British Open: Despite recent changes, Philip Reid finds a course of humps and hollows which is just how links golf should be
The road that eventually leads up to Royal St George's is more like a wild Irish boreen, except this one winds its way through sandhills and high fescue grasses dance in the breeze on either side. God forbid if another vehicle should come at you from the other direction because the world would stop. Yet, this ancient Roman roadway, usually closed to through traffic, provides an early hint of the quirkiness of the course itself at Sandwich, one that is returning to the British Open rota after a 10-year absence.
This is a traditional links course and, on days like yesterday, with the sun blazing down and the fairways already changing hue from green to a brownish colour that indicates they are firm and fast and ready to accentuate any strange bounce, those playing early practice rounds - Tiger Woods, for one, was up and about from 6.20 a.m. - were being reacquainted with golf as it once was, and as it should be: wickedly challenging, with an emphasis on creating shots rather than merely firing at the flag time after time.
In this modern golfing age, though, no course is allowed to stand still in time; and, so, alterations have been carried out to the course since it last held the Open in 1993, when Greg Norman won. An extra 246 yards have been added, and 30 of those have been added to the fourth hole - changing it from a par four to a par five of 497 yards - in an attempt to bring back into play the fairway bunkers known as the Himalayas, one of the most fearsome sights off a tee in golf.
A decade ago, those cavernous bunkers were not in play.
However, the additional yardage that has been found for this year's third major of the season, and the 13th time that Sandwich will play host to the Open, has restored some of its bite. As Donald Steel, the golf course architect brought in to make the changes, remarked, "it has always been one of the most recognisable hazards in Open Championship golf, and it was important that it was not seen merely as decoration."
When Steel was asked to toughen up the links at Sandwich, the R&A wanted to ensure that this was not a course that the game's top players could play just using irons off the tee. It would seem that he has succeeded, and now it is for the top players to think their way around a course - there are times here that it is difficult to know just where you should be hitting the ball off the tee - as well as relying on a good bounce rather than a bad one, which is what links golf should be all about.
"On a windy day, a top links course can cope, as we saw during the third round at Muirfield last year, when even Tiger Woods failed to break 80 (he shot 81) . . . the challenge is to give a course some teeth in benign weather, so it still requires a lot of thought. That was what we were trying for at St George's, and I think we have succeeded."
The changes - implemented over the past two years - bring the yardage to 7,106 yards with the par for the course increased from 70 to 71.
New tees have been built at eight holes - the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th - and the green at the 14th has been moved back 43 yards. "It's going to be a bit like the 2000 Open at St. Andrews," explained Rhodri Price of the R&A. "When Tiger won there, he barely took his driver out. It was a case of him taking irons off the tees to avoid bunkers. It's going to be a big test for all the golfers to avoid bunkers this year."
In making the changes to the course, Steel felt it was important to "maintain the integrity of Royal St George's and bring some of the bunkers back into play". To an extent, the changes reflect the fact that players with modern equipment are hitting the ball further than they were ten years ago when the Open was last held there - but it is also an indication that the old courses have had to move with the times so that they don't become completely outdated.
The most radical change following the review was the redesign of the Suez Canal Hole - the 14th - which was lengthened to 550 yards with a new green built close by the out of bounds fence on the right. Two St Andrews type bunkers in the centre of the fairway call for clear thinking on the second shot; and two more guard the green to the left.
At the fourth, the original line of the hole has been restored, with the new tee demanding a carry of over 250 yards over the Himalaya bunkers to the fairway and bringing the bunker left more into play. The new 10th tee, more the concept of Nick Faldo on a visit here in June 1997 than of the two architects, reshapes the hole with the left hand fairway bunker protecting the favoured landing area.
On the 13th, a new tee has been built to the right of the 12th green, taking out a blind drive and creating a dramatic hole with seven fairway bunkers visible to the player. Two of these bunkers, to the left, are new (as are two on the eighth) to catch the pushed tee shot and one in the centre left of the 15th fairway.
Whoever wins this week will follow in some illustrious footsteps. Some 10 players, from JH Taylor in 1894 to Norman in 1993, have won the 12 previous Opens to be staged here. A mark of their class is that six of them have won the claret jug more than once - Harry Vardon (six), Taylor (five), Walter Hagen and Bobby Locke (four), Henry Cotton (three) and Norman (two)- and four of them - Taylor, Hagen, Cotton and Locke - all won their first titles here at Sandwich.
Sandwich, of course, has teased and tormented Irish players down the years. It was here in 1949 that Harry Bradshaw had his famous bottle incident. After an opening 68, one off the lead, Bradshaw was cruising comfortably through his second round when his ball finished up in a discarded broken bottle. The rules in force at the time allowed a free drop but were worded in such a way that Bradshaw feared disqualification.
The rule stated, "the ball is unplayable if a player considers he can not make a stroke at it and dislodge it into a playable position." With no referees on instant call, he opted for the smash and grab solution. Eyes tight shut, he launched at the bottle with his wedge, shattering it to pieces and moving the ball barely 30 yards. He finished with a double-bogey six and those dropped shots were to prove crucial as he finished level with Locke only to lose to the South African in a play-off.
Then, there was the case of Christy O'Connor Jnr in 1985, which was to be Sandy Lyle's year. To this day, the Galwayman views it as the big one that got away.
"It's one of the biggest regrets of my golfing life," said O'Connor. "In the last round, I hit perfect shot after perfect shot. I glued them to the green. " The problem was that he couldn't buy a putt, and, in fact, took 37 putts in that final round.
In the first round that year, O'Connor Jnr established a course record 64. When he reached the back of the 18th green, two men were there waiting for him.
One of the them was Henry Cotton, the winner at Royal St George's in 1934 when he had shot a course record 65, after which the famous Dunlop 65 golf ball was named. On greeting Junior, Cotton remarked: "Are you sure you completed all of the course?" before extending his hand and giving the Irish golfer a firm handshake and congratulations.
The other golfer waiting to greet O'Connor was Tom Watson, who had been playing in the match ahead and who had been so mesmerised by what was going on behind him that he had actually stopped and watched on a number of occasions to see O'Connor's approach play to greens.
Despite failing to land golf's biggest prize here, O'Connor retains a terrific fondness for the links at Sandwich, describing it as a "course that is almost human. That may sound silly, I know, but it really was a course that you felt you could almost talk to. It was all about getting the ball from A to B, almost like a moving target."
The changes that face players for this year's championship, though, have not unduly affected the charm of Sandwich. It is still a course with bumps and hollows and where there is an element of fortune in the bounce of a ball. Which is what links golf is all about.
