In any ranking of the greatest putts of all time, the weaving 50-footer Nick Price drained across Turnberry’s 17th green – the eagle putt that secured him the 1994 Open – is right up there. It was the biggest putt ever made in his life.

TrueGolferPlus International Correspondent recently caught up with him and…

When you reflect on the happenings at Turnberry in 1994, now 29 years ago, what most sticks in your mind?
Well, strange as it may seem the frustrating thing for me, when I look back, was I really didn’t hit the ball as well as I had in the early part of the year. My short game was really, really good, and my confidence was high. I had one of those weeks where you knew that if you could just keep hanging in there, something was going to happen. Although I didn’t have the control with my long game that I’d been used to in the previous three months, I just hung in there the whole week. Sunday came along and I was behind the whole day. I was missing greens – I think I missed the 10th, 13th and 14th – and just wasn’t hitting it flush. But I up-and-downed it a few times, made pars and kept going. In the back of my mind I knew, going down the stretch, that this was going to be as good a chance as I would have of winning the Open.

That putt at 17…how vividly do you remember it?
The first thing about 17 was I had a good break off the tee, as my ball skipped around that fairway bunker, and then we were in between a 4- and a 5-iron. It was a little downwind and I agreed that because the pin was cut on the front right-hand portion of that green, you really didn’t want to wind up short or right, where you can get caught in the swales. So the play was to go long and left, and I hit a beautiful 4-iron in there. When I got to the ball I saw the line so beautifully. It wasn’t a complicated putt, it was going to break left to right, down the slope, perhaps six inches outside left edge. It was a question of speed. Nobody ever looks to make a putt of that length. I was trying to leave it dead for a birdie and move on. That was basically all I was trying to do.

What was it, 50 feet?
It must have been all of that. I hit the most beautiful putt, and it was breaking the way I saw it. Then, about three feet out, it hit a spike mark, and it kind of knocked it a little off line. Instead of going in the middle of the hole it just caught enough of the right edge. The worst thing about holing a putt like that is you want it to be on the 72nd hole, not the 71st. You get so excited, and then you still have another hole to play. And I hadn’t played the 18th well all week. So I had to suck it up and get disciplined. And I think all of the experiences I had had – previous Opens, winning the PGA in ’92 – it all came to the fore when I got over my tee shot on 18. My heart rate was way up there, and I had to calm myself down, choose the right club and play what was, to me, one of the hardest holes all week.

And you played it by the textbook?
I hit the most beautiful 3-iron off the tee that went about 265 yards. I mean I just absolutely killed it. Obviously I was adrenalined-up or whatever, but I hit it absolutely dead nuts on, with a little draw into the fairway. I played the hole with a discipline that I obviously needed, but also that reflected what I had learned over the years from all of my mistakes and also some of the wins I had had.

Is it possible to put into words how you felt when you knocked in the putt for par?
Just absolute relief, you know. Having come close twice, and to finally break through and win, it’s hard to put into words. I was just ecstatic. The worst thing about 18 was I really wanted to cosy my first putt up there about an inch or two away, so I wouldn’t have to sweat. It ended up about 18 inches, which was about 14 inches longer than I wanted.

Turnberry has a reputation of being one of the easier Open layouts – do you agree with that?
Well, it all depends on the weather. If the weather’s bad at Turnberry, it’s probably one of the hardest. If you look at the three Opens, with the exception of the one that Greg won in ’86, where they had some bad weather the first couple of days and he shot that amazing 63 in the second round, with the exception of that the weather has been beautiful. We had great weather – maybe a little wind and drizzle one day – but otherwise short-sleeve weather all week. Perfect conditions for scoring, like it was in ’77 with Nicklaus and Watson.

You shot 12 under and have said since that you are amazed how low you went. What was the key to scoring?
My short game was just so sharp that week. I drove the ball OK, I didn’t hit my irons particularly well that week, didn’t have the control I usually have, and I felt like I was always behind – which I was, pure and simple. And one of the most gratifying things was to win from behind, which I had never really done. I was always a good frontrunner. Once I poked my nose in front I could manage my game properly and strategise really well. I was never a great charger, but to come charging from three shots down with five holes to play, or six holes to play, was huge for me. Especially when you consider my previous track record in the Open.

How do you rate the Ailsa Course among Open venues?
Of all the golf courses on the rota, on a summer’s day with the sun shining, Turnberry is the most beautiful venue by far. When you look up at the hotel and then out to sea there’s Ailsa Craig and the lighthouse, a lot of holes on the ocean. It’s so picturesque. Above all, I think it’s the prettiest. The fact that it’s a par-70, people tend to look at it as the easiest one, but I don’t think it is. I’d hate to put my finger on it but the records have all been made at St Andrews, so history would say St Andrews yields itself to lower scoring when the weather’s good. But it has an ambience and a presence that is very hard to find in other links courses.

Have you seen the changes that have been made and what are your own thoughts?
I have heard that a few tees have been lengthened, a few fairway bunkers added, and I know they’ve played with 16. Putting on a few yards isn’t exactly unusual in this day and age – with the modern equipment, that’s what was needed to be done. The way the guys hit the ball now they have to do things like that. If you’re a long hitter of the ball you can cope with the changes, but if you’re on the shorter side, like I am and players like Mark O’Meara, it’s very hard to compete.

If you were to compose an ‘identikit’ image of the perfect golfer to win an Open at Turnberry, what would be the order of importance in terms of driving, irons play, short game, putting?
Look no further than Tiger Woods!

