Speaker 1: The pros love Royal Birkdale Golf Club, the upcoming site
Speaker 1: of the Open Championship, but do we love it. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about today with my colleague Joseph Lmania.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison and this is Designing Golf. Joseph Almania
Speaker 1: is here. Joseph is a writer for Friday Golf, focusing
Speaker 1: mostly on the professional game and the courses where high
Speaker 1: level tournaments are played. And you, Joseph just got back
Speaker 1: from a visit to Royal Birkdale. How was your trip.
Speaker 2: It was a great trip, Garrett. Yeah, I played Royal
Speaker 2: Birkdale and Royallytham and St Anne's two very different golf courses,
Speaker 2: but extremely useful to have that context about Brickdale in
Speaker 2: advance of this Open Championship. So excited to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Love talking golf courses with you, So eager to get
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love talking golf courses with you as well.
Speaker 1: Always interesting stuff comes up. Yeah, very cool trip that
Speaker 1: you went on to see a couple of courses that
Speaker 1: are that are hosting Open Championships in the future, in
Speaker 1: Royal Brickdale obviously next week, and then Royal Lithm and
Speaker 1: Saint Anne I believe on the on the schedule for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight or nine.
Speaker 3: Twenty eight, and also the Women's Open is there at
Speaker 3: the end of this month.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, okay, cool places. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: Royal Brickdale today, going into detail about the golf course
Speaker 1: and what your impressions of it are. I have some
Speaker 1: of my own impressions, but those are just based on
Speaker 1: seeing the golf course from afar. I've actually never been there,
Speaker 1: so I'm very curious to get your kind of on
Speaker 1: the ground details about it. Now, before we dive into
Speaker 1: the elements of the course itself, I want to go
Speaker 1: through a little bit of history. This is something that
Speaker 1: I can offer in this podcast is some historical context.
Speaker 1: So Royal Birkdale is in the coastal town of Southport
Speaker 1: in the county of Merseyside. It's part of a trio
Speaker 1: of open ROTA courses on the kind of Merseyside Lancashire coast.
Speaker 1: Royal Liverpool is an hour south and Royal Livem and
Speaker 1: Saint Anne's is just across the Ribel Estuary to the north.
Speaker 1: It takes about an hour to drive between the two courses.
Speaker 1: I believe but it's only nine miles as the crow flies,
Speaker 1: so it is in a kind of series of very
Speaker 1: well known golf courses on this one stretch of coastline
Speaker 1: in England. Birkdale Golf Club was founded in eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: originally a nine hole golf course, and then in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven the club moved to its current location in
Speaker 1: the sand dunes just south of the city of Southport.
Speaker 1: So the original course in this location was designed by
Speaker 1: George Lowe, who was the professional at Royal Limb and
Speaker 1: Saint Anne's. As far as I can tell, it was
Speaker 1: a well regarded but not hugely well regarded golf course.
Speaker 1: In Bernard Darwin's book Golf Courses of the British Isles,
Speaker 1: he mentions it just once and kind of mentions it
Speaker 1: in passing, you know, as part of a list of
Speaker 1: courses that would be worth talking about on this coastline,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't say anything else about it. And obviously
Speaker 1: that version of Birkedale never hosted the Open Championship, so
Speaker 1: clearly it was overshadowed in a sense by you know,
Speaker 1: Hoylake to the south and Lithm to the north. So
Speaker 1: we go forward to nineteen thirty two and Royal Birkdale
Speaker 1: decided to completely redesign golf course. They brought in the
Speaker 1: architects fred G. Hawtree and J. H. Taylor to do
Speaker 1: the work and what they produced is essentially today's version
Speaker 1: of the golf course with a lot of alterations, you know,
Speaker 1: the usual amount of alterations that happened at Open Championship courses.
Speaker 1: But this is kind of their golf course. So who
Speaker 1: were Fred G. Hawtree and JH. Taylor? These are not,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the best known names in golf architecture anymore.
Speaker 1: We can start with Taylor. John Henry Taylor was a
Speaker 1: very well known professional golfer. He was a member of
Speaker 1: the Great Triumvirate alongside James Braid and Harry Varden. This
Speaker 1: was a trio of British professional golfers who really dominated
Speaker 1: the game around the turn of the twentieth century and
Speaker 1: played a big role in popularizing the game in England
Speaker 1: as well as the US, where where they kind of
Speaker 1: took trips and spread the gospel of golf. Taylor won
Speaker 1: the Open Championship five times and went on to be
Speaker 1: a very significant golf architect as well. Probably his best
Speaker 1: preserved original design is Royal mid Surrey golf Club near London.
Speaker 1: Very interesting and kind of curious course. It has a
Speaker 1: kind of artificial appearance that in some ways has come
Speaker 1: back into fashion these days. He also wrote a fair
Speaker 1: amount about golf course design. Bob Crosby, friend of the program,
Speaker 1: who has been on designing golf a number of times,
Speaker 1: has done research on Taylor, and Bob characterizes him as
Speaker 1: mostly an advocate of what we would now call penal design.
Speaker 1: So Taylor often expressed a belief that hazards should be
Speaker 1: placed to punish poor shots, you know, poor strikes of
Speaker 1: the ball, rather than serving kind of a more complex
Speaker 1: strategic purpose. He liked cross bunkers and once wrote an
Speaker 1: article lamenting that cross bunkers had fallen out of fashion.
Speaker 1: And behind these positions I think was Taylor's conviction that
Speaker 1: the purpose of golf architecture was to provide a fair
Speaker 1: playing field for competition. Fairness was a big deal to
Speaker 1: him and understandable that he would take that position given
Speaker 1: his background as a professional, competitive professional golfer. Now, all
Speaker 1: of that said, I don't know how much input Taylor
Speaker 1: had at Royal Birkdale. My impression is that the new
Speaker 1: course at Birkdale that was installed in nineteen thirty two
Speaker 1: was mostly the work of his partner, Frederick George Haughtrey.
Speaker 1: Fred G. Haughtrey Hattrey was not known as a competitive golfer.
Speaker 1: He was very much a professional golf architect. Founded his
Speaker 1: own firm in nineteen twelve, started working with Taylor in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, and Hawtrey had what I'd characterize as
Speaker 1: a very practical, utilitarian approach to design. He did a
Speaker 1: lot of work at a lot of courses. He wasn't
Speaker 1: known for his artistry, unlike his contemporaries Harry Colt and
Speaker 1: Tom Simpson. You know, no one out there, I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean very few people at the very least are
Speaker 1: begging for restorations of Fred G. Hawtree courses. But Hawtrey
Speaker 1: did end up having a big influence on British golf architecture.
Speaker 1: His son, Fred W. Hawtrey carried on the family business
Speaker 1: and in turn passed it on to Martin Hawtree, who
Speaker 1: is still building and renovating golf courses today. So the
Speaker 1: haw Tree firm is now one hundred and fourteen years old,
Speaker 1: widely recognized as the longest continuously operating golf architecture company
Speaker 1: in the world, obviously extremely successful. And I would say
Speaker 1: that the haw Trees are sort of like the Jones
Speaker 1: family of Great Britain, right, Robert Trent Jones, Robert Trent Jones,
Speaker 1: Junior Rhys Jones, Except unlike the Joneses, they haven't really
Speaker 1: gone out of style or you know, had their courses
Speaker 1: kind of reversed in their character the way that the
Speaker 1: Joneses have over and over in the US. You know,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, Mackenzie and Ebert, Tom McKenzie and Martin
Speaker 1: Ebert the dominant golf architecture firm of the Open ROTA Today.
Speaker 1: Mackenzie and Ebert are very much in the Hotrey mold,
Speaker 1: doing a lot of work a lot of places, frequently
Speaker 1: hired by courses that want to host big tournaments, not
Speaker 1: particularly renowned for their craftsmanship, all right. So that is
Speaker 1: the architectural lineage behind the nineteen thirty two Birkdale Golf Course.
Speaker 1: It received the Royal designation in nineteen fifty one, hosted
Speaker 1: its first Open in nineteen fifty four and ever since
Speaker 1: then has very much been part of the Open RODA.
Speaker 1: This year's championship will be the eleventh that Royal Bridale
Speaker 1: has hosted since nineteen fifty four. Great list of winners,
Speaker 1: Peter Thompson twice, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson,
Speaker 1: Ian Baker Finch, Marc o'meira, Patty Harrington and Jordan Speif
Speaker 1: that's a murderer's row, I mean, that's a list to
Speaker 1: be proud of. There's not really a random one in there.
Speaker 1: You look at that list and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: those guys could play golf. So the course itself has
Speaker 1: seen many updates over the years. Right Fred W. Hawtree
Speaker 1: made some big changes in the nineteen sixties He created
Speaker 1: the current par three twelfth hole and completely rebunkered the course.
Speaker 1: The original bunkering at Royal Birkdale was much more kind
Speaker 1: of rugged and lacy edged. Today's bunkering is kind of
Speaker 1: that typical stack sod pop bunkering that you see at
Speaker 1: many golf courses in this region. Then in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one Martin Hawtree rebuild and redesigned all of the greens.
Speaker 1: So basically every open, and there have been many opens
Speaker 1: at Royal Birkdale, every open has brought a new round
Speaker 1: of nips and tucks to this course and this year
Speaker 1: is no exception. Tom McKenzie of the firm Mackenzie and
Speaker 1: Ebert completed a major renovation last year, which we will
Speaker 1: talk about Joseph later in this episode. I think that's
Speaker 1: good for history. Let's go through the elements of the
Speaker 1: golf course at Royal Birkdale. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the land, the routing, the hazards, the greens, and the
Speaker 1: design philosophy. Does that sound good? Sounds great? All right,
Speaker 1: let's start with the land. I want to you know,
Speaker 1: start off with your with your you know, impressions of
Speaker 1: the land as you walked onto the golf course, as
Speaker 1: you played the holes. How would you describe the terrain
Speaker 1: at Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 2: The dunes are the obvious land features at Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 2: And as I'm sure you're going to talk about, a
Speaker 2: lot of the fairways sit between the dunes. It's not
Speaker 2: a golf course where there's a lot of traversing of
Speaker 2: those dunes. You're near the water, you're near the Irish Sea,
Speaker 2: but you don't ever you don't ever approach the sea.
Speaker 3: You don't see it.
Speaker 2: But the wind is a significant factor, in part because
Speaker 2: of the proximity to the Irish Sea. So the things
Speaker 2: that stand out, in addition to the wind and the
Speaker 2: prevalence of wind, which I think is an important ingredient
Speaker 2: of an Open Championship and how it tests golfers. The
Speaker 2: dunes are a very significant part of the golf course
Speaker 2: and they're not out of play.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's not that the yes, the fairways don't necessarily traverse them,
Speaker 2: and greens aren't positioned on a lot of the dunes.
