British Courses 37

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Royal Birkdale


There's a wonderful stretch of dunes just south of Southport and Birkdale, Hillside and Southport & Ainsdale sit side by side in the middle of it.  There's enough of this magical land to create several more golf courses but it's an important conservation area so that will never happen.  Birkdale does a good deal for conservation and a number of species of rare flora and fauna can be found there undisturbed, for there is a lot of spare land around the course where no one ever goes - not even me at my wildest!  Some years ago they rooted out the trees which were crowding the fairways and affecting drainage and after Ian Baker-Finch's Open in 1991 they took the bold decision to dig up all the greens which had been heavily criticised.  They were found to be in a pretty dreadful condition below the surface.  Martin Hawtree saw to the rebuilding and re-contouring of the greens, which are subtle rather than extreme.  He's the third member of the Hawtree family to work on the course which has been much altered through the years, George Lowe laying out the original.  There are vestiges of the earlier holes all over the site and I was given a tour of them some years ago.  

Royal Birkdale is favoured by Open Championship contenders because it is the fairest of the courses on the roster and it is loved by spectators because there are so many great vantage points high on the dunes allowing you to view play on several holes at once.  It is less favoured by many GCA regulars because the course is mostly routed along the valleys between the dunes, there will be no capricious bounces, there are almost no blind shots and you will almost always find a level stance in mid-fairway.  In benign conditions a good player is unlikely to have to improvise a shot during the round.  Let the wind blow, however, and it can be a very different matter.

For the 1998 O'Meara Open the course played to 7018 yards with a par of 70.  You and I will normally play it to a par of 72 - we play the 485-yard 6th and 471-yard 18th as par 5s, while the big boys play them as as par 4s of 480 and 472 yards respectively.  I'll quote the Open Championship yardages.  I don't have a photo of the 1st, a rather dull-looking hole, but a tough one, a 449-yard dog-leg left with OOB on the right and a big hill, Jutland, on the left.  There are mounds before the green making the approach shot for many of us semi-blind.  In 1976 Seve Ballesteros announced his arrival on the scene by driving well clear of Jutland - a carry of 280+ yards!


2nd, 421 yards par 4.  This is typical of spectator views throughout most of the round.


2nd.  There are several contradicting borrows on the rolling putting surface.  The green is long and narrow, the bunkers deep, and for players of my feebleness there is a cross-bunker 43 yards short of the green just about the range of my best second shot from the yellow tee.

The 407-yard 3rd is played back parallel to the 2nd, a flattish hole with some nice moundwork protecting the approach shot.  The 4th is a 203-yard par 3 played from an elevated tee to a a green angled away to the right.  I like the 5th, 344 yards par 4, but on first acquaintance it is difficult to know where to aim from the tee, the fairway curving sharply to the right.  A prudent long iron still only leaves a wedge to the green which is raised up above a host of bunkers.


6th, 480 yards par 4.  Something of a monster hole, though it looks very dull from the tee, the fairway utterly featureless as it stretches out into the distance.  The fairway turns sharply right at 260 yards where a huge bunker is set into the face of a big mound on the right.  I stood behind this green for a while on the final day in 1998 and only Tiger Woods managed to get his drive past the mound giving him a sight of the green.  He launched a long iron at the green which bounced through but, fortuitously, it hit a spectator and remained on the fringe.  The green is quite steeply elevated and there are two bunkers set into the upslope, while the putting surface is domed and somewhat unreceptive.  Even as a par 5 it is Stroke 1.

The 7th has two sets of tees either side of the 6th green.  Make sure you play it from the left-hand tees, which is how the hole was meant to be played.  It's a 177-yard par 3 from an elevated tee to a low green ringed with bunkers.  I was standing just off this green at about 2 o'clock to the hole, when Vijay Singh missed the green right next to where I was standing.  He had to chip from low, damp ground over a bunker onto the highest part of the green from which his ball rolled some way past the pin.  He took two more to get down and ended with a bogey.  The next time I played at Birkdale I landed in almost the same spot.  I was very pleased with my chip which cleared the bunker and landed on the very nearest edge of the green.  The ball continued down the green, off the putting surface and into a bunker with an island of turf in the middle, against which my ball lodged.  After several unsuccessful attempts at recovery I picked up.  I expect Vijay has better clubs....

More to follow....

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Royal Birkdale part 2


6th.  There's a great feeling of space at Birkdale.


8th, 457 yards par 4.  Typical of the flatness of the fairways and the manner in which they run along the bottoms of the valleys.  There are many bunkers down the right of the fairway and a ditch, too, so most pros seemed to take an iron for position off this tee.


8th green, from another spectator vantage point high on the dunes.


