Weekend Wrap - West Lancashire Edition

Yeah, I suspect that Weekend Wrap header will prove to be more of a head fake....  I did watch the Scottish, though spent more time tuned to the Wimbledon men's Final than the golf.  Mostly I just tuned in to see the camera shots looking North across the Firth of Forth, where the bride and I will be in a mere four weeks.

Shall we speak of Birkdale?  Yes, good to see you finally getting the hang of these rhetorical questions.  The first bit is always the green vs. brown query.  There's joy to be had, as this pic from Geoff will demonstrate:

Be still my foolish heart.

That's a more interesting photo than it may seem, as the player hitting is Jordan Spieth in his first visit to Birkdale's 13th hole since 2017, when he made an unremarkable bogey.  Here we see him on the left side of the fairway, virgin territory for him.

Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, and Cameron Young were among the top names out on a sizzling

82-degree Sunday at Royal Birkdale. A strong turnout of spectators dialed in their pinkmaxxing, while the fescues of all heights continued to transition from beige to that (almost) sickly shade of grey that means one thing: a fiery links for the year’s final major.

If you have been hankering for a 2006-style Hoylake and St Andrews four years ago didn’t quench your thirst for dusty divots, then 2026 Birkdale should do the trick. The turf is still spectacular but about as dry, firm, and fast as any rota venue since the Old Course. The taller unmown roughs won’t pose the challenge of nine years ago, but in spots the fescue could trip up a few players from time to time. (See the dreaded rough ball-toss video below.)

The only downer might be this:

Forecasts continue to call for very tame winds.

Still time for that to change....

Geoff has a couple of preview videos at that link.  I went in a slightly different direction today, my mind traveling back to 2010.  We spent ten days in Southport playing the best of the Lancashire Coast.  I documented that trip on a friend's website and, as you may have heard, the Internet is forever.

I'll spare you the links because the piece is overly long and needed a strong edit.  Today's kids would give it a deserved TL:DR, but it has its moments.  I lead with this quote:

For those only vaguely familiar with the term, “links golf” refers to a very specific variant of the game that is found only on seaside courses in the British Isles and Ireland. The British Golf Museum defines linksland this way:

A stretch of land near the coast on which the game is played, characterized by undulating terrain, often associated with dunes, infertile sandy soil, and indigenous grasses such as marram, sea lyme, and the fescues and bents which, when properly managed, produce the fine, textured, tight turf for which links are famed.

To add some color to this accurate, if somewhat clinical, definition, let me quote from “To the Linksland,” Sports Illustrated columnist Michael Bamberger’s homage to Scotland:

Do you know what I mean when I say linksland? Linksland is the old Scottish word for the earth at the edge of the sea — tumbling, duney, sandy, covered by beach grasses. When the light hits it, and the breeze sweeps over it, you get every shade of green and brown, and always, in the distance, is the water. The land was long considered worthless, except to the shepherds and their sheep and the rabbits, and to the early golfers. You see, the game comes out of the ocean, just like man himself!

Only four weeks!

 My comments on Birkdale were reasonably brief, including this:

As we first approached Southport in the fading light of early evening, we suddenly found ourselves driving through spectacular dunes comparable to the dramatic dunes of Western Ireland (sufficiently distracting that my wife felt compelled to remind me to keep my eyes on the road). These were the Ainsdale Sand Dunes, a National Nature Reserve and home to our three favorite courses of the trip. First amongst this memorable troika is Royal Birkdale, universally and deservedly considered the finest of England's British Open venues. Birkdale is an extremely fair test of golf, with surprisingly flat fairways winding amidst the tall dunes. It has many memorable driving holes, where the player has alternative lines available to avoid the strategically placed fairway bunkers.

It can seem perhaps a bit Americanized, with perhaps too many tee shots needing to be placed between bunkers on both sides of the fairway, but we are very much picking nits here.

I also had this:

Birkdale immediately vaults into my Top 10 links courses and warrants only a couple of demerits on its scorecard, the most significant of which is temporary. Birkdale is not particularly close to the water, with the Irish Sea visible from only a couple of the elevated tee boxes. Therefore, the delightful sense of the sea as a constant companion during a round, such as at a Royal Dornoch or Ballybunion, is missing. As for the clubhouse, built in the 1930s and designed to evoke an ocean liner, we’ll consider that an acquired taste.