Speaker 2: But the dunes are in play, as people will remember
Speaker 2: from you know, Jordan Spief blowing a shot way right
Speaker 2: on thirteen onto one of those dunes. You can end
Speaker 2: up on them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, of the dunes really, I mean like the
Speaker 1: other side of the dunes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's the dominant land feature and I think
Speaker 2: that that should inform how people think about the golf course.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, dunes and wind. Those are kind of the
Speaker 1: big big features of this property. Spectacular dunes right thirty
Speaker 1: to forty feet tall, probably the biggest dunes on the
Speaker 1: Open Roda, or at least rivaling those, especially you know
Speaker 1: for an English golf course. These are dunes of the
Speaker 1: type that you might associate a little bit more with
Speaker 1: with Irish links courses. You mentioned the wind. My understanding
Speaker 1: is the wind basically rips right off of the Irish Sea,
Speaker 1: so it's coming directly in from from the shoreline roughly
Speaker 1: west northwest on the compass, and that is the predominant
Speaker 1: wind direction, but of course not the only wind direction.
Speaker 1: One more thing I'd like to mention about this stretch
Speaker 1: of links Land is that it also includes a couple
Speaker 1: of other golf courses. So right next door to Royal
Speaker 1: Brookdale is Hillside Golf Club, which has hosted some big
Speaker 1: tournaments including the British Masters and number of years ago.
Speaker 1: And then next to Hillside you'll find Southport and Ainsdale
Speaker 1: Golf Club, which I've heard some great things about. So
Speaker 1: all three of these courses kind of sit side by
Speaker 1: side in this dune system. Royal Birkdale, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: owns the most valuable part of this dune system, closest
Speaker 1: to the ocean and with the biggest dunes. So that's
Speaker 1: the kind of property we're dealing with, a Duneland property,
Speaker 1: and very dramatic even for an open course. Okay, So
Speaker 1: that leads us to the routing of the golf course
Speaker 1: I have a couple of takes about the routing of
Speaker 1: the golf course, so I'll talk about this first and
Speaker 1: then i'll send it to you for you to tell
Speaker 1: me whether this is sort of a correct set of conclusions.
Speaker 1: But for me, it is the routing of Royal Birkdale
Speaker 1: that really identifies it as a modern links. So first
Speaker 1: of all, it's laid out in two loops of nine
Speaker 1: has returning nines. The front nine travels around the northern
Speaker 1: half of the property and the back nine travels around
Speaker 1: the half, and the basic momentum of each nine is
Speaker 1: to venture out toward the ocean side end of the property. Again,
Speaker 1: you can't see the Irish Sea from the golf course
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, but you know generally the course kind
Speaker 1: of goes out toward the ocean and then comes back.
Speaker 1: The back nine has a couple of different loops where
Speaker 1: it goes out toward that end of the property and
Speaker 1: then comes back and then goes back out. So each
Speaker 1: nine kind of has this has this momentum toward one
Speaker 1: end of the property. But returning nines is the big
Speaker 1: thing to notice here. This is not your old school
Speaker 1: out and back golf course like Royal Troon or the
Speaker 1: Old Course. The second big thing about the routing at
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale that feels modern to me is that the
Speaker 1: holes almost exclusively run between the dune ridges instead of
Speaker 1: going directly over them. And you already mentioned this. Just
Speaker 1: about every fairway sits in a valley between dunes, and
Speaker 1: just about every green sits in a little amphitheater surrounded
Speaker 1: by dunes, and as a result, the fairways are relatively
Speaker 1: flat and the greens are mostly relatively flat. This, I
Speaker 1: would say is a very post World War II approach
Speaker 1: to routing Duneland properties. Keeping in mind obviously that Fred
Speaker 1: Hawtree and Jage Taylor did all this in nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: so I guess in a sense they were ahead of
Speaker 1: their time. But this kind of a approach where you
Speaker 1: where you're kind of avoiding the bigger dunes is something
Speaker 1: that I associate more with modern links in Great Britain
Speaker 1: and Ireland than with links that were built or redesigned
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties or before. So those are the
Speaker 1: two big points I'd make about Royal Birkdale's routing. And
Speaker 1: it has those returning nines, each going toward the ocean
Speaker 1: and then coming back, and it has this tendency to
Speaker 1: stay between the big dunes instead of interacting with those dunes.
Speaker 1: So do those points conform with your experience of the course, Joseph,
Speaker 1: They do.
Speaker 2: This is not a correction, but I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 2: When you're playing the golf course, it feels like you're
Speaker 2: at the beginning of each nine kind of going out
Speaker 2: towards the sea and then back. Since it is insulated
Speaker 2: and you never see the sea, it's not like the
Speaker 2: wind intensifies as you get closer to the sea. So
Speaker 2: it doesn't really feel that way to me, that you're
Speaker 2: making your way out towards the water and then.
Speaker 1: Doesn't feel like there's like a magnet that's attracting you
Speaker 1: out there, like it doesn't St Andrews, you know, going
Speaker 1: out toward the estuary, it feels like, you know, that's
Speaker 1: drawing you out, and then the town draws you back.
Speaker 1: There's not that same feeling.
Speaker 2: I played the golf course one time, so I don't
Speaker 2: want to There might be people who play it every
Speaker 2: day and feel that way that they're being drawn out
Speaker 2: toward the sea and then back, but no, it didn't
Speaker 2: feel that way to me. I think the other The
Speaker 2: only other part that maybe you didn't mention that I
Speaker 2: felt was true and I think it sometimes discussed with Burkedale,
Speaker 2: is it does make your changing directions a lot. For
Speaker 2: the first twelve holes, you're never really playing two holes
Speaker 2: in the same direction there or even like straight and
Speaker 2: back right back. Once you get towards like thirteen, fifteen,
Speaker 2: seventeen and eighteen all kind of play in the same direction,
Speaker 2: and then fourteen and sixteen play back in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: But until you get to that point of the golf course,
Speaker 2: you're sort of always playing in different wind directions like that.
Speaker 2: That's the big part that's noticeable when you're playing it.
Speaker 2: The wind is kind of constantly changing on you, and
Speaker 2: that is something that I like about the golf course.
Speaker 2: But yes, i'd say the defining characteristics of flat fairways
Speaker 2: and flat greens situated between dunes you're appropriately hitting on.
Speaker 2: And in terms of the going out to the sea
Speaker 2: and back.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: And I have Google Earth pulled up and I'm looking
Speaker 2: at it, and that's certainly true, but I would say
Speaker 2: it doesn't it doesn't feel that way when you're prying
Speaker 2: the golf course.
Speaker 1: Well, this is why it's insightful to have you on
Speaker 1: because I'm just looking at Google Earth and being like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at that. But yeah, I mean, I guess since
Speaker 1: you can't see the ocean that you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: that orientation of I'm going toward it and then coming back.
Speaker 1: But the changes of direction is an important point to
Speaker 1: make about this routing, and it's another thing that I
Speaker 1: associate a little bit more with not modern links, but
Speaker 1: more like post nineteen hundred's links. Right, Whereas a lot
Speaker 1: of nineteenth century eighteenths links golf courses were happy to
Speaker 1: go out and back and have multiple holes going in
Speaker 1: the same direction. In sequence, there was much more of
Speaker 1: an emphasis after the turn of the century on varying
Speaker 1: the direction of the holes throughout the course. Now, another
Speaker 1: thing that I've heard about World Birkedale's routing is that
Speaker 1: a lot of holes are set on crosswinds specifically, so
Speaker 1: the wind comes in from the Irish Sea predominantly northwest,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the holes are kind of oriented,
Speaker 1: you know, perpendicular to that wind direction. Is that something
Speaker 1: that you picked up on while you were.
Speaker 2: There, Yeah, I would say I need to think through
Speaker 2: the prevailing wind on every shot I had the prevailing wind,
Speaker 2: So it's sort of helpful here as a reference. Like
Speaker 2: straight away, the first hole you can go O B
Speaker 2: right and the wind is off your left, so it's
Speaker 2: not the most comfortable t shot, which is something that
Speaker 2: I like about the golf course in terms of how
Speaker 2: it tests pros. Some of the other shots, yeah, some
Speaker 2: of the par threes, like seven is I think a
Speaker 2: frequently photographed hole, kind of a short part three. The
Speaker 2: wind is straight off your right. Twelve another part three
Speaker 2: that is often photographed and one of the more iconic holes.
Speaker 2: I guess you'd say, I don't know that any hole
Speaker 2: at Brokedale's necessarily iconic, but twelve would probably be.
Speaker 3: Towards the top of the list, straight off the right.
Speaker 2: So some of the holes at the end you have
Speaker 2: the wind you're either straight into or it's behind you.
Speaker 2: But I would say, especially through the first twelve holes,
Speaker 2: you're dealing with a crosswind, which is really difficult to play.
Speaker 2: And there are a lot of shots where you've got
Speaker 2: to start a shot if there's a decent amount of
Speaker 2: wind pretty significantly far right of the green, if the
Speaker 2: wind is off your right, and trust that it's going
Speaker 2: to come back, like playing in the wind is a
Speaker 2: very significant variable at Brookdale.
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of crosswinds out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if we get significant wind during the open, it's
Speaker 1: going to be challenging. It's going to be entertaining because
Speaker 1: because the ball is going to be getting pushed left
Speaker 1: or right. You know, you're not often traveling directly up
Speaker 1: or down the prevailing wind. If you get the prevailing wind,
Speaker 1: players are going to be having to manage their shot
Speaker 1: shape with some pretty narrow corridors. You know, they're going
Speaker 1: to be pushed into these dunes in one direction or
Speaker 1: the other. So, yeah, the course can it can very
Speaker 1: quickly become a beast from the sounding.
Speaker 2: I guess, not to interrupt you, but I would need
Speaker 2: to maybe think this through a little more. Like Shittacock,
Speaker 2: for example, the prevailing wind is not the most difficult
Speaker 2: way to play the golf course when you get the
Speaker 2: opposite wind to the prevailing winds right right versus at Brickdale,
Speaker 2: I would need to think about how all the holes
Speaker 2: are oriented. But I think the prevailing wind would probably
Speaker 2: be the most challenging direction. Don't don't hold me to that,
Speaker 2: but it's a really difficult wind to play the golf
Speaker 2: course in. So I don't know if that's I would
Speaker 2: want to flesh that out a little more before saying
Speaker 2: it definitively, but it feels that way and going through
Speaker 2: the holes.
