Open Championship diary day one: Matt Cooper reports from Royal Liverpool
Matt Cooper is at Royal Liverpool where players are getting to grips with course changes including a brand new 17th. Read the first instalment of his Open diary.
Striking impression
The first page of the leaderboard in the two Opens that Royal Liverpool has hosted in the 21st century drops that ball-striking matters on this stretch of Wirral linksland that overlooks the Dee Estuary and North Wales beyond.
Pretty much everyone in the game knows that Tiger Woods won in 2006 and that Rory McIlroy emulated him in 2014. Both have supreme long games which were at their very best in those weeks of Claret Jug triumph. But in both those championships Sergio Garcia and Jim Furyk landed top fives which only further backs up the idea that the tee-to-green game needs to be strong.
Let’s dig deep, though. What is it about the layout that demands so much from the tee and into greens? A key element is that so many of the holes are, for want of a better word, paired. That’s to say that throughout the round a hole will go in one direction and then the next in more or less the opposite direction, often with added nuance.
It starts with the first, towards the sea, which is shaped right-to-left and then the second, coming back from the sea, which is left-to-right. It doesn’t matter which direction the wind is blowing, in those first 20 to 30 minutes there is an examination of dealing the wind, whether it is into and down, down and into or with contrasting cross winds, and also on holes that suggest different shapes from the tee (a modern player might eventually ignore that but the visual is that way nonetheless).
The fourth and fifth are similar (one shaped left-to-right, the next right-to-left), so too the seventh and eighth (both of them a little blind from the tee), also 10 and 11 (the first to a raised green, the second to a green low in the dunes), and also 15 and 16.
The par-4s in the dunes – 12 and 14 – are paired in a different manner: there is a sense of deja vu in that both have raised tees, to doglegged right-to-left fairways, with approaches hit back in the dunes. The tee shot calls for a low draw which in itself introduces the prospect, for less competent strikers of a ball, of a weak left-to-right quit or a rank pull.
On the front nine, the par-3 sixth is a raised green which needs all carry, the par-3 ninth is below the tee and the ball can be run into the green. The back nine short holes (13 and 17) both involve tee shots to putting surfaces high in the dunes.
All these changes of direction, and subtle echoes or contrasts, are designed to ask persistent questions of ball control and that’s before the bunkers are introduced to the equation.
Derek Lawrenson writes in the Royal Liverpool GC magazine that he walked with Tiger Woods on his first practice round in 2006 which took place on the Saturday before Open week. The eventual winner took wood from the first tee and found a bunker on the right, he then hit wood from the second tee and found sand on the left. It was an early lesson and he heeded it: he used driver just once in his victory the following week.
Changes
There has been considerable renovation of the course since 2014.
A bunker has been introduced at 325-yards on the left of the first fairway (adding some peril for big-hitters) and the false front to the green been removed while there is now a run-off back left instead of a bunker.
The fourth and seventh greens are often attacked with short irons and have therefore had their size reduced. The former now has a steep run-off at the back.
In-between them, the par-5 fifth has been shortened but extended gorse on the left and a new bunker on the right add new threat at around 325-yards.
The par-4 eighth and par-3 ninth have been lengthened slightly, while the 10th is shorter and now a potentially brutal par-4 rather than par-5. The raised green remains swift from back to front, the bunker short right continues to act as a ball magnet, a new run-off on the left will now repel slightly errant blows.
The 11th, 12th and 13th greens now feature extended run-offs in what were bail out areas. The 14th and 15th have been extended, the latter has two new bunkers to threaten drives. The 16th also has a new sand trap aiming to limit drives and 18 is now 58-yards longer with a narrowed fairway at driver length. RLGC member Matthew Jordan has said of the latter: “A lot better, a brilliant change. It’s now a proper risk and reward hole.”
And then there is the new 17th…
Little Eye
We’ll see plenty of 17 because TV has cameras in all the bunkers. It’s also entirely possible that at least one poor soul is going to endure a Tommy Nakajima- or Thomas Bjorn-like experience (both men dropped from Claret Jug contention when failing to emerge from sand).
Anything short with spin will be sucked into the front bunker, anything left or right will kick into bunkers there, anything failing to grip or a little bold will catch the back slope and head towards the waste area between green and beach.
The length of this short will only be around 130/140 yards but the landing area will be tiny. Dealing with the wind and controlling spin will be essential.
The jeopardy of Little Eye.
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 17, 2023
Beware the 136-yard 17th. pic.twitter.com/swFDdP4PER
Jordan has said that without wind the hole will be straightforward, but with it hazardous. Cameron Smith said that he played it in a “30 or 40mph wind and it’s not a tee shot you want to have … there’s not much room for error up there.”
Marshals looking after the hole on Sunday and Monday reported that at least 60% of balls were missing on the left and that makes sense. Laurie Canter said that anyone finding the right bunker might take a good while trying to get out, or at least find more sand in trying.
Some pour soul is likely to fly the green, land on the downslope and kick into the waste area, maybe even ending up in the reeds that separate golf course from the beach.
There is more flat on the putting surface than it appears from the tee, but it is still very perilous.
Some will agree with Matt Fitzpatrick’s thoughts in his press conference:
Q. Have you played the new 17th hole?
A: I have.
Q. Your thoughts?
A: Interesting.
Q. Anything else?
A: I'll leave it at that.
What to do, and what not to do on 17.
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 12, 2023
Missing the green at @RLGCHoylake's Little Eye will land players in a heap of trouble.
With great skill, @padraig_h shows us why. pic.twitter.com/ptwV9woRHx
Conditions
The course went 52 days without rain in late spring and early summer and areas of the property show it. I’ve just walked the course and discovered many areas of classic, dusty, straw-dry turf.
But during the last three weeks it has been persistently damp. I was told ahead of arriving that this had made the rough somewhat lush but it’s not what I was expecting – there’s very little of the thick green grass you sometimes find at the roots of the fescue. It’s wispy, tangled in the wind, but not treacherous.
The greens and the fairways, however, are green and therefore more receptive than might be desired.
Local connections
As mentioned, Jordan is a member (he reckons a 62 is his best score on the course), Ewen Ferguson won the 2013 Boys’ Amateur Championship here and Alex Fitzpatrick won two of four matches in the 2019 Walker Cup.
And remember the draw in 2014. There was a significant draw bias and only two golfers among the top 11 finishers played before 11:59 in round two (i.e. they were PM/AM) – Adam Scott in fifth and Shane Lowry in ninth.