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Tuesday, July 18, 2006
British Open course not as it was in 1967
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
No matter the elegance the name implies, Royal Liverpool Golf Club, where the 135th British Open will be played this week, will be like fitting a lumberjack’s foot into a chorus girl’s slipper. For obviously more righteous purposes, the venue is known as Hoylake and has been for all the 11 times the Open has been contested there. That’s right — 11 of the 135 times, but not since 1967, when the winner was the Argentine sportsman, Roberto de Vicenzo.
Thereafter, Hoylake fell into the same state of rejection as the Merion Golf Club over here. Too small, too cramped for an Open. Frankly, both are still too cramped and tight, and yet, the U.S. Golf Association just this year followed the R&A’s lead and restored Merion to our Open rotation. The sadness is that advanced equipment and technology have neutered them, and several other British Open venues.
Hoylake is a vintage classic. Some distinguished champions have been serenaded there: Peter Thomson, Walter Hagen and, the crowning moment, when Bobby Jones won there in 1930 on his way to the Grand Slam.
But this is not the same golf course, nor is it the same one I played a few years back. Holes have been switched. The 16th, a par 5, becomes the 18th, the 17th, once the closing hole, now becomes the first, the first becomes the third and the original 18th becomes the second, if you’re still with me.
Not that all of this means anything to most of us, but somehow or another they have managed to elasticize the course to a length of 7,258 yards, about the same as St. Andrews. Which, I might say, might have fallen into the category of the obsolete were it not considered the Bethlehem of the game. It’s Tiger Woods’ own private pitch-and-putt course. Tee it up, go through the motions and hand him the jug.
So, Hoylake is not any more vulnerable than most Open venues, other than Carnoustie, measuring 7,361 yards, but set up so in ‘99 as to cause much anguish and gnashing of teeth among the contestants, and borne out by the winning score — 6 over par.
Carnoustie — to which the Open returns next year — played to a par of 71. The readjusted Hoylake will play to par 72, same as St. Andrews. When de Vicenzo won there in ‘67, no more than 30,000 spectators had to be accomodated. Last year at St. Andrews the number of spectators was estimated at 250,000.
How on earth do they squeeze any such number into Royal Liverpool with one two-lane road and a rail station, as I recall it?
And check this in your memory bank – to get into the British Open all one has to do is stop at a ticket kiosk and plunk down the price.
No one is turned away.
The players’ problem will be keeping the ball on the golf course. Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s noted course critic, is so put out by the choice of Hoylake that he has dubbed it “Royal O.B.,” for out-of-bounds. Slight room for error.
It is possible in one situation to drive the ball in the center of the course and be O.B. It ordinarily is the members’ practice range, but the club has acquired 10 acres on a nearby municipal course for practice at the Open, so the former practice ground is now O.B., most probably occupied by the tented village.
Royal Liverpool is bordered by rows of brick cottages on three sides and the River Dee, on its way into the Irish Sea, on the other. It measures out to 184 acres, which would be a tight fit for a course alone on one of these meandering American real estate projects.
There are four par 3s, all 200 yards or less; four par 5s, including two of the three finishing holes, two par 4s under 400 yards, but a much tighter par 72 than St. Andrews.
This has the bearing of a course that favors the shorter but straighter shooter. The player who can hit his tee shots where he aims it, and putts well on that side of the pond. The betting class, as usual, goes for the boomers, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, though the only time the favorite has won in 10 years has been Woods, always at St. Andrews.
Could this be another Ben Curtis or Todd Hamilton year?
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