Speaker 1: In that's an interesting point. Yeah, that's kind of a
Speaker 1: different approach to routing for the wind. Do you route
Speaker 1: for the most difficult course to be the most common course,
Speaker 1: or do you route for the course to be most
Speaker 1: manageable in the prevailing wind. Obviously, the easiest wind is
Speaker 1: no wind at both of the courses, but if you
Speaker 1: get the prevailing wind at Shinnacock, the down wind holes
Speaker 1: are often the logger holes and the into the wind
Speaker 1: holes are often the shorter holes. That's just the way
Speaker 1: William Flynn approached routing for the wind there. The course
Speaker 1: is challenging enough as it is, and so you know,
Speaker 1: when when the wind comes more out of the north
Speaker 1: at Shinnecock, then you're really in trouble and a lot
Speaker 1: of members choose not to play the course on those days.
Speaker 1: And you know, when we happen to get that wind
Speaker 1: during US opens, that's when Shinnecock really turns into a beast.
Speaker 1: So yeah, interesting at Rollbrickdale that the approach seems to
Speaker 1: have been perhaps different. All right, let's move on to
Speaker 1: the primary hazards Royal Brokedale. I've identified three categories here bunkers, dune,
Speaker 1: vegetation and wind. Now we've already sort of talked about
Speaker 1: the wind, so let's get into the bunkers. What was
Speaker 1: your experience with the bunkers at Royal Birkdale, both in
Speaker 1: terms of their placement and in terms of their style
Speaker 1: of construction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I know we're going to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit more about the renovation work that Tom mackenzie spearheaded
Speaker 2: in advance of this open I think a lot of
Speaker 2: that was to soften some of the bunkers and make
Speaker 2: them a little more playable for members. And I would say,
Speaker 2: in comparison to some other open venues like Litham for example,
Speaker 2: which I have a reference for now less Penal, the
Speaker 2: bunkers are a little more playable from around the greens.
Speaker 2: You can advance the ball farther if you find a
Speaker 2: fairway bunker. But in play like I think the bunkers
Speaker 2: are located in places overwhelmingly that makes sense that will
Speaker 2: be at the appropriate scale for professional golfers, so not
Speaker 2: as there aren't a million bunkers. I don't know exactly
Speaker 2: how many bunkers are out there, but it's not I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say you feel like there's a bunker everywhere, but
Speaker 2: definitely they are real hazard, just not as penal at
Speaker 2: some other Open championship. And you don't have to come
Speaker 2: out sideways. It's not like if you're in a pop
Speaker 2: bunker around the greens you have no chance. The pretty manageable,
Speaker 2: I would say, kind of going back to the fairness
Speaker 2: idea that you laid out at the top of this podcast,
Speaker 2: kind of feels like if this, if the original vision
Speaker 2: was that you should be able to get up in
Speaker 2: town from a bunker, then that is represented in the
Speaker 2: golf course.
Speaker 1: So it's not like Roal Liverpool where the bunkers are
Speaker 1: kind of intentionally sadistic in a way right, where they
Speaker 1: you know, intentionally created kind of flat bottom bunkers in
Speaker 1: a lot of places that were all Liverpool so that
Speaker 1: the ball would end up against the lip and not
Speaker 1: be advanceable. Roy Burkedale a little bit more manageable. Now,
Speaker 1: what about a position. Just looking at Royal Birkedale, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that often both sides of the fairway
Speaker 1: and both sides of the greens are defended by bunkers.
Speaker 1: But we have a few different kinds of arrangements in
Speaker 1: the fairways, some staggered arrangements here and there. What was
Speaker 1: there general feeling about how the bunkers were placed the
Speaker 1: spots that they most frequently show up in a player's
Speaker 1: kind of dispersion pattern.
Speaker 2: There's not a whole lot of like a bunker in
Speaker 2: the middle of the fairway or a bunker that like
Speaker 2: juts out into the fairway that makes you think about
Speaker 2: whether or not you want to lay up short of
Speaker 2: it or try to push past of it. It's more
Speaker 2: bunkers that are to the side of the fairway or
Speaker 2: to the side of the greens, and you're not thinking
Speaker 2: as much I would say about like distance control and again,
Speaker 2: do I want to play short of this or try
Speaker 2: to push past it. It's more if I hit something offline,
Speaker 2: there is a bunker there to catch it. And I
Speaker 2: think that's basically the general premise throughout the golf course,
Speaker 2: so there's very little exception to that. Sixteen is one
Speaker 2: where there's a bunker in the middle of the Fairway,
Speaker 2: I don't. I'd have to think about if there's any
Speaker 2: other ones that are like that. But often, you know,
Speaker 2: you might have a bunker on the dog leg and
Speaker 2: you got to carry it. If you don't, you're in
Speaker 2: the bunker. Like That's how number six is. Yeah, I'd
Speaker 2: say that's the general which which I think kind of
Speaker 2: goes in line with the Penal school of architecture that
Speaker 2: you alluded to again at the top of the show.
Speaker 3: So that was my experience with it.
Speaker 1: It would likely be that would be the method that
Speaker 1: the Jage Taylor would prefer and defend, though I'm sure
Speaker 1: he would like more cross bunkers to be present at
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale. There there generally aren't kind of like big
Speaker 1: bunkers at Royal Birkdale. Most of them are small pots
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're chained together to create a bigger hazard.
Speaker 1: But rarely do you see the kind of big bunkers
Speaker 1: going across the line of play. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a few that Mackenzie and Ebert reintroduced to certain places.
Speaker 1: To a couple of holes here and there, like on
Speaker 1: five and seventeen would be the examples that would come
Speaker 1: into mind. Fairway bunkers that are more of that kind
Speaker 1: of blowout style, more rugged in their appearance, and of
Speaker 1: course bigger as a result. What was it like when
Speaker 1: you were off the fairway and in the rough?
Speaker 2: So this is the biggest, I would argue, the biggest
Speaker 2: defense of Royal Birkdale, and from my perspective, in what
Speaker 2: provides an effective test of professional golf. Having a golf
Speaker 2: course where there's a lot of space and the fairways
Speaker 2: are pretty narrow. But often the fairway might be let's say,
Speaker 2: twenty five yards wide, but from dune to dune or
Speaker 2: from really thick dune vegetation area to thick dune vegetation
Speaker 2: area on the other side it's like sixty five or
Speaker 2: seventy yards. So often what you will find at Brickdale,
Speaker 2: and I would this is one of the defining characteristics
Speaker 2: in my opinion, kind of a narrow fairway and then
Speaker 2: five to eight yards there's usually like maybe three yards
Speaker 2: of rough, like a first cut that's pretty short and
Speaker 2: you're fine if you find it ball sitting up, and
Speaker 2: then another like five to seven yards of kind of
Speaker 2: a thin ish native area that's playable. You'll find your
Speaker 2: ball even if there weren't spectators out there, but you
Speaker 2: don't want to be there. It's sitting down. And then
Speaker 2: once you get wide of that, you get this thick,
Speaker 2: dense vegetation. And if there weren't spectators, you probably wouldn't
Speaker 2: find your ball, certainly wouldn't be able to advance it
Speaker 2: very far. If you get really wide, then there could
Speaker 2: be some instances where you're in spectator areas and you
Speaker 2: kind of get bailed out and open. But largely I
Speaker 2: would say that is the texture, the complexion of the
Speaker 2: golf course. A pretty narrow fairway, a small penalty for missing,
Speaker 2: and then a very very significant penalty for missing wide,
Speaker 2: and that is where these dunes are in play are
Speaker 2: impacting the golf course because you could hit into the
Speaker 2: side of a dune super thick lie, I have almost
Speaker 2: no chance of advancing the ball. If you were to
Speaker 2: kind of map out the penalties with like a small
Speaker 2: miss and a wide miss, it's probably about, as you know,
Speaker 2: mathematically symmetrical as about anywhere on any open venue that
Speaker 2: I could think of, And I guess there's probably some
Speaker 2: aversion to that to an extent in some architecture circles.
Speaker 1: But I think talking about it couldn't possibly be me.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not even just saying you necessarily, but I
Speaker 2: know that when I've mentioned that before, that that there's
Speaker 2: I don't think it needs to be mathematically precise, but
Speaker 2: I do like when a wide miss finds a significant penalty,
Speaker 2: and I think that's part of why the pros will
Speaker 2: really like Royal Birkdale as it does that. That's what
Speaker 2: pros talk about all the time, like I want a
Speaker 2: good shot rewarded, a bad shot pun The wide t
Speaker 2: shots here are punished very effectively, and part of that
Speaker 2: is because how much space there is out there. It's
Speaker 2: not a cramped golf course where spectator areas now are
Speaker 2: bailing out or tournament infrastructure is bailing out a wide miss.
Speaker 3: That is a key characteristic.
Speaker 2: Of Brickdale and why I would argue in part that
Speaker 2: it might have more merit as a venue than it
Speaker 2: does as a golf course, and there is a distinction
Speaker 2: between the two.
Speaker 1: And Roal Brickdale has based its identity for a long
Speaker 1: time on the fact that it frequently hosts major tournaments,
Speaker 1: not just the Open Championship, but the Women's Open and
Speaker 1: the Amateur Championship, et cetera. And so this is a
Speaker 1: major reason for the club to exist. It is the
Speaker 1: thing that they pursue. And so, yeah, certainly makes sense
Speaker 1: that a graduated penalty would be cultivated on a lot
Speaker 1: of the t shots on these holes. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what you're describing, this graduated penalty where the wide
Speaker 1: misses get the get the most severe punishment. The narrow
Speaker 1: misses still get punished, but less so. And if you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of the fairway and you hit it,
Speaker 1: you hit strike the ball, well, then then you'll often
Speaker 1: find yourself in a very good position to attack the whole. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's really interesting. Obviously, a key characteristic of Royald Birkedale,
Speaker 1: perhaps even more important than the bunkers, is the fact
Speaker 1: that the the dune vegetation, the rough is laid out
Speaker 1: in this fashion that you're talking about. This episode of
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Speaker 1: brings us to the Greens. Joseph and I want to
Speaker 1: start with you here. You know it's hard to get
Speaker 1: a sense for greens from Afar from pictures. I've done
Speaker 1: my best and I have my general impressions of modern
Speaker 1: greens that have been built at many open road to courses.
