie for fourth with Langer and Broadhurst.

It was the Spaniard who put the pressure on during the final round, birdieing three of the first four holes, and he got to 12 under with his last birdie of the day at the 17th.

Dodd had made three birdies and two bogeys — having also holed long par putts at the seventh and 12th holes — when he came to the last. His tee shot just leaked into the rough on the right but his approach shot was superb, the best of any of the contenders at the last. And then the putt went in.

He knew exactly what was required and, as Dredge suggested, seized the day.

“I like to see the scoreboards and know what I need to do,” he said. “For me it focuses my mind more... I hit some decent shots coming down the last few holes.”

This was Dodd’s fifth appearance in the Senior Open. On the regular tour, he had played in The Open three times and missed the cut in all of them.

“I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet,” he said immediately afterwards. “It’s been quite a tough day. I’m sure on the drive home I’ll reflect on it all and I’ll be a very happy person when I get back home later tonight.”

Greeted there by wife Allison, their six dogs and three cats, as well as a glass or two of red, the new Senior Open champion was content indeed.

Happy days: Darren Clarke and Miguel Ángel Jiménez congratulate each other at the end of the Championship (above); Dodd hits out as the rain comes down on the final day (right)