 But more knowledgeable and gifted writes have these takes on the venue:

Standing within a glorious expanse of dunes on the Lancashire coast, Royal Birkdale has been the setting for more championships and international matches than any other British course since the end of World War II—not even St Andrews has been as richly endowed. Without the variety of Muirfield or [Royal County Down], the charm of St George’s or the subtleties of St Andrews, Birkdale has nonetheless tested the mighty and produced champions of enduring stature. Pat Ward-Thomas

Many of the tees are high up on the sand hills, exposed to the full fury of winds that steadily lash the area. Others are comparatively sheltered, but when the ball soars up from the shelter, it receives a sudden, mighty buffeting, and unless it is perfectly struck, it will be carried far off line into that ferocious scrub bordering the fairways. Henry Longhurst

The great panorama of hills is most beautiful, and to sit on the top of one of them in the sunshine and see the cloud shadows flitting across that noble expanse is one of the pleasantest things in life. Bernard Darwin

Royal Birkdale...lies only two sneezes and three coughing spells from the redbrick seaside town of Southport, England, where people go to enjoy the icy mist and sit on beach chairs in the mud and stare at incoming squalls. Dan Jenkins

Been a while since we've quoted Dan Jenkins....

Shall we do one of Geoff's Birkdale by the numbers?

Birkdale By The Numbers

• 1889: Birkdale Golf Club formed at its original location

• 1897: Club leases land for new location at today’s site

• 1922: Club secures long-term lease from Sefton Council

• 1951: Receives Royal title

• 10: Previous Open Championships (1954, 1961, 1965, 1971, 1976, 1983, 1991, 1998, 2008, 2017)

• 1965: Year Birkdale hosted the Ryder Cup and The Open

• 37: Total major championships won by Birkdale’s Champion Golfers of the Year

• 8: Architects who have worked on the course (George Lowe, F.G. Hawtree and J.H. Taylor, Fred Hawtree, Donald Steel, Martin Hawtree, Tom MacKenzie and Martin Ebert)

• 7,223: 154th Open course yardage (7,156 in 2017)

• 70: Par (Par-73 in the 1954, 1965, 1971 Opens, Par-72 for the 1961 and 1976 Opens, Par-71 in 1983, Par 70 for Opens in 1991, 1998, 2008, and 2017)

• 3,394 vs. 3,829: Front nine (34) vs. back nine (36) yardage

• 1 of 2: Rota courses with nines returning to the clubhouse (Muirfield)

• 108: Bunkers (123 in 2017)

• 0: Bunkers to the rear of greens

• 1: Donut bunker (restored to original size on No. 7)

• 12: Bunkers on the 14th hole

• 10th: Fairway will play as out-of-bounds from the 9th tee

• 49: Feet above sea level of the highest property point (Clubhouse)

• 21: Feet above sea level of the lowest property point (6th fairway)

• 6: Holes with water in play

• 3: Returning holes significantly shortened since 2017 (Nos. 5, 7, 16)

• 151-186-219-241: Official yardages of the four par-3s

• £495: Unaccompanied visitor guest fee

 There are six holes with water in play?  That's kinda news to me, though 2010 was a long time ago.

I had completely forgotten those 1965 events.  The Euros are a bit strange, as they not only took back-to-back Ryder Cups to Birkdale, but they had back in the day taken back-to-back Ryder Cups to Southport & Ainsdale, which abuts Royal Birkdale.  Four Ruder Cups with a few hundred yards seems, well, overkill?

There's no shortage of great reads, first Geoff's take on that Spieth bogey:

He was trying to hit it there!

That may be the strangest byproduct of Jordan Spieth’s surreal Royal Birkdale expedition of nine years ago. His odd route to a 13th hole bogey took Spieth into the steepest and deadliest dunes on

the course before ending up dropping amidst equipment trucks to produce what remains the Best Bogey By A Leading Man In A Modern Major.

To all who believe he tried to hit it there, I have bad news: he did not. Also, the moon landing was not filmed in Burbank, and New Coke was never a ploy to make us drink Old Coke. And while we’re at it, the Golf Illuminati did not remove OB stakes surrounding the range and then whisper in young Spieth’s ear to bank a drive off some unsuspecting ticketholder’s head to gain a better path to the green while taking over 10 minutes for officials to sort out an unplayable ruling that would freeze out Matt Kuchar’s final-round comeback bid.

The entire episode has since taken on a strange life. The weird theories may coarsen this week during the 154th Open now that another row of dunes has magically erupted out of the practice range border. Right where Spieth took his drop in the 2017 Open Championship.

The cover-up is always worse than the crime.

Shack even had a cameo in the proceedings:

 Can you spot him?

But perhaps this is the most important takeaway:

The R&A has installed out-of-bounds over in Spiethland that also wasn’t there before. The club’s driving range will be serving as the 154th’s Fan Village and requires a defined boundary on the off-off-off-chance someone blows a tee shot even farther right and induces another “where to drop” saga as picnicking patrons enjoy their fish & chips.

