By John Berry
I was in the Midwest last week to visit my father on the occasion of his 89th birthday. On one of those days back home, I teed it up at 6 a.m. at Ravisloe Country Club in the south Chicago suburb of Homewood. Ravisloe was a longtime exclusive private country club that is now open to the public, the result of a significant core of its membership losing their money in the Bernie Madoff financial scandal.
On the par-4 fifth hole that morning, I hit a high arching wedge into the green. It land some 30 feet right of the hole, took one bounce, caught the back ridge of the green, and slowly crept across the green, stopping some five feet left of the hole. On the 220 yard par-3 seventh hole, my tee shot landed in the left pot bunker. My right leg was in the sand and my left leg was in a kneeling position outside the bunker. I barely got the ball out, yet it rolled some 40 feet across the green in a buttonhook pattern and stopped inches from the hole.
On the par-4 16th hole, I hit a tee shot down the right side. It carried the ridge and disappeared from sight. Upon walking over the ridge, I looked down the fairway, but I couldn”t see my ball. It certainly wasn”t in the fairway. After about a three-minute search, I found it sitting up nicely in the rough. Upon further review, I noticed how that part of the fairway steeped towards the left. On the 17th hole, I had to re-cross that same ridge with my tee shot. I was unable to see the fairway, unable to see the green. However, some 60 yards off the tee was a small, meaningless pot bunker, except for the fact that if you hit it over the heart of the bunker, you”d end up in the middle of the fairway.
Ravisloe was built in 1901 by Donald Ross. The godfather of American golf architecture built lots of courses like Ravisloe with false fronts, collection areas, pot bunkers, blind tee shots, and undulating fairways and greens. That”s how the game was played back at the turn of the century.
The Open Golf Championship commences this coming Thursday at the Royal St. George”s Golf Club in Sandwich, England. When Royal St. George”s first opened in 1887, it was indicative of the way the game was played in Great Britain and Ireland well before the beginning of the 20th Century. When the game”s top professionals tee it up later this week, they will be using all the modern equipment of the 21st Century, yet they will be playing a links golf course alongside the seas steeped in the architectural nuances of the 19th Century.
St. George”s will play to 7,211 yards and a par of 70. Eight of the greens are originals from 1887, and have false fronts, ridges and swales. The third, seventh, ninth and 15th holes have been lengthened from 2003 when virtual unknown Ben Curtis won The Open there. How unknown was Curtis? Well, it was the first major he competed in, he was ranked 396th in the world, and he was a Hooters Tour alum playing as a tour rookie.
The fourth hole with its notorious 40-foot-high bunker is a par-4 that plays to 495 yards. The lengthened 15th hole, a par-4 of 496 yards, is described in the St. George”s yardage book as “frankly nearly impossible.” The first, 17th and 18th fairways are crowned and were hard to hold in ”03, so they have been widened this time around. Still expect many quality drives to bounce sideways into the rough. In fact, the course”s topography will put the golfers at the mercy of St. George”s many humps and bumps.
Yet Royal St. George”s is a somewhat kinder, gentler course nowadays. The sixth hole, a 178-yard par-3, used to feature a blind tee shot over a vast dune named “Jungfrau,” after one of the mountains of the Swiss Alps. The tee was relocated and now the dune serves as a great spectator viewing point. Also, many of the blind tee shots have been softened in response to the Royal and Ancient”s desire to remove some of the links alongside the English Channel and Stour Estuary.
For those of you watching the British Open next weekend, quirkiness is the operative word. It has been a very dry spring in England, so expect the course to play hard and fast. You”ll notice that on many iron shots to the green, dust instead of divots will fly out from the clubface. It could be similar course conditions to those experienced at Turnberry in 1977.
If the wind picks up, expect the quirky nature of the course to be further magnified. Henry Cotton shot 65 in the 1934 Open in gale-like conditions. His round featured a driver and a tap in putt on the 370-yard par-4 second hole for an eagle 2. In remembrance of his round, Dunlop Golf christened the Dunlop 65 ball, which was still being sold in the 1970s.
Cotton”s 65 was mighty impressive as was J.H. Taylor”s 68 in 1894. However, Royal St. George”s has also been the site where Bobby Jones carded an 86 and Jack Nicklaus posted an 83. In 2003, Paul Casey shot 85. That same year, with thousands in the gallery, Tiger Woods hit his opening tee shot into the rough, couldn”t find it, took a triple-bogey 7 and ended up losing the tournament to Curtis by two shots.
Nicklaus was quoted as saying that the farther south you go, the worse the British Open venues seem to be. Royal St. George”s is the southern-most course on the Open Championship rotation. Steve Elkington was asked to rate Royal St. George”s among the nine courses on the Open rotation. With tongue firmly embedded in cheek, Elkington stated that he would rank it tenth best.
The 140th edition of the British Open tees it up on Thursday at Royal St. George”s. It will feature the world”s top golfers, yet they”ll have to share center stage with the wind, the course”s topography, and a 100-plus-year history of great champions of note as well as totally unexpected fluke winners.
It should be an interesting four days in Sandwich.