Taking Tiger out of the equation, what are the qualities you look for in a winner?
I would look for a player who can strategize really well. Because that is what you have to do on an Open Championship course. It is not a question of hitting driver all the time – look at Tiger at Hoylake. If it is firm and fast and fiery, you have to control the distance you hit the ball off the tee. That is where I think links courses differ and hold themselves above all other major championship golf courses, because the game starts on the tee. And I am not just talking about the ability to hit it straight down the middle – you can hit it straight all day and if you’ve got the wrong club you’ll be in pot bunkers and end up shooting five or six over par. It’s about controlling the distance that you hit off the tee and hitting it straight. The US Open courses, and on a lot of the other ones, it doesn’t matter how far you hit it as long as you hit it straight. At the Open, you have the wind from one direction one day, carrying it 30 yards over a pot bunker, the next day you are into the wind and a driver now runs into it.

They have added 20-odd fairway bunkers?
So they have tightened up that aspect of it, which is a good thing. You have to play a links golf course from the fairway.

Is it true that in trying to hit the ball further to keep up with the young players you lost your groove towards the end of the ’90s?
Absolutely. I played OK and managed to keep going into early 2000, but each year the number of golf courses I felt I could win on just kept on diminishing. And so in an effort to try and hit the ball further and keep up, my game just went awry. Only in the last year and a half has it begun to come back. But it feels like I haven’t played properly for five or six years. You know, it’s impossible to keep on playing against guys for four days when you’re hitting a drive and 4-iron and he’s hitting 8-or 9-iron.

Which aspect of all this new technology has most helped your game?
I wish I could find something! Trying to match the ball with the driver is where I’ve gained the most. I’m maxed out now with the driver and the ball, and I couldn’t hit it any further without sacrificing control. I use a TaylorMade driver and play a Bridgestone ball, and I hit it as far if not further than I ever did. I think when you look at the guys who managed to handle the transition, the Vijays the the Ernies, they were 30 or so when all this new gear came out, and they could adapt to it. When you are in your later 40s when all this happened, it is much harder to adapt to it.

Back in the early ’90s, you were one of a group of players Greg Norman sought out with his plans of a World Tour. What became of all that and why did Greg’s plans fall flat then?
I can’t really speak for anyone other than myself, but for me at that time I was dead keen for us having a World Tour. That idea was great. For me, all my contracts were coming to an end at the end of 1994, and the World Tour was due to start in 1995, so I had to go to the manufacturers not really knowing what exposure I might get. I was No. 1 in the world, just won two majors, and yet when it came to negotiations with the manufacturers, when I asked them ‘What are you going to pay me?’, it was an unknown. I spoke to Greg about this when he mentioned it to us. I told him it was a roll of the dice. He had just come out of making a lot of money with his Cobra deal, and now this was my opportunity to maximize my earning potential, having played myself into position, and so a crucial time for me. And I couldn’t roll the dice by saying yes I’ll play the World Tour, but not knowing how much TV time we might get. But the whole concept was a brilliant idea, and we’ve seen a sort of connotation of it today with the World Golf Championships and so on. It just wasn’t the right time for that to happen.

Was his vision pretty much what we have today with the WGC events – or certainly what the top players have given they can pick and choose to play wherever they want?
Here was the thing that was frustrating, for me coming to play from Zimbabwe. The perfect example is the Masters. We never had the world ranking. In 1980, I played my tail off and if there had been a world ranking and/or WGCs, I would have got invited to the Masters and maybe the US Open and the USPGA, through the way I’d played in 1980. But because American golf was so insular, they didn’t look at foreigners very much. When I went to my first Masters dinner there were seven of us – now there are a lot more. It was so hard to break in. Now, what the WGC events and the World Ranking have achieved, is that guys from Australia, South Africa, Asia, Japan can at least get in to those tournaments and make ranking points and get into these events.

Is there too much money in golf?
By that, I really mean is it just too easy for the top players to make so much money quickly that the lure of chasing the big titles has, to some extent, disappeared? Every generation they say that. They said it in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. You are always going to get the winners winning. Pure and simple. The guys who want to win are going to win. If a guy finishes second and makes a lot of money doing that, he was never going to be a winner anyway. The money is nice and rosy, but it is not going to detract a winner from winning, trust me.

Has ball striking itself become less important than distance, pitching and putting?
Driving the ball now is just so easy compared to what it used to be, with the result there are a lot of good drivers of the ball out there. And subsequently it’s now all about how close you hit your irons and how well you putt. Times gone by, the difficulty of the game started on the tee. They’ve made it a lot easier with these drivers now, to keep the ball in play. Even if it does go in the rough it’s not across three fairways – you just don’t see those horrible snap-hooks now that you would see in the ’70s and ’80s when guys would get under pressure. That’s why I say they should reduce the size of the driver.

Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods – who is better?
Unfortunately, I never played with Jack when he was in his prime. I first played with him in 1983, and that was three years after he won at Baltusrol. Jack was 43, and you could see he wasn’t as motivated as he was. So I never really got to see him at his best. But I have played with Tiger many times. I was fortunate enough to play with him in a lot of majors – the first two rounds at St Andrews in 2000, when he won, then again two rounds at the USPGA Championship, so I played with him in four of the 16 rounds of major championship golf that year. I don’t think there’s ever been a golfer like Tiger. A guy who can drive it that far, hit the variety of shots he can, who has the powers of recovery he has. Jack had the focus, and he had a lot of other things, but he didn’t have Tiger’s short game. Jack could putt really well, but he couldn’t chip or play bunker shots like Tiger. In terms of major championships, when you get over 10 you’re splitting hairs talking about who’s the best in the world. And Tiger has done much more than that.