I played Lytham quite a lot in the 80s and 90s, often with Tony Nickson, twice past Captain and author of the Lytham centenary book. In those days I was off between 11 and 13 handicap and played to it. I hit a drive 250 yards and a 7 iron 150. From the members' medal tees the course was manageable as long as you didn't hit too many fairway bunkers. Unfortunately there were fairway bunkers at just about every length off the tee, ready to swallow up good players, bad players and all in between.
True, it is a flat course, and yet it isn't. There are all sorts of humps and hollows, little shaved swales off the green, and all sorts of uphill, downhill and sidehill lies on fairways such as the 15th. Royal Zoute reminds me of Lytham in that it is an inland course with no sight of the sea and yet it has all the characteristics of a true links. Both courses are surrounded by housing. But, as I say of Seaton Carew, once you get out on the course you don't notice the surroundings.
Of the English Open courses (and I played them all in the days when I could survive on a golf course) Royal St George's was the most intimidating and Royal Lytham the most unforgiving. I suppose, like most Open courses, Lytham has had its design tweaked every time it has held an Open, and it must be difficult to account for who may have contributed this feature or that.
The greens are not as dull as some of you might make out. Having survived a journey through Hades to get the to the greens you are glad they are not eccentric. Perhaps someone could dig up some putting statistics comparing Lytham with other Open Championship courses. We might then learn how good (or otherwise) these greens are. Remember the criticism of the new greens at Hoylake put in for its last Open? They were criticised for being out of character with the rest of the course for being too interesting! (They are being rebuilt).
Opportunities to play R Lytham as a visitor are expensive and infrequent. If you are paying that sort of money should you not be looking for the positives rather than the negatives? If you own a Ferrari or a Lamborghini it probably has some (or many) shortcomings, but don't you just relish the noise of its engine? Top athletes are rarely perfect. Lytham is a pretty top athlete.