Apologies for the self-promotion... I wrote this for Golf Digest Ireland in Feb'11... Entitled "Why don't the pros play more links golf?"
You cannot have a full appreciation of golf course architecture without being entwined in a long-term love affair with the links courses that the game started on. Almost every modern design has a genealogy that can be traced back to those early seaside layouts, to be found in the mounding that imitates dune formations, bunkers that ape the open scars of sand created by the wind or contours that mimic the unpredictable roll of the land.
Any Irish golfer should consider himself blessed that twenty percent of the world’s links courses belong to these shores. Tourists travel from far and wide to play them and although the first taste can prove frustrating for some, all leave knowing that they have come one step closer to the origins of the sport.
I am continually bewildered therefore at the almost complete absence of links golf played on the elite pro-tours. The European Tour in particular appears to be missing a trick by not taking advantage of the great variety of courses afforded to it. As a spectator, what I’d be keen to see is a mini-links tour within the tour, played out over one month in the middle of the summer. The skeleton of the structure is already in place with The Open Championship which will this year be held at Sandwich from July 14th to 17th.
In addition, the tournament that is played out immediately prior to The British Open is The Scottish Open which has been housed for the past fifteen years at Loch Lomond, an undeniably beautiful setting but an American style parkland design that does not reflect the first thoughts we have when picturing great Scottish courses. In a refreshing move for 2011, the powers that be sought to take the tournament back to the coast, eventually choosing the new venue at Castle Stuart near Inverness, one of a handful of high quality new links courses in Scotland that together form conclusive proof that seaside golf is as much a part of the future as of the past.
With two championships already in place for our mini-links tour, all we need are two more and the logical third pick is The Irish Open, ideally to be held (with some juggling of various calendars) during the week before its Scottish equivalent. Portmarnock would be a leading candidate, as it should have been for the Ryder Cup held in 2006, but there is a plenitude of other courses with suitable length, challenge and close by amenities that could also host the top professionals.
The fourth and final piece of the puzzle would likely be The Dutch Open. We normally don’t associate the stereotypical flat, Dutch landscape with suitable golfing ground; but that is to neglect the thin stretch of heaving, rolling links land that resides on its North coast. Nestled amongst these sand hills are three of the best courses to be found on the continent, each easily capable of testing the tour pros on their day. Indeed, the Harry Colt designed Kennemer has done just that on many previous occasions. This tournament could be earmarked for the week after The British Open, providing a climax to our mini-tour and setting the scene for the “Links Champion of the Year” to be crowned.
So there we have it. It sounds so sensible that we have to question why this cosy little party hasn’t been implemented already. Calendar difficulties aside, the main thing we need to consider is whether the pros themselves would actually buy into it? The flippant response to this question would be “Does it matter?” There was a time when it would have been a fallacy to think that professional golfers could have a say in the scheduling of the tournaments that paid their wages. This is clearly not the case in the modern game where the elite players have minutely detailed plans laid out to ensure peak physical and mental fitness for the biggest competitions. More to the point, links golf is anathema to many of today’s pampered pros who have honed their game on a production line style of tour course that plays host to them week in, week out. When you hear a pro moan that he doesn’t like links golf because the wind plays havoc with his swing, then you know that the wiring that once connected him to golf’s grass roots has short-circuited somewhere along the line. Nevertheless, the celebrity draw that the world’s top players provide for sponsors and money spinners alike cannot be neglected and it is for that reason that a mini-links tour is less likely to occur in practice than in theory.
For any lover of golf course architecture this is a real shame, but it can take surprisingly little to instigate a culture change and if the tour and their sponsors decided to market it in the correct way then undoubtedly something could be worked out. It would offer a welcome change of pace, a unique selling point to world golf and a reminder that we amateurs aren’t playing and enjoying a completely different sport to those privileged paid few.