Nick Faldo 1987 Open Championship Royal Birkdale

Lore & Background

By 1987, the golfing world had already anointed Faldo as the modern heir to the great British Open tradition. His 1985 win at St Andrews had been a statement; his 1986 defence at Royal Birkdale had been a coronation. The 1987 championship, staged once again on the exposed North Yorkshire links, was the proof. Birkdale's notorious wind, its firm and fast greens, and its unforgiving fairways had defeated or humbled countless champions, yet Faldo treated them as a personal invitation. His style — full swings, aggressive pin attacks, a refusal to play safe when the wind was in his face — was anathema to older, more cautious generations, but on a links course it was simply the correct answer.

The rivalry with Sandy Lyle gave the 1987 Open a human drama that transcended the scorecard. Lyle, a fellow Englishman with a fiery temperament and a devastating short game, was the only player who could match Faldo blow-for-blow on the back nine. Their duels in the mid-1980s and into the late 1980s became a fixture of British golf, a constant that fans tuned into week after week. In 1987, that tension was the engine of the final rounds, and Faldo's composure in the closing stretch — the quiet, almost mechanical execution while Lyle and the crowd roared — became the defining image of the tournament.

The broader significance is hard to overstate. Three consecutive Opens had not been achieved since the earliest decades of the championship, and it has not been repeated since. Faldo's 1985–87 run sits alongside the most legendary stretches in golf history, a period in which the Open, often seen as the most unforgiving of the four majors, was conquered not once but three times by the same man. It reshaped how the tour and the public perceived British golf in the 1980s and gave a generation of fans a hero whose identity was inseparable from the links.

In Their Own Story

The wind off the North Sea was doing what it always does at Birkdale — twisting, gusting, punishing. On the back nine, the fairways looked like they were breathing. Faldo stood over a mid-iron, the flagstick a thin white needle against a pewter sky, and for a moment the whole gallery on the hill went silent. No shout, no call. Just the soft thwack of the clubface meeting the ball, the ball rising into the crosswind and curving with a patience that seemed almost disrespectful to the conditions. He watched it land, watched it stop, and turned to his caddie without a word. The crowd exhaled. It was that quiet, unshowy confidence — the absence of celebration, the absence of doubt — that made the round feel less like a golf match and more like a man solving an equation while everyone else was still reading the question.

Reader's Guide

The 1987 Open at Royal Birkdale is one of the most replayed and re-examined rounds in major championship history, and it remains the benchmark against which all three-consecutive-Open feats are measured. It is the round that turned Faldo from a champion into a legend in the eyes of the British public.

The final stretch of the tournament played out under the kind of grey, cross-breezing North Yorkshire sky that makes Birkdale feel like a different planet from any other course on the calendar. The wind was not steady; it was argumentative, shifting direction every few holes, punishing any player who tried to play the safe, conservative game that the old guard preached. Faldo did the opposite. He attacked. His swings were full, his lines into the pins were aggressive, and his short game was surgical. When the pressure of a third consecutive major bore down on the back nine, his face went still — that famous, almost blank expression — and his strokes became shorter, more controlled, more inevitable. Sandy Lyle, the fiery rival, was in the mix, and the gallery roared with every birdie opportunity, but Faldo's composure in the closing holes was the difference. He played the golf, not the moment.

The round is replayed because it is a masterclass in nerve. It showed that dominance is not just about talent; it is about the willingness to swing the club at full speed when the entire world is watching and the wind is in your face. It shifted the narrative of the 1980s Open from a tournament of cautious, weather-managed golf to one where the most aggressive, confident player could simply outplay the field. And it gave British golf a hero whose identity was written in links grass and sea wind, a hero who would carry that identity for the rest of his career and beyond.

Did You Know?

• Faldo's three consecutive Open Championships (1985, 1986, 1987) remain one of the rarest feats in the history of the tournament, a streak not matched by any other player in the modern era.
• Royal Birkdale hosted Faldo's 1986 and 1987 Open victories, making the Birkdale links the site of two of his three consecutive titles.
• Faldo's aggressive, full-swing attacking style was considered unconventional and even reckless by older generations of British golfers, yet it proved devastatingly effective on the exposed links courses of the Open.
• The Faldo–Lyle rivalry of the mid-to-late 1980s is widely regarded as one of the great personal rivalries in the history of British professional golf.