Speaker 1: But how would you describe the greens at Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 2: It's hard to get a sense of even after having
Speaker 2: been there. Garrett like, I don't have a ton to
Speaker 2: say about the greens. They're pretty flat. There's a little
Speaker 2: bit of movement in them, and there's some elevation change,
Speaker 2: and I think some of the greens that have been
Speaker 2: built more recently have more of that slope, more slope
Speaker 2: in them, like the seventeenth there's a significant amount of
Speaker 2: slope in the seventeenth green. And the par fives tend
Speaker 2: to have pretty big greens, pretty long from front to back,
Speaker 2: which I think has its virtues from the standpoint of
Speaker 2: not just that it's they're achievable to hit intwo for
Speaker 2: somebody who's playing in the open, for a professional golfer,
Speaker 2: but also if you hit it in a bad spot
Speaker 2: at the ball, then can actually travel and roll into
Speaker 2: slopes into a bad area. So I think you'll see
Speaker 2: that on the par five, six, fourteen, and seventeen all
Speaker 2: are pretty big greens. But other than that, most of
Speaker 2: the greens are similar in size. They're oval, they don't
Speaker 2: have a ton of movement in them, and there aren't there.
Speaker 3: There are some.
Speaker 2: Most of them are surrounded by short grass, but it's
Speaker 2: not like, oh, if you miss right on this green,
Speaker 2: you're completely dead.
Speaker 1: It's not super severe, not super severe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not super There's not a ton of areas
Speaker 2: where if you're short sighted you're in a huge amount
Speaker 2: of trouble.
Speaker 3: I'd say largely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're oval, they have a little bit of slope
Speaker 2: in them, not a ton. In the defense of this
Speaker 2: golf course is not the greens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's basically been my impression. Now, instead of
Speaker 1: speaking specifically to Royal Birkdale's greens, which again I haven't
Speaker 1: experienced in person, I want to talk about what I
Speaker 1: would consider this sort of house style of green design
Speaker 1: in modern British golf architecture, and I'm talking more about
Speaker 1: work that's been done at Open Road to courses over
Speaker 1: the years by the likes of Martin Haughtree, Donald Steele
Speaker 1: and most recently Mackenzie and Ebert. I think there is
Speaker 1: a trend in green design and again, a house style
Speaker 1: and a lot of the greens that Royal Birkdale from
Speaker 1: photos I've seen, you know, kind of embody this tendency,
Speaker 1: So that style is basically a roughly and oval shaped
Speaker 1: putting surface, sometimes kind of peanut shaped, maybe almost always
Speaker 1: longer than it is wide, sometimes set on a diagonal,
Speaker 1: especially on par three's, but I would say usually set
Speaker 1: straight onto the line of play, often guarded on both
Speaker 1: sides by pop bunkers front right, front left with a
Speaker 1: short grass run up through the middle is a frequent
Speaker 1: orientation on the putting surface itself. Mostly flat, you know,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, severe tilts are not very common. You don't
Speaker 1: see a lot of prominent, rounded internal contours like rolls
Speaker 1: or spines or depressions or channels. Sometimes you'll see a
Speaker 1: tier to define a difficult pin position, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, the internal contouring is pretty simple and quiet.
Speaker 1: The most distinctive aspect of this house style, though, is
Speaker 1: these kind of scoopy short grass runoffs along the edges,
Speaker 1: basically chipping swales that will shed inaccurate approaches away from
Speaker 1: the putting surface and toward these lower collection areas. These
Speaker 1: swales often have roughly the same shape and scale regardless
Speaker 1: of the setting or the surrounding topography or whatever natural
Speaker 1: environment the green is tying into. But you see them
Speaker 1: a lot of places. Once you see them, you can't
Speaker 1: unsee them now. I would say, good example is the
Speaker 1: new Fifteenth Green, the new par three that Mackenzie and
Speaker 1: Ebert built, and we'll talk more about that when we
Speaker 1: get to the renovation work section of the podcast. But
Speaker 1: if you just look at the fifteenth Green, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: set on a little diagonal. There's some interest there, but
Speaker 1: it is longer than it is wide, it has some bunkering,
Speaker 1: but the primary feature is these chipping swales along the
Speaker 1: sides of the green that have this roughly sort of
Speaker 1: wavelike appearance, so that they are defined into different collection areas.
Speaker 1: This is something I see on a lot of modern
Speaker 1: and renovated links courses in Great Britain and Ireland. It
Speaker 1: is very characteristic of the work of Donald Steele, who
Speaker 1: renovated many of these courses in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: You see it a lot from Martin Hawtree, and we've
Speaker 1: been seeing it very very often from Mackenzie and Ebert
Speaker 1: as well, though I will give Mackenzie and Ebert some
Speaker 1: credit here. I think that there there is a little
Speaker 1: bit more variety in the way that they've executed this
Speaker 1: concept on various greens than than we saw in the
Speaker 1: work of say Donald Steele. But but it is kind
Speaker 1: of still representative of what I would call this house style,
Speaker 1: And honestly, it just drives me crazy. I think. I
Speaker 1: think there's just there's this much much better ways to
Speaker 1: approach green design that they're there are so many ways
Speaker 1: that you can tie a green into its environment, uh
Speaker 1: and kind of mimic the surrounding landforms that are more elegant.
Speaker 1: But I'm just not sure that that we've seen a
Speaker 1: huge amount of shaping talent and have these courses in
Speaker 1: recent years at open road of courses. You know, it's
Speaker 1: often often this work is contracted out and and uh
Speaker 1: and and so to my mind, a lot of these
Speaker 1: greens have come out looking a little bit similar to
Speaker 1: each other. But that's just a general take, you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily about Royal Birkdale specifically, because again I haven't
Speaker 1: seen them in person. I'm just getting an impression from
Speaker 1: the photos about these designs. But to me, it's starting
Speaker 1: to get a little bit repetitive.
Speaker 2: So my only quick reactions to that fifteen that you
Speaker 2: outlined the new Part three, which we'll talk more about
Speaker 2: some of the renovations later in this podcast. But that's
Speaker 2: a little more severe than a lot of what you
Speaker 2: see at Brikedale. Pretty steep actually where it falls off
Speaker 2: to the right in a tightly mown area that is
Speaker 2: pretty significantly uphill if you miss that green over to
Speaker 2: the right. Most of what you see at Brikedale, some
Speaker 2: of the greens are yeah, they're perched up, but it
Speaker 2: might be like a foot of the drop off. It's
Speaker 2: not that severe. The only other real exception I can
Speaker 2: think of to that is nine, which has a significant
Speaker 2: false front that if you come up short on nine,
Speaker 2: it probably rolls twenty yards back to your feet, and.
Speaker 1: Probably seventeen to two, which is like an enormously long
Speaker 1: green with deft levels to it.
Speaker 2: The par fives are long, and especially seven the greens
Speaker 2: the par fives are long, and seventeen has some pretty
Speaker 2: significant slope in it. I would say, outside of fifteen,
Speaker 2: the par three nine, which has a big false front.
Speaker 2: In the par fives, almost all of the greens are
Speaker 2: about the same size, whether it's Part three or Part four,
Speaker 2: about the same size oval and might have a little
Speaker 2: tight runoff area in different parts, surrounded by pop bunkers
Speaker 2: and not indistinguishable from each other, because somebody who plays
Speaker 2: there every day would know the subtleties of all the greens,
Speaker 2: but largely not a lot of variety in terms of
Speaker 2: their size, in terms of the little chipping runoff areas
Speaker 2: that you talked about.
Speaker 1: If you had to sum up the design philosophy behind
Speaker 1: Royal Brickdale, how would you put it?
Speaker 2: Well? I think it's relevant that it's in the lease
Speaker 2: that was granted to the course. According to the documentation
Speaker 2: that we were provided, it says this was designed as
Speaker 2: a tournament venue and that this is supposed to be
Speaker 2: a championship test. And I'd argue that it meets that criteria.
Speaker 2: That you know, fair is a word that I would
Speaker 2: probably be pretty quick to use here, And even though
Speaker 2: fairness isn't something that I necessarily think is super important
Speaker 2: ingredient in a golf course, I think that the general
Speaker 2: like you talked about, the gradual penalty here is a
Speaker 2: significant part of the design philosophy. Whether that was a
Speaker 2: part of the original vision or not, I don't know
Speaker 2: how much they were thinking about gradual penalty in the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds or in the nineteen thirties when this
Speaker 2: redesign happened. But if you were to look at the
Speaker 2: golf course now, I think that's one of the noticeable
Speaker 2: things that you'd call out about it immediately. There aren't
Speaker 2: a lot of blind shots. There aren't steep runoff a
Speaker 2: super steep runoff areas where you find yourself in total jail.
Speaker 3: To me, it's like it's an.
Speaker 2: Eight It's a collection of eighteen solid holes that all
Speaker 2: kind of fit the same mold. Like, yeah, penalty for
Speaker 2: missing real premium on ball striking and being able to
Speaker 2: control your trajectories and penalties associated with not being able
Speaker 2: to do that, And that's basically every hole on repeat.
Speaker 2: But I wouldn't when I say that it sounds mundane
Speaker 2: or repetitive, I gotta say I didn't find the golf
Speaker 2: course to be repetitive rote redundant, Like I actually think
Speaker 2: there's a decent amount of variety out there, more than
Speaker 2: I would have thought before. And like from a memorability standpoint,
Speaker 2: the criteria do you remember all the golf holes? I do,
Speaker 2: and I find them to be a little more distinct
Speaker 2: than I might have thought going in so, but I
Speaker 2: still think that fairness and that gradual penalty feels like
Speaker 2: a pretty significant part of the DNA of this golf course.
Speaker 3: Whether that was part of the vision from the beginning
Speaker 3: or now, I think it.
Speaker 1: Was for sure. But I'm curious what distinguishes the golf
Speaker 1: holes from each other for you, because as if you
Speaker 1: were from home, that's something that has been really challenging
Speaker 1: with World Birkdale over the years.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the shot value is really high, and
Speaker 2: so there are a lot of shots that fully commanded attention.
Speaker 2: And for example, like the ninth hole dog leg right,
Speaker 2: you're not going to see too many golfers try and
Speaker 2: get over the corner because it's like two sixty and
Speaker 2: then once you get over the corner and it kind
Speaker 2: of slopes down to the right, the fairway gets very
Speaker 2: narrow and you almost have nowhere to land it. So
Speaker 2: you're going to see a lot of golfers hit shots
Speaker 2: that are, you know, two hundred and fifty or so
Speaker 2: yards off the tee and then they'll have some kind
Speaker 2: of wedge in maybe one hundred and forty yards with
Speaker 2: a lot of wind, and that's a different wind direction
Speaker 2: a different the whole dog legs in a way that's
Speaker 2: different than anything else out on the course. Really, I
Speaker 2: think there's quite a bit of variety in the first
Speaker 2: twelve holes. Maybe not the first couple, but you're playing,
Speaker 2: you're playing in a lot of different directions, and I
Speaker 2: think that there's a little bit of elevation change. Eleven,
Speaker 2: you're on an elevated tee and you're hitting that hole
Speaker 2: is pretty much straight away, but like you're right back
Speaker 2: into the wind, and that's a really, really hard golf
Speaker 2: shot that you have to flight something down, hit like
Speaker 2: a low piercing T shot, and if you don't have that,
Speaker 2: you're gonna get exposed. Does that come through on TV?
