In 1925 crowds got out of hand at the British Open at Prestwick, costing Macdonald Smith the championship.Leading by five shots going into the last round over Jim Barnes, who shot a 74 earlier in the day, all Smith needed was a 78 to win his first major championship. Unfortunately, he teed off just as the Glasgow trains were unloading thousands of golf-loving passengers onto the Prestwick platform. Some estimated 15,000 fans, about three times the normal crowd for that era, all at once swarmed over the course as Smith played the first hole. Frantic messages were sent back to the clubhouse to send out more marshals (called stewards there) but few wanted to volunteer. Only through the gyrating exhortations of stewards did he have enough room to swing.
“Many times we had to play over the heads of the gallery,” Smith recalled. “It was not such a difficult proposition at times but where individuals were bobbing up here and there it was disconcerting.” He had to wait several minutes between each shot, as fans spilled into bunkers and onto the greens as he was attempting to putt. “They bumped him, talked to him, and slapped him on the back between shots.” Poor Mac Smith found it too much to overcome, especially when he was off his game. He shot an 82, which some have put into the category of all-time chokes in the final round of a major, but his circumstances were highly unusual. What was the effect of all this?
The following year the R&A began charging admission, following the example of the USGA, which began doing so in 1922. But it was too late to help Smith, who would go down in history as one of the “best players to never win a major,” with 24 PGA Tour wins. Prestwick never hosted another Open, as its grounds were too condensed to accommodate large crowds. (See a video of the play and the crowds here.)
Top players in the U.S. also had their problems with fans, but were ridiculed at time for being overly sensitive. A newspaper in 1925 noted:
"One should not be sent to the guillotine for coughing inadvertently as someone is about to drive. One feels that the whims of the temperamental stars, if allowed to run hog wild for some time, might finally reach the point where spectators with certain colored neckties might be barred from following the aforesaid finicky ones." It did concede that crowds could be better behaved, stating that as the game was gaining wider appeal, “spectators who have not an inborn appreciation of golf etiquette are becoming the rule rather than the exception at championships.”
In 1926 Bob Jones won the U.S. Open at Scioto Country Club in Ohio, and was famous for penalizing himself a stroke when he caused his ball to move on a green (he did the same thing in 1924.) Jones was the most popular player on the planet and a reporter for The Brooklyn Daily Eagle claimed that a “worse mannered, more inconsiderate rabble we have never seen in two decades at gazing at golf.”
It violated every rule of etiquette and decency. Three or four times Bobby Jones had to check his swing as befuddled spectators ran directly into the line of his drive. If it hadn’t been for its possible effect on the contender for the title, the gallery’s unruly behavior would have been laughable. The crowd, made up of individuals who apparently had never seen a golf match, got completely beyond control of the marshals.The New York Times noted that about 2,000 fans surrounded the green on the final hole to see his birdie that clinched the title.
Two years later, the 1928 US Open program cautioned fans, “Don’t crowd too closely. In a large circle all can see without rushing. I a small circle only the best sprinters can see.” Human nature being what it is, they didn’t pay much attention and ran pell-mell around the golf course to see their hero Jones, and “let other players in the tournament fare as best they could.” Johnny Farrell was paired with Jones in the first two rounds and shot a 77 in round one. William D. Richardson wrote in The New York Times that “there is no doubt but what Farrell would have played better golf than he did if he had not been jostled and jolted the way he was at the outset. It wasn’t so bad for Jones. The crowd waited for him to play his shots. There was no waiting for Farrell, ever.” Despite these distractions, Farrell beat Jones in a playoff by a shot, due to better putting (he took 62 to Jones’s 68 putts over the 36 extra holes.)