8th green.  The putting surface is quite sloping and raised above bunkers on both sides.  The front of the green is open and, in my experience, the bunker to avoid at all costs is the big trench guarding the left.  It's like trying to escape from a grave.


9th, 411 yards par 4.  The only blind drive of the round is made to a mounded fairway curving right at the length of a good drive.  At this point the fairway falls to a lower level with the rise to the domed green being steep and sudden.  There's a bunker guarding the right front and lots of deep gorse through the back.  I watched here for a while on the final day and I don't think anyone (perhaps 24 golfers) dropped a shot!


10th, 403 yards par 4.  One of my favourite holes on the course with a drive to a fairway curving all the time to the left under a tall dune.  There are bunkers if you keep too far to the right in an attempt to open up the green and from the yellow tee (355 yards) it is easy to run out of fairway.  The pitch (which may be blind over a corner of the dune) is made to another nicely raised green in an amphitheatre amidst the dunes.


11th, 408 yards par 4.  This is the bewildering view from the Championship tee.  The hole plays straighter from here.  There are four bunkers on the right of the fairway, one on the left and one in the middle of the fairway at 307 yards from the Open tee.  The members' and visitors' tees are further forward and some way to the left, so that it becomes a cape hole with the drive aimed at the fairway bunkers and drawn away from them.  It suits my left-hander's slice.


11th, the bunker to the left of the landing zone, with a snippet of the mid-fairway bunker to the right.  The green is 116 yards from this bunker.


11th green, protected by a deep bunker at the front left.  The putting surface is angled away to the right and there are a number of perplexing breaks in it.


11th, again.

Rest to follow....

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Royal Birkdale conclusion.


12th, 183 yards par 3.  I've never seen a photo of this hole which shows how elevated this green really is.  The slope up to it is very steep and the bunkering is deep.  There's a hillock on the left from which recovery is something of a lottery.  This hole was built 25 or 30 years ago to replace the old short 17th.  It can be impossible for many women to make the carry into the wind (as the hole often plays) and there is no opt-out area in the boggy low ground.


12th.  Awful photo, but you may just be able to make out how deep this front left bunker is.


12th looking back towards the tee.


12th, the view you see as you leave the green for the 13th tee.


13th, 498 yards par 4.  The fairway is a flat meadow but there are bunkers at the length of a good drive and the run in is littered with them.  There is also a ditch on the left which is easily found by golfers of my incompetence.


13th.  These fairway bunkers are 234 yards from the green.  OK, they should only catch a feeble drive but their very presence is often enough to force the tee shot into one of the bunkers on the left further on.


13th.  Like the 8th, to which this hole runs parallel, the green is sloping and cradled in the dunes.


13th.

The 14th is a 198 yard par 3 played across a track and low ground to a wickedly sloping green.  A long putt on it is great fun.  The 15th at 544 yards is the first of two par 5s, often something of a slog into the wind.  It is cunningly bunkered for the average player with 8 bunkers in the fairway 166 to 108 yards from the putting surface.  I like the approach to the green and its protection with mounds and bunkers.


16th, 416 yards par 4.  A very different hole from the Championship tee which is set back in the woods to the left making the hole pretty straight.  From the members' tees it is much shorter (347 yards) but the tees are on the right giving another cape-type drive to a fairway curving sharply to the right.  There's a plaque on the right commemmorating a stupendous rescue shot by Arnold Palmer, playing from a horrid lie in a bush in 1961 when he went on to win.


16th.  The green is raised on a hill with bunkers on either side and a ring of them in front.  It is a very enjoyable hole.


17th, 547 yards par 5.  This is only 499 yards from the members' tee which makes the task of landing the drive through the gap in the dunes roughly equivalent for pros and amateurs alike.  The gap is straight out over the red path to the left of the white tee.  The hills either side are called Scylla and Charybdis.


17th.  The fairway turns left after passing through the gap and it's a pretty nondescript piece of flatland for those of us with no hope of getting on in two.  Given an accurate drive, all the pros expect to get on in two.  The green front is open, but there are two bunkers on either side and the putting surface is long, narrow and stepped.


18th, 472 yards par 4.  This is the view from the Championship tee.  There's a long carry over rough country to a fairway split in the middle by a bunker about 220 yards out.  From this tee good players must shape the ball left to right to avoid running out of fairway on the left, but there is a further fairway bunker on the right which catches some of their drives.  Visitors' and members' play is usually from a rather dull tee low to the left from which the drive is far less exciting.


18th.  The clubhouse is 1930s, I think, influenced by the style of the great ocean liners which used to steam out from Liverpool to the farthest corners of the earth.  It was from about this spot that Justin Rose chipped in during the final round in 1998, when he finished 4th while still a young amateur.