Speaker 2: Does that check the box of variety as much as
Speaker 2: maybe we might like. I don't know, but it was
Speaker 2: the only time I really felt like I had to
Speaker 2: do that that day, from an elevated tea box into
Speaker 2: a huge amount of wind. So I would say from
Speaker 2: a shot value standpoint, you're always your attention is always heightened,
Speaker 2: and the shots that you're asked to hit around the
Speaker 2: greens are pretty similar. But I off the tee and
Speaker 2: into the greens, it's a lot of different types of
Speaker 2: shots like the fourth hole is I think it's two
Speaker 2: twenty from this new back tea And when does straight
Speaker 2: off your left to a pretty small green surrounded by
Speaker 2: pop bunkers really really difficult? And then seven is a
Speaker 2: much shorter, it's a short iron when to straight off
Speaker 2: your right the green doesn't look that different. It's kind
Speaker 2: of a small green surrounded by pop bunkers. The shot
Speaker 2: is downhill Like those two part thres, I don't know
Speaker 2: how differently they come across on TV, but they play
Speaker 2: completely differently. So again, is that the variety that comes
Speaker 2: through on TV that you're talking about and being able
Speaker 2: to distinguish these holes from one another? Maybe not, but
Speaker 2: in terms of playing them, and I think the pro
Speaker 2: golfers will probably attest to this after they go through,
Speaker 2: especially the first twelve or so holes. I think it's
Speaker 2: a lot of different types of shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think what's coming through here for me
Speaker 1: is an impression that I've had all along really that
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale is very invested in fairness. Now, that can
Speaker 1: be interesting. What's surprising to me, and what you're saying
Speaker 1: is is how interesting that was for you. But the
Speaker 1: design philosophy is one that is very devoted to fairness,
Speaker 1: and yes, this graduated penalty has something to do with it,
Speaker 1: but the level nature of the fair ways is probably
Speaker 1: the biggest factor at Royal Birkdale that for me, contributes
Speaker 1: to this overall impression that the courses is very much
Speaker 1: about fairness. If you hit the fairway, you will have
Speaker 1: a relatively level lie, with some exceptions here and there.
Speaker 1: It's not as though the fairways are perfectly flat. There's
Speaker 1: a little bit of rumple on them, but in general,
Speaker 1: compared to most Links golf courses, especially the fairways at
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale, are relatively level. It's something that people have
Speaker 1: commented on at Royal Birkdale since the nineteen thirties that
Speaker 1: this is a way in which the course is very
Speaker 1: different from other Links courses. And there are some, you know,
Speaker 1: a variety of theories as to how these fairways came
Speaker 1: to be because if you look at the dune system there,
Speaker 1: if you look at the surrounding dunes, my understanding is
Speaker 1: that there are very few natural flat places and so
Speaker 1: when you see these fairways kind of running between these
Speaker 1: big dune ridges that are more or less level, you
Speaker 1: have to think that those are artificial, that they were
Speaker 1: constructed to be that way somehow. Now, it was relatively
Speaker 1: rare in nineteen thirty two, especially in Great Britain, that
Speaker 1: a course would be manufactured from tea to green in
Speaker 1: this fashion, so that that would be something pretty remarkable
Speaker 1: in Gulf architecture for the time. But you know, one
Speaker 1: theory that I read about in an article by Ron
Speaker 1: Witten from two thousand and eight before the two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight Open Championship. Witten's idea is that basically the
Speaker 1: course was routed through natural valleys, through places where there
Speaker 1: might have been even some water courses going through the dunes,
Speaker 1: but that the level of those valleys was raised a
Speaker 1: little bit. That they basically built the fairways up from
Speaker 1: the bottom of the valleys and left them relatively flat.
Speaker 1: And Ron Witten goes as far to say that you know,
Speaker 1: hat Tree might have hired a road contractor to build
Speaker 1: the fairways and that's part of the explanation as to
Speaker 1: why they are so flat. But yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: defining characteristic of Royal Birkdale and it's something that I
Speaker 1: think pros and joy where if they hit the fairway
Speaker 1: then then they're all right. They're not on a side slope.
Speaker 1: You know, that's something that competitive golfers have complained about
Speaker 1: at Saint Andrews since the eighteen hundreds, that you can
Speaker 1: hit the ball in the middle of the fairway the
Speaker 1: ideal position and find yourself on a weird lie. That
Speaker 1: can happen at Roural Saint George's, it can happen at
Speaker 1: Royal Port Rush. So you know, pros like these level
Speaker 1: lies in the fairway and that's something that Royal Birkdale
Speaker 1: provides for me, though it is the course is missing
Speaker 1: something because of that. For me, one of the most
Speaker 1: fascinating and pleasurable things about links golf is that there
Speaker 1: is undulation and the and there's a little bit of mystery,
Speaker 1: a little bit of complexity to the game once you're
Speaker 1: in the fairway, and you know, as far as a
Speaker 1: test is concerned, I think that the test of hitting
Speaker 1: off of an uneven lie is a worthy one for
Speaker 1: a professional golfer as well. So in any case, the uh,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about philosophy of design, those flat fairways
Speaker 1: and relatively level greens, that's an essential part of it.
Speaker 1: If you're within the playing field at Royal Brokedale, then
Speaker 1: then your game is going to be relatively predictable.
Speaker 2: I guess well, it's probably sounding like I like fairness
Speaker 2: more than I actually do. I think the course is
Speaker 2: missing something and how flat I would say how flat
Speaker 2: the greens are more than how flat the fairways are.
Speaker 2: That's one of the things I appreciate about Augusta National
Speaker 2: most the way that the uneven lies interact with the
Speaker 2: shots you have to hit like that is such a
Speaker 2: cool part of Augusta National that yes, I think Royal
Speaker 2: Birkdale is missing something with how flat the fairways and
Speaker 2: especially the greens are. But what I appreciate about the test,
Speaker 2: and whether you want to call this fairness or just
Speaker 2: the test of high level golf. You can't bully this
Speaker 2: golf course because of how big it is and because
Speaker 2: of how much there is a penalty for hitting something
Speaker 2: way off line. And I think in that sense it
Speaker 2: really commands a great golfer, a professional golfers attention, and
Speaker 2: a lot of these other open venues, sadly that don't
Speaker 2: play quite to the scale that they are intended to play.
Speaker 2: You can kind of stand on a tea box and
Speaker 2: say to yourself, like I can hit this one hard,
Speaker 2: maybe carry a bunker that is supposed to be in
Speaker 2: play and hit it anywhere, and even if I'm way
Speaker 2: off line, it's not going to be that big of
Speaker 2: a deal. And you can't do that as much at
Speaker 2: Royal Birkdale. So I think that's the part of it
Speaker 2: that I appreciated, and that it really heightened my attention
Speaker 2: on all the shots, because it's not like you can
Speaker 2: hit iron off a bunch of the te's it's still
Speaker 2: pretty beefy. And then if you're hitting driver and it's
Speaker 2: you got a significant crosswind and your ball is gone
Speaker 2: if you hit it thready yards right of the fair way,
Speaker 2: like that's a really good test. So it's for me
Speaker 2: it was more about the shot value than the adherence
Speaker 2: to fairness, though I agree with you that a little
Speaker 2: bit more slope and some more interesting greens, frankly, would
Speaker 2: go a long way at Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 1: Are there any courses that you think would be interesting
Speaker 1: to compare to Royal Birkdale, either in contrast or for
Speaker 1: characteristics that might be similar.
Speaker 3: I think it bears some resemblance to Port Rush.
Speaker 2: I do. I think there's some similarity to Royal Port Rush,
Speaker 2: in the way it plays through a lot of the dunes.
Speaker 2: It's not the type of links like baked out irons
Speaker 2: off to tea trying to avoid pop bunkers that jut
Speaker 2: out into the fair way. It feels I think it
Speaker 2: feels in a lot of ways similar to Royal Port Rush.
Speaker 2: Maybe this isn't the best reference since we haven't seen
Speaker 2: it super recently, but I think it's like the polar
Speaker 2: opposite of Royal Litham in sane Hands, which I also saw,
Speaker 2: where you're hitting bunker shots out sideways. It's like a quaint,
Speaker 2: tight property where you kind of look around and you're like,
Speaker 2: how can they have an open championship venue? How can
Speaker 2: this host and open? You go to Birkdale, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this place can host and open.
Speaker 3: It's really big.
Speaker 2: Those dunes provide the good vantage points for spectators. So
Speaker 2: from the way it plays. I've never played Royal Port Rush,
Speaker 2: I have been there. I think there's some similarities, and
Speaker 2: then yeah, completely completely different than a place like Litham
Speaker 2: in Sant Anne's or any golf course that's really tight
Speaker 2: and you're kind of looking at other holes as you're playing,
Speaker 2: and maybe you have a wide miss and there's nowhere
Speaker 2: for the spectators to stand because it's a small property,
Speaker 2: so you're in the spectators and then you're hitting a
Speaker 2: wedge onto the green and it doesn't really test you
Speaker 2: that much. Like this is quite different than that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean Royal part Rush seems yeah, similar in some ways.
Speaker 2: It is is of like a similar vintage, right that
Speaker 2: they're early thirties golf courses. Essentially, that's when Harry Colet
Speaker 2: did so much of his work.
Speaker 1: At at Royal Port Rush. But Royal Port Rush does
Speaker 1: have I think much more sophisticated in artful green design
Speaker 1: as far as I can see, and definitely a more
Speaker 1: assertive approach to routing large dunes. Right. There are big
Speaker 1: fairway contours at Royal Port Rush. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: that kind of playing between the dune ridges approach on
Speaker 1: every single hole though. A lot of the holes that
Speaker 1: Royal Port Rush are in these valleys, and part of
Speaker 1: that is inevitable on sites with big dunes. This is
Speaker 1: often a debate that golf course enthusiasts have with each
Speaker 1: other whether big dunes or smaller dunes are better for golf,
Speaker 1: and the argument against having big dunes on a golf
Speaker 1: course is that you can't really use them that much.
