Mark - I don't think (I hope) that I'm just playing devil's advocate.
Let me put it this way: there is a whole group of professional golfers (reasonably smart I assume, especially about the game itself and the playing of it) and a whole group of media types (similarly of reasonable intelligence) who use the word "fair" to describe the golf course. Now, they must mean *something* by that term -- and whether we agree or not with either the term or their use of it, I think it worth exploring *what* they mean by it.
I think it worth it especially because Birkdale seems to me to be a very fine golf course, one that - as we've seen already - allows for and plays differently in various wind/weather conditions.
To put it very simply: I don't understand how so many of us here can be so sure that so many people there are so totally misguided/misinformed about the golf course they are actually playing this week, over there.
Birkdale, as has been mentioned constantly, does not have the quirk/randomness of some other links courses. But so what? Don't we want many different kinds of golf courses in the world? And, if many folks who are playing that course this week describe the *opposite* of quirk/randomness as more *fair*, it doesn't seem to me to be all that far off.
Peter