My Open Championship preview is done and I love it. If I have a typo or somethin glemme know and I'll fix it before it gets syndicated. Special guest James Bond makes an appearance - Duh duh-duh-DAAAAH - duh-duh DAAAAH! (how do you type the James Bond theme?)
http://jayflemma.thegolfspace.com/?p=3738From the piece:
St. George’s – Sandwich to its friends – within sight of the stately, stoic white cliffs of Dover is so charming and inspiring in its authenticity as a true links, Shakespeare himself would hold his quill with a flawless Vardon grip and pause at the top of his pen strokes.
This year will mark the lucky 14th Open for St. George’s, which opened in 1887 and hosted its first Open in 1894. How’s that for staying power? But despite its venerable reputation as an outstanding and historic golf course, no other course in the Rota polarizes opinions like St. George’s. Jack Nicklaus may have infamously opined that British Open venues get worse the further south you go – which was his misguided way at having a backhanded slap at the strange bounces and corresponding random luck sometimes meted out by the rumpled fairways and topsy-turvy greens – but you know what? Winning 18 majors doesn’t mean you’re always right about golf course architecture. Frequently the opposite is true.
Nicklaus may have snubbed St. George’s but no less a personage than Bernard Darwin, one of the four greatest golf writers in history, (the others are Herbert Warren Wind, Grantland Rice, and Dan Jenkins), loved it, calling it one of his absolute favorites, and pondering why anyone would quibble with how much fun the occasional strange bounce or blind shot makes our grand old game. Or as golf course architecture expert Ran Morrissett writes, “It would be nonsensical not to have at least one or two blind tee shots as, otherwise, the holes simply would not be reflective of the land upon which they are on.”
Moreover, another well-decorated champion, Ben Crenshaw, told Morrissett in an interview, “I believe that Royal St. George’s has the finest set of greens of any of the Open courses. The variety found throughout all its greens is really exceptional.”
But one other famous and entertaining voice has a great deal to say about what makes Royal St. George’s such an outstanding venue for a golf competition – England’s iconic author Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond 007. While the epic movie golf battle between Goldfinger and Bond was filmed at Stoke Poges, in the book it takes place at Royal St. George’s or “St. Mark’s” as Fleming dubbed it, (for reasons best known to himself). We get not one chapter of the golf match between the two arch-nemeses but three, and many holes are lovingly detailed. But before we have Fleming break down St. George’s like a fraction, let’s first turn to the history of the course.