Speaker 1: You have to for the most part avoid them, or
Speaker 1: else the golf course will become non functional. And so
Speaker 1: small dunes can can create a lot of interest because
Speaker 1: you can play any which way over them, whereas at
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale and to an extent world Port Rush, you're
Speaker 1: a little bit more limited to the valleys. That said,
Speaker 1: another interesting comparison with Royal Birkdale. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: the kind of yin to Royal Brokedale's yang is Royal
Speaker 1: Saint George's, where there are really big dunes at one
Speaker 1: end of that property, and the routing choices in that
Speaker 1: section are so bold, right. There's not this avoidance of
Speaker 1: blind shots, there's not this avoidance of huge fairway contours
Speaker 1: or really perched greens that might be considered unfair by
Speaker 1: some players. If you look at the first several holes
Speaker 1: at Royal Saint George's so which travel through such big dunes,
Speaker 1: it I think provides a kind of counter example to
Speaker 1: the design philosophy the routing philosophy of Royal Birkdale, and
Speaker 1: I think it also explains why We'real Saint George's is
Speaker 1: not as beloved by competitive golfers as as Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 1: It is St. George's is not afraid of quirk, it's
Speaker 1: not afraid of accusations of unfairness. But to me, it's
Speaker 1: thrilling because it actually interacts with the big stuff. It
Speaker 1: doesn't just use the big dunes as penalty or as scenery.
Speaker 1: It brings them into the golf holes. It actually maximizes
Speaker 1: the greatest asset of the property. And that, to me
Speaker 1: is what I really want a golf course to do.
Speaker 1: And so that's I love Royal Saint George's. When I
Speaker 1: played it for the first time last year, I loved
Speaker 1: it far more than I expected I would. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason is this is this approach to routing
Speaker 1: the golf course.
Speaker 2: No pushback. I think your critiques are valid. I think
Speaker 2: the parts of Brokedale that you don't love makes sense
Speaker 2: to me if you were to I think the only
Speaker 2: somewhat defense I'd offer is that if I think most
Speaker 2: people would put port Rush like miles and miles ahead
Speaker 2: of Brokedale, and to me that gap is a little narrower,
Speaker 2: probably than most people might assign it. I don't think
Speaker 2: broken is the golf course that port Rush is, but
Speaker 2: I don't find that to be a I don't think
Speaker 2: there's a huge golf between them, huh And why is that? Well?
Speaker 2: I think maybe the port Rush I think some of
Speaker 2: those holes blend together for me personally a little bit.
Speaker 2: And similarly to like it's not. I think the virtues
Speaker 2: of Brokedale, as we've mentioned, are how it tests a
Speaker 2: professional golfer, and I think it does some of that
Speaker 2: a little more effectively than port Rush. There are some
Speaker 2: unbelievable golf holes at port Rush and the fifth out
Speaker 2: by the water like there it has more outstanding golf holes,
Speaker 2: but I think a lot of the holes at port
Speaker 2: Rush kind of in the middle and even to start,
Speaker 2: aren't the badass major championship golfers, and Brokedale I think
Speaker 2: has a little more like from start to finish, commanding
Speaker 2: your attention where it can kind of bite you anywhere.
Speaker 2: So that's something that I like as somebody who watches
Speaker 2: a lot of professional golf. But in terms of one
Speaker 2: that to just walk every day, you know, maybe I'd
Speaker 2: feel a little more positively about a Royal port Rush
Speaker 2: compared to.
Speaker 3: Birkdale, at least using that criteria.
Speaker 1: Gosh, does a test of professional golf have to be boring? No,
Speaker 1: it does not. It does not. It sounds like that's
Speaker 1: what we're implying, though, that Royal Birkdale is a great
Speaker 1: test of professional golf precisely because of some of the
Speaker 1: aspects of it that make it kind of boring.
Speaker 2: I think it's more that, unfortunately, with technology, we have
Speaker 2: really outgrown a lot of the great, great designs across
Speaker 2: the world, and if they have been compromised in a
Speaker 2: way that the current dimensions of the game, you can
Speaker 2: overpower so many of these golf courses in ways that
Speaker 2: are obvious, like carrying a bunker, but also in ways
Speaker 2: that are less obvious, and you can hit a shot
Speaker 2: three hundred and twenty yards off line you might find
Speaker 2: grand stands or something, and then you have a pretty
Speaker 2: easy shot on and so like Saint Andrews, unfortunately, I
Speaker 2: think is a great example where people who love golf courses,
Speaker 2: and I put myself in this category, I know you're
Speaker 2: obviously staunchly in this category, get delighted to watch golf
Speaker 2: at Saint Andrews, and then the shot value doesn't always
Speaker 2: quite line up with how it's intended, and that can
Speaker 2: be to me, that's very disappointing to watch in an
Speaker 2: Open championship venue, or any major venue for that matter.
Speaker 2: So I think, with the exception of basically Augusta, it's
Speaker 2: very hard to find great tests of professional golf that
Speaker 2: are also beautifully designed, and so I think Birkdale, Yeah,
Speaker 2: is it beautifully designed?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: Are there a lot of great golf holes out there?
Speaker 2: I don't think so, but I do think it's a
Speaker 2: really effective test. Now, the number of venues at this
Speaker 2: point that do both, it's very small, and again that's
Speaker 2: not because it's impossible to do.
Speaker 1: It's just because of the current scale of the game.
Speaker 1: You know, this is not a well worked out theory
Speaker 1: then I'm about to outline. But I've found myself recently
Speaker 1: wanting to move away from the framework of test when
Speaker 1: it comes to evaluating professional golf venues and more toward
Speaker 1: what makes a place a compelling venue overall for the viewer,
Speaker 1: primarily for the fan, and that doesn't always align with test.
Speaker 1: I don't think, for example, if you take a hole
Speaker 1: like the road hole at Saint Andrews, I don't know
Speaker 1: how the road hole necessarily rates on a test scale.
Speaker 1: But if you ask anybody what holes they want to
Speaker 1: see played in major championship situations, the road hole is
Speaker 1: going to come up. The fifteenth hole at Augusta National
Speaker 1: is going to come up. Are these holes really great
Speaker 1: tests of professional golf in the sense that they have
Speaker 1: high shot values for each shot and that they really
Speaker 1: identify the best player? Maybe not, but they inject a
Speaker 1: little bit of chaos into the tournament, and I think
Speaker 1: that's part of what people want to see, and that
Speaker 1: element of mystery and chaos and things just being a
Speaker 1: little bit off kilter. Maybe things being a little bit
Speaker 1: unfair is something that I crave in a professional golf venue.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure that that that fits in with
Speaker 1: the framework of a great examination of golfing ability. But
Speaker 1: certainly I think it's the special sauce that makes certain
Speaker 1: holes so in certain courses so memorable, right, And that's
Speaker 1: something that maybe we're all burkedale acts a little bit there.
Speaker 1: There aren't many holes where I feel like, oh, this
Speaker 1: could get.
Speaker 2: Really weird, in complete agreement with you, and I think
Speaker 2: fifteen at August as an example that is a great
Speaker 2: test of professional golf and has that level of quirk
Speaker 2: and things can go awry. I think Tenant Shinnecock and
Speaker 2: I think Shinnacock is one of the premier major championship
Speaker 2: venues in the world, and it has that element of chaos.
Speaker 2: And again ten eleven at Shinnecock, I think are awesome,
Speaker 2: awesome tests of professional golf. I'm in agreement with you
Speaker 2: that Brickdale does not satisfy that criteria, and I do
Speaker 2: not think this is one of the best Open championship venues.
Speaker 1: I would not put this near.
Speaker 2: The top, but it at least satisfies the can you
Speaker 2: just get up and hit it wherever? No, you cannot,
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, there are so many venues now that fail
Speaker 2: to satisfy that criteria, and I think that is where
Speaker 2: my frustration comes from that if we were to significantly
Speaker 2: scale back the game, a lot of the places that
Speaker 2: you take delight in and have their quirk, we would
Speaker 2: actually allow that quirk to shine versus muting it because
Speaker 2: you can just overpower it. So I think it's a
Speaker 2: much more of a commentary on the state of the
Speaker 2: scale of the game than it is appreciating the level
Speaker 2: of fairness that Birkdale exacts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you there. But you know, Royal Birkdale
Speaker 1: has its place in the Open ROTA when you put
Speaker 1: it that way, right alongside the old course in Royal
Speaker 1: Saint George's and even you know some holes at Hoylake.
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale has its identity, it has its position on
Speaker 1: the RODA, and I think it's probably good that the
Speaker 1: RODA features a course like Royal Birkdale, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: just has a different character than most of the kind
Speaker 1: of older links courses that where the Open Championship is held.
Speaker 2: And just quickly, this isn't Tory Pines, Like I think
Speaker 2: Tory Pines is the kind of rote like people say
Speaker 2: it's a good test, but sure not a well to
Speaker 2: designed golf course. I think it's kind of common sentiment
Speaker 2: at this point. I would just contend that Brokedale is
Speaker 2: more going on than somewhere like Tory Pines.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you often bring up the subject of wide
Speaker 1: misses when we talk about Tory Pines, where those wide
Speaker 1: misses really really aren't punished very severely compared to narrow misses,
Speaker 1: and that flattens the competition in some ways and makes
Speaker 1: it less satisfying. You know, it doesn't feel like maybe
Speaker 1: we've identified the best player consistently at Tory Pines. Although
Speaker 1: the winners there have been have been all stars, two degree,
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale is there's certainly something more satisfying about seeing
Speaker 1: a golfer conquer Royal Birkdale. You know that they've you
Speaker 1: know that they've done a good job. And honestly, the
Speaker 1: roster of winners at Birkdale testifies to that one of
Speaker 1: the best lists of winners I think that any course
Speaker 1: can claim, and so that's that's something that I think
Speaker 1: the club can rightfully be proud of. All Right, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the renovation work now here.
Speaker 1: Toward the end of the podcast, we've gone through the
Speaker 1: elements of the golf course, given some takes on how
Speaker 1: we think it'll play and just what we make of
Speaker 1: the golf course architecture there in general. There have been
Speaker 1: some changes recently at Royal Birkdale, carried out by McKenzie
Speaker 1: and Ebert. The club hired mackenzie and Ebert in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two specifically to prepare the course for this year's Open,
Speaker 1: so the changes they made were targeted at Championship Golf
Speaker 1: in case we haven't covered this before. Mackenzie and Ebert
Speaker 1: is a partnership between Tom McKenzie and Martin Ebert. On
Speaker 1: each of their projects, one of them takes the lead.
