Feature
clubbable in the extreme, courteous,
cautious and should the occasion demand
it, curmudgeonly rather than approachable
and about as far from devil-may-care is it’s
possible to get, Dawson’s tenure came to
an end, in 2016, having reached the sell-by
date and some.
In fairness, and in large part because
he knew who could unlock the Open
Championship treasure trove, a.k.a IMG,
Dawson’s greatest legacy was to see the
Open Championship just about retain
its place as ‘First amongst equals,’ of
the four ‘Majors, fi rst prize rising from
US$450,000 in Dawson’s fi rst year, when
fellow-Aberdonian won the Claret Jug
at Carnoustie, to US$1.1m when Louis
Oosthuizen won at St. Andrews in 2010
and US$1.5m by the end of his tenure as
Zach Johnston won in the rain at the Old
Course. And that, fi rst–and-foremost is the
primary responsibility of Martin Slumbers,
a former director at global bankers Salomon
Brothers, then Deutsche Bank, to maintain
the status of the oldest of the four ‘Majors,’
in term of historical reverence, which is a
given, and secondly, hard cash, which it is
not. OK, post-Brexit plunges in the Pound
have rendered the Open the least valuable
of the four, ‘Majors,’ this year, but with
GolfPlus
JULY
2017
21