Though perhaps Birkdale's biggest moment was this:

Arnold Palmer’s win at The Open Championship in 1961 at Royal Birkdale is the stuff of legend

When The Open Championship returns this July to the northwest coast of England, about an hour north of Liverpool, it’s hard not to remember the heroics of Arnold Palmer, who was at the peak of his powers, 65 years ago.

“I wanted this championship more than anything in my life,” he said upon winning. “But anything you want real bad is awfully hard to get.”

Americans had won The Open before Palmer’s title in 1961, most notably Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones, who took seven titles collectively from 1922 to 1930. Gene Sarazen won in 1932, Sam Snead in 1946 and Ben Hogan in 1953. But Palmer’s victory popularized the significance of The Open as a major title.

There's a plaque on the 15th hole (although I believe that hole has been changed) honoring this shot:

When Palmer’s tee shot at the par-4 15th came to rest behind a blackberry bush, his lead suddenly

was in doubt. Although the ball was barely off the fairway, it might as well have been a mile off line because of the deep stuff. Longhurst described the lie as in “the bottom of a small sandy bank, buried deep in some blackberry bushes.” The prudent play would have been to take his medicine and muscle a wedge sideways back to the fairway and a clear shot at the green and hope to salvage par.

His usual caddie in The Open, Tip Anderson, urged him to do just that. But Palmer had other ideas. He saw a shot that others could not see. Palmer switched from a 7- to a 6-iron and “whipped the club down and through the ball with such velocity that the shaft of the club was barely visible,” wrote Herbert Warren Wind, the longtime golf writer for The New Yorker.

The result was impeccable: The ball bore through the breeze and stopped 15 feet from the hole.

This is why he was The King.  He performed a huge service for our game in traveling to St. Andrews in 1960, where he was rewarded with a heartbreaking one-shot loss to Kel Nagle.  he responded by making the arduous journey the next two years, and winning both times.  Then, when he didn't return to St. Andrews for the 1964 Open, he offered Tip Anderson to Tony Lema, who proceeded to win.

At the link above, Geoff has some details on the substantial changes made to Royal Birkdale, summarized here:

The key changes to know about since Jordan Spieth’s 2017 victory:

• Redesign and shortening of the par-4 5th

• Shortening and major redesign of the par-3 7th

• Modifications to the 13th hole landing area

• Removal of the par-3 14th

• Remodeling of the existing par-5 15th into the new 14th hole

• A completely new par-three 15th.

• A shortened par-4 16th

• New bunkering on the 18th fairway

Geoff also details Brandon Grace's 62 in 2017, the first in major championship history, duplicated three times since.  The changes are so substantial as to lead to this result:

After multiple course changes since 2017, Grace’s round will no longer be considered the competitive course record once a new mark is set during the 154th Open. With a lack of rough or significant distance added to the course, plus the uncontrollable explosion of pure, unadulterated athleticism in the years since, expect even shorter approach irons than Grace hit in 2017.

I guess we'll find out whether firm and fast will control scoring, even in the absence of wind.

Did you watch the Scottish Open?  It's become quite the raging success, what with the co-sanctioning by both the DP World Tour and PA Tours.  But that brave ne world that Brian Rolapp is fisting on us comes with some risks:

Rory McIlroy has urged the PGA Tour to "be careful" with the future of the Scottish Open when it introduces its two-tier format in 2028.

Under the new system, the schedules for the Championship - which will contain the PGA Tour's leading players - and the second-tier Challenger series will run concurrently.

Championship players will not be able to feature in Challenger events and vice versa, although anyone who wins two Challenger events in the same season will gain immediate promotion to the Championship.

The Scottish Open would not qualify for Championship status so, while 14 of the world's top 20 are competing at this week's tournament at Renaissance Club, many of those big-name players could be ineligible to play in the tournament from 2028 under the new rules.

Bob MacIntyre, Scotland's leading player, called for "exceptions" to be made for his home Open when the new schedule is implemented.

"We've got to be careful with that because then these national opens lose the fabric of what they are," said McIlroy, the two-time Masters champion.

"You can't call yourself a national open any more if it's a closed-off tournament and there's a certain number of guys.

"These events need to be treated differently than the Travelers Championship or RBC Heritage or whatever else is going to be in the Championship series."

The real problem is that the powers that be don't see the difference between the Scottish and the Travelers.....  Remember, it's just a product.

That will have to do you for today.  As always, the blogging schedule remains undefined.  Have a great week and enjoy the ccontrolled descent into Birkdale.