Speaker 1: At Royal Birkdale, Tom McKenzie was the lead architect, but
Speaker 1: as a firm, Mackenzie and Ebert are the undisputed Open
Speaker 1: Championship doctors. They now consult at all of the current
Speaker 1: Open RN golf courses, including the old course at Saint Andrew's,
Speaker 1: so they are incredibly dominant in this particular domain of
Speaker 1: golf architecture. Their work at Royal Birkdale was carried out
Speaker 1: between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five, and the
Speaker 1: changes were extensive. Tom McKenzie made alterations to every single
Speaker 1: hole at Royal Birkdale. I'm not going to go through
Speaker 1: all of those changes right now, but one of the
Speaker 1: major goals of the renovation was to create more variety
Speaker 1: in the par three's. Previously, three of the four par
Speaker 1: three's at Royal Birkdale basically played in the same direction,
Speaker 1: and then the other par three often required the same
Speaker 1: club as the other par three's in certain wind conditions.
Speaker 1: So the idea was to just get more variety in
Speaker 1: the t shots there, and the way that they did
Speaker 1: that was to eliminate the old fourteenth hole and then
Speaker 1: to create a new par three playing back toward the
Speaker 1: clubhouse between what used to be the fifteenth and sixteenth holes.
Speaker 1: So the old fourteenth hole happened to kind of sit
Speaker 1: between the clubhouse and the practice ground. Eliminating that hole
Speaker 1: allows better access to that big practice area and driving
Speaker 1: range which will be during the Open Championship, a fan village,
Speaker 1: So this has been an infrastructural improvement as well as
Speaker 1: an improvement in the kind of directions and lengths of
Speaker 1: the par threes.
Speaker 2: And just to clarify it, yeah, what understanding is the
Speaker 2: fourteenth green that they used to have has just been
Speaker 2: repurposed as the short ging facility. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: sitting there like it was the old fourteenth hole, but
Speaker 2: it is now a short ging facility.
Speaker 1: And they can use it in the winter or something
Speaker 1: as a part three. They can still play it as
Speaker 1: a golf hole, but you know, basically the old fourteenth
Speaker 1: hole was kind of blocking access to that area. You know,
Speaker 1: now it's just a little bit more open there and
Speaker 1: the fan village, which is a big priority in any
Speaker 1: Open Championship these days is going to be a bit
Speaker 1: more easily accessible from the clubhouse than it would have
Speaker 1: been otherwise. So this new par three, the fifteenth hole,
Speaker 1: brand new hole designed by Mackenzie and Ebert, plays back
Speaker 1: toward the clubhouse, okay, in a different direction from the
Speaker 1: rest of the par three's, And then in order to
Speaker 1: have roomed for that par three, the current fourteenth hole
Speaker 1: had to be kind of shifted toward what is now
Speaker 1: the fan village. So you know, again, Mackenzie and Ebert
Speaker 1: designed and built a new fourteenth hole. Okay, So we
Speaker 1: have a new fourteenth, we have a new fifteenth, and
Speaker 1: from there the course plays home sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen
Speaker 1: roughly like it used to. So that is the single
Speaker 1: biggest change. Two new golf holes in that critical section
Speaker 1: of the back nine. The other really major change was
Speaker 1: rebuilding the fifth hole, which is a short par four.
Speaker 1: Basically it was not a very well respected hole, and
Speaker 1: Mackenzie and Ebert designed and built a new one in
Speaker 1: the same location. So those are the biggest differences, I think,
Speaker 1: Joseph that people will notice between the twenty seventeen Open
Speaker 1: Championship version of Royal Birkdale and the twenty twenty sixth version.
Speaker 1: Where do you want to go with this? What changes
Speaker 1: did you find the most interesting? What did you make
Speaker 1: of them?
Speaker 2: I think you are appropriately highlighting the most relevant changes.
Speaker 2: So like fourteen, now the par five is going to
Speaker 2: play if they want, like six hundred yards and back
Speaker 2: into the wind, and I believe it was five point
Speaker 2: fifty before, so there's some lengthening there. Fifteen is the
Speaker 2: entirely new part three. It's two hundred and forty yards
Speaker 2: from the back to very very difficult shot and completely
Speaker 2: different par three than what existed before. I understand the
Speaker 2: not wanting to have the same club in your hands
Speaker 2: four times, potentially wanting a little more variety. So that
Speaker 2: is the need that I guess I'll use need in quotes,
Speaker 2: but that's why they the impetus for that change.
Speaker 3: And then five is totally different.
Speaker 1: Five.
Speaker 3: I would agree that the whole before was not particularly good.
Speaker 2: It was just a short four that didn't There was
Speaker 2: no there were no bunkers in any of the landing
Speaker 2: areas off the tee. I think it was about three
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty yards before and the length hasn't changed much.
Speaker 2: But now there's a smattering of bunkers up by the
Speaker 2: green and a fairway bunker that kind of protects the
Speaker 2: left side. The other change on five that will probably
Speaker 2: just like kind of fly completely under the dar, but
Speaker 2: you might find interesting, Garrett is a pretty big dune
Speaker 2: on the right that obscured the view to the green
Speaker 2: was flattened. And I don't know all the reasons for that,
Speaker 2: or if it was an artificial or natural dune before,
Speaker 2: but like that was probably the one area where there
Speaker 2: was a blind shot if you wanted to go for
Speaker 2: the green.
Speaker 3: It was kind of obscuring the whole.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that was the impetus for the
Speaker 2: change and not wanting to have any blind shots, but
Speaker 2: I just found that kind of amusing that I've sticked
Speaker 2: the one quirk kind of to the golf course.
Speaker 1: It is no longer there. Yeah. Well, the other quirk
Speaker 1: was that eighteen had two sets of tease and was
Speaker 1: kind of had a double fairway at the start of
Speaker 1: the fairway where you would play into the hole from
Speaker 1: different directions, And the thought there was that this hole
Speaker 1: had a schizophrenic identity and they wanted to unify it
Speaker 1: around one set of tees, So they kept the left
Speaker 1: setatees where the whole plays a little bit straighter, and
Speaker 1: that was no other quirk of the golf course that
Speaker 1: has gone away. I'm not necessarily saying that that was
Speaker 1: like the coolest thing or that it was genius design
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but they have taken that away
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, taking the blind shot on five away.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the new fifth hole? I mean,
Speaker 1: just looking at it, like in terms of strategy, like
Speaker 1: not bad, you know, I don't I kind of see
Speaker 1: what they're going for. I guess pushing up towards the
Speaker 1: green on the short part four is feels a little
Speaker 1: bit risky, or you know, the landing zone is a
Speaker 1: little bit more obscured. You can kind of lay up
Speaker 1: to the left a bit. I mean, what did you
Speaker 1: make of the new fifth hole?
Speaker 2: When I make of the fifth hole is what I
Speaker 2: make of the changes on net overall, Garrett, which is,
Speaker 2: I feel like they've replaced holes, at least in the
Speaker 2: changes that they've made that weren't particularly sacred or special before,
Speaker 2: with holes that still aren't necessarily that great a golf
Speaker 2: holes or special or sacred now. And I think the
Speaker 2: fifth hole before it was weak, and so this is
Speaker 2: an upgrade almost by default.
Speaker 3: I still don't really like this golf hole. I think
Speaker 3: it looks really weird.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of rumpling of the fairways to the
Speaker 2: right of the green that looks really artificial and funk.
Speaker 1: As soon as I saw that, I saw some early
Speaker 1: pictures of this, maybe even in twenty twenty four when
Speaker 1: they executed this shaping in the run up to the green.
Speaker 1: Basically it's very lumpy, bumpy, but doesn't really look natural
Speaker 1: because it's a bit too uniform, and you don't really
Speaker 1: see that elsewhere at Royal Birkdale because, as we've discussed extensively,
Speaker 1: the fairways are fairly flat, and so I'm not sure
Speaker 1: why they made this decision to create artificial mounds around
Speaker 1: this set of bunkers that kind of runs up to
Speaker 1: the green.
Speaker 2: It's just kind of a weird, a little bit of
Speaker 2: a clunky, awkward golf hole to me. It's again, before
Speaker 2: I don't think it was a good golf hole, but now, like,
Speaker 2: if you want to go for the green straight back
Speaker 2: into the wind, you're gonna have to hit something. It's
Speaker 2: like three hundred ish yards to the front of the green,
Speaker 2: but there's nowhere really for you to put the ball,
Speaker 2: Like there's bunkers all down the right side that you're
Speaker 2: going to end up in. There's like a pretty narrow
Speaker 2: fifteen ishuyard wide gap if you go let the left
Speaker 2: side of the green that you could hit something up there.
Speaker 2: But I think you're gonna see most guys when the
Speaker 2: wind is up, just hitting iron into the fairway, and
Speaker 2: that iron is harder now, like there is a fairway
Speaker 2: bunker protecting the left side of it. It's not as
Speaker 2: thoughtless off of the tee. So I think from an
Speaker 2: execution standpoint or the golfer what they need to execute,
Speaker 2: the shot value has been enhanced and it is a
Speaker 2: more challenging golf hole. I still think it looks weird
Speaker 2: and I don't think it's a great hole now, But
Speaker 2: again that's kind of how I feel about the changes
Speaker 2: overall that they made. I'm pretty neutral on them. I
Speaker 2: think I understand the rationale for them. I don't think
Speaker 2: they blew up anything sacred, and I think in a
Speaker 2: couple spots things look a little weird. Left of sixteen
Speaker 2: green is another spot that I immediately clocked as I
Speaker 2: was playing. I was like they took out two bunkers
Speaker 2: and you can tell like it looks really funky left
Speaker 2: of the sixteen green, like these two big swales where
Speaker 2: the bunkers used to be. But overall, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of the changes were fine. I'm not offended by
Speaker 2: the fit fifteenth part three that that one is going
Speaker 2: to be highly scrutinized next week during the Open. It
Speaker 2: didn't bother I think it's fine. I think it's a
Speaker 2: pretty good golf hol for pros. So overall, I think
Speaker 2: on net I rate out somewhere neutrallly on all the changes.
Speaker 1: You know, because of rural Brookdale's history as a golf
Speaker 1: course that was meant to host tournaments and that never
Speaker 1: really had precious golf architecture to begin with, I find
Speaker 1: myself challenged to get too worked up about any of this,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as I'm concerned, I think I
Speaker 1: come down where you do. It's fine. It could be better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the architecture could be better, the shaping could be better,
Speaker 1: the tie ins with the natural environment could be better.
