THE MAGIC NUMB3R

Garrett Johnston speaks to Nick Faldo about his three Open wins and who could contend at St Andrews this year

- Garrett Johnston

In 1978, you finished T7 at your first St Andrews Open. How was that experience?

It was just amazing. I loved it from the word go. Some people say, "What the heck is this place?", but I kind of got it and enjoyed it straight away. I only finished four shots back of Jack in 1978. That was when I told myself I can win The Open one day; that gave me the belief. When you give yourself the belief that yes, this is doable, it becomes a genuine goal. I knew I could handle that. Obviously, it took nine more years until it happened.

Everything gets so accentuated at St Andrews. If you miss a shot on a normal golf course, it finishes 30 feet from the hole; there, it finds a way to finish 30 yards from the hole, it really does. So you have to accept that you have to be really good at putting from 20 and 30 yards away. You'll get a couple of 100-footers the week of an Open and you can't get wound up about them. You have to find a way to get it inside six feet and knock that one in. You need a good eye to find the true line on those greens because they're hundreds of years old.

How did you deal with the pressure of your first Open win at Muirfield in 1987?

That was a situation where I was really focused. We had a difficult day - it was a foggy day, pea soup. I had four layers of cashmere on and the ball was flying nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. So you had to calculate all that as well. That was a situation where I sensed I had the chance to win and I was staying in my moment - Tony Jacklin called it being in your cocoon, now we call it being in the zone. You tell yourself: "This is my little world and I'm still in this." You realize the pressure you're under and you know that one great shot will win it and one bad shot will cost you. So I told myself: "Just keep it going, keep delivering good shot after good shot." That's all I tried to do.