Speaker 1: The strategies could be more interesting, the greens could be
Speaker 1: more interesting. All of this. But it's not like they're
Speaker 1: running roughshod over Harry Colt or Thoms Simpson greens here,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's what it really raises my hackles
Speaker 1: with new work at places like Royal Liverpool or if
Speaker 1: they were to do anything God forbid to the older
Speaker 1: greens at Royal Saint George's, you know, that's where that's
Speaker 1: where I'd get I'd get kind of angry. But with
Speaker 1: World Birkdale that this has been the nature of the
Speaker 1: course from the beginning. You know, they kind of make
Speaker 1: make some changes for each Open Championship it's been in
Speaker 1: a course has been in a continual state of flux
Speaker 1: basically from the time that the club moved to the
Speaker 1: stretch of Doomland to the current day. They're always making
Speaker 1: these little adjustments. Do I think that the you know,
Speaker 1: from Afar, does the golf course design look like it
Speaker 1: falls short of the kind of best design work that's
Speaker 1: being done today. Absolutely, yes, But I'm sure that it
Speaker 1: will be a fine Open Championship venue, that it will
Speaker 1: be challenging, that it will be a test, and if
Speaker 1: the wind is up, it's going to be incredibly entertaining
Speaker 1: because you know, wind and linksland terrain is an invincible
Speaker 1: combination and no matter what the golf architecture on the
Speaker 1: ground is, that would be interesting. So hoping for wind
Speaker 1: that's always going to make an exciting tournament. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm kind of kind of with you on that, Joseph.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there are any are there any particular
Speaker 1: holes that you're especially excited to see or or even
Speaker 1: just like a little more excited than then you are
Speaker 1: to see the rest of the holes, because as we've established,
Speaker 1: there aren't any particular huge highs. There aren't high highs
Speaker 1: at Royal Birkedown necessarily, But are there some holes that
Speaker 1: you think people should keep an eye on?
Speaker 3: Yes, and sorry, just quickly on the changes.
Speaker 2: I think the other thing we should highlight is that
Speaker 2: a lot of these it's a lot of these holes
Speaker 2: are at sea level, and there was a there was
Speaker 2: a legitimate flooding issue with a lot of these holes.
Speaker 2: And so I think a lot of the bunkers, especially
Speaker 2: in the winter, like the Seventh Green, they have now raised,
Speaker 2: and I mean I think that hole is just as
Speaker 2: good or if not better now, and.
Speaker 3: There was actually a practical need for some of it,
Speaker 3: so I wouldn't be called that.
Speaker 1: I think This is part of the history of the
Speaker 1: routing of the golf course where it was routed through
Speaker 1: kind of what are called dune slacks, right, basically waterways
Speaker 1: between the tall dunes. Obviously, that's going to create some
Speaker 1: drainage issues and probably explains why a lot of the
Speaker 1: greens are you know, a little bit built up from
Speaker 1: the terrain in some slightly repetitive ways. You know, that's
Speaker 1: that's good for drainage. So yeah, good note there golf
Speaker 1: holes that you want to keep an eye on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean five and fifteen people should monitor because
Speaker 2: those are brand new ones, as is fourteen. But I
Speaker 2: think forming an opinion will be interesting. It'll be interesting
Speaker 2: to hear what other people say. But I would say
Speaker 2: the part three's in general, I would just I would
Speaker 2: be excited to watch. There's not going to be carnage.
Speaker 2: There's no like postage stamp hole. But they're just very
Speaker 2: difficult shots. And so I think like seven and twelve,
Speaker 2: you're going to get a hard win off of the
Speaker 2: right and seeing who has that shot, whether they hold
Speaker 2: up some kind of cut, if they're alrighty into the wind,
Speaker 2: can you start a shot far right enough when the
Speaker 2: wind is significant like you really do have the golf
Speaker 2: course is exposed, like you've got to hit pure iron
Speaker 2: shots that really play the wind.
Speaker 3: So I think those are interesting to keep an eye on.
Speaker 2: One right off the top, maybe not the most interesting
Speaker 2: golf hole in the world, but again there's ob right
Speaker 2: and there's a hard wind off of your left when
Speaker 2: the wind is up. So no, there's not one hole
Speaker 2: in particular that I think people need to be a
Speaker 2: fixed to their TV when it comes on. But I
Speaker 2: think overall watching shots get smacked out of the air
Speaker 2: and seeing who can flight their ball and hit a
Speaker 2: pure iron shot that is basically present on every hole
Speaker 2: when the wind is up, and I think that's the
Speaker 2: main thing to get excited for him to watch. Who
Speaker 2: are some of these frauds that can't do that, that
Speaker 2: just hit it way up into the air because it
Speaker 2: does not work out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit of justice for the driving range rats,
Speaker 1: I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, precisely.
Speaker 1: A couple of holes that you know, again jumped out
Speaker 1: to me just looking at photos and kind of trying
Speaker 1: to piece together how players would approach the holes. The
Speaker 1: eleventh hole, you know, kind of cool angles off the
Speaker 1: tee dog leg par four. The fairway bunkers define different
Speaker 1: landing zones and and I would expect different players to
Speaker 1: choose different landing zones depending on wind conditions. The green
Speaker 1: is oriented to the inside of the dog leg, a
Speaker 1: little bit offset from the shape of the fairway, in
Speaker 1: a way that's slightly unusual at Royal Burkedale. So eleven
Speaker 1: jumps out to me as you know, a nicely executed
Speaker 1: dog leg par four hole. And then the other one
Speaker 1: that I'm looking forward to seeing and that I remember
Speaker 1: being pretty entertaining in twenty seventeen is the seventeenth hole
Speaker 1: at part five. Coming home, you know, you can get
Speaker 1: aggressive over the big dune on the left for a
Speaker 1: chance of reaching the green. And two and then the
Speaker 1: green itself, you know, a little bit out of character
Speaker 1: with the rest of the golf course. It was built
Speaker 1: by Martin Hawtree back in the nineties, but very long,
Speaker 1: undulating green that introduces a different flavor to Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 1: And you know, in isolation, considered as as its own hole.
Speaker 1: And you know, putting aside the concern about the fact
Speaker 1: that this green is is not like the other greens
Speaker 1: at roll Birkedale, I think it should be should be
Speaker 1: fairly fun to watch players navigate that green on the
Speaker 1: way home with a potential shot at the Open Championship.
Speaker 1: So eleven and seventeen are kind of the holes that
Speaker 1: jump out to me.
Speaker 3: Six is also a pretty cool tea shot. I'd call
Speaker 3: that out.
Speaker 2: It's a par five for member play, but they play
Speaker 2: it as a part four, and there's a bunker down
Speaker 2: the right and a bunker down the left as it
Speaker 2: dog legs to the right, and seeing which guys try
Speaker 2: to take it over that dog leg.
Speaker 3: It's narrow. That fairway gets really narrow.
Speaker 1: Rory did it.
Speaker 2: I was rewatching twenty seventeen. He just bombed it over
Speaker 2: the corner. But it's only like seventeen eighteen yards wide,
Speaker 2: and that's one of the very few areas on the
Speaker 2: golf course that has any water. There's a little water
Speaker 2: hazard that runs down the left side and you can
Speaker 2: bounce through the fairway through a little bit of fescue
Speaker 2: if it's got some pace on it, into that water hazard.
Speaker 2: So I think that's actually a really good t shot
Speaker 2: for these guys.
Speaker 1: Cool. Yeah. I mean, if there is strategic interest at
Speaker 1: Royal Birkdale, if there are angles to consider, then often
Speaker 1: it is on these dog leg holes where you have
Speaker 1: the option of taking it over the corner of the
Speaker 1: dog leg and trying to hit a fairway that's oriented
Speaker 1: on a diagonal in relation to the line of play.
Speaker 1: You know. I think that there will be some pros
Speaker 1: who kind of appreciate that there is a legitimate question
Speaker 1: on a lot of tea's at Royal Birkdale whether you
Speaker 1: air out a driver or take a shorter club, and
Speaker 1: I think for that reason that there will be some
Speaker 1: pros who maintain that, yeah, this is a strategic golf
Speaker 1: course because I think that's how a lot of pros
Speaker 1: understand strategy. Is this a hole where I'm actually being
Speaker 1: persuaded to take driver out of my hands. There might
Speaker 1: be a couple of places at royld Brookdale that they
Speaker 1: do that, which I think will register as interesting to
Speaker 1: the pros, even if it's you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: less interesting on the whole for viewers compared to other
Speaker 1: things that could be going on on the golf course.
Speaker 2: And how that club choye interact with trajectory I think
Speaker 2: is really important because some of the golfers that they
Speaker 2: can hit something flighted down like a hard teed down driver.
Speaker 3: That changes the calculus a little bit.
Speaker 2: And the wind is just such a significant part of
Speaker 2: this test that I think that's an integral part of
Speaker 2: that off the tea decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprising to see a player do
Speaker 1: really well in this tournament hitting a driving iron off
Speaker 1: the tee, like just kind of trying to bully the
Speaker 1: course with a low trajectory accurate driving iron like Brooks
Speaker 1: Tepka did at Chinnacok Hills in twenty eighteen. Certainly would
Speaker 1: not be surprising to see that happen. And of course
Speaker 1: wind is the X factor here. If we get wind
Speaker 1: at this tournament, you know, basically everything that I've said
Speaker 1: in my critis of the golf course and that you've
Speaker 1: said in your critiques is almost rendered irrelevant, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just going to be It just be so fun
Speaker 1: to see this course played in the wind. You know,
Speaker 1: good golf architecture is always a plus. It's never it
Speaker 1: never goes a miss. But the biggest, the biggest factor
Speaker 1: is the combination of wind and firmness. If we get
Speaker 1: that at this Open Championship, at any Open Championship, we
Speaker 1: are going to have fun. So I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: the tournament. Joseph, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate your perspective. Thank you for traveling out there
Speaker 1: and actually seeing the golf course so that we can
Speaker 1: talk about it in an in depth way on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to sacrifice to travel over there and
Speaker 2: play it. Thanks Gary, always job. We have always enjoyed
Speaker 2: talking golf courses with you. Yeah, it'll be It'll be
Speaker 2: great to see what people think of the course. I'm
Speaker 2: interested in what the public perception is of Birkdale, but
Speaker 2: it was a pleasure to talk about it with you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Make sure to follow Joseph's work this week and
Speaker 1: next week for the Open Championship. He's going to have
Speaker 1: some good stuff coming up, all right. This episode of
Speaker 1: Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam. Thank you Will.
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