@the open
Much has been said about the potential difficulty – and fairness – of Royal Liverpool’s powerful, 136-yard par-3 17, in the run-up to the Open.
It didn’t take long for the controversial new piercing to claim its first victim, Lucas Herbert.
Unfortunately for Herbert, he just so happened to be tied for the lead at the time.
“I could have told you there would be carnage,” said Herbert after his tour. “I could have predicted that for you.”
Let’s start the scene first. The old 15th route has been reversed in Liverpool’s Open routing – now the new 17th – since the 2014 Open Championship, resulting in a shorter Par 3 appearance that plays back towards the Dee Estuary. Design by Mackenzie & Ebert built a high, infinity green with runoff all around and guarded by monstrous dugouts on either side. A long or short bug can find dense, rough or natural sandy areas.
The new 17 o’clock, called “Little Eye,” had everyone talking.
“It’s fair, because if it’s unfair, then it’s unfair to everyone,” world number three John Ramm said on Tuesday.
Matthew Fitzpatrick described the crater as “interesting” but did not elaborate further. His caddy, Billy Foster, did it for him.
“There was nothing wrong with the little Level 3 they had before, and they created a monstrosity, in my opinion,” Foster said. golf per month. “The green is very small. If you land a short distance on it, it rolls into an underground coffin, very deep. This is a challenge for the best golfers in the world who will make 6s, 7s and 8s.”
With that, we rejoin Herbert. Just two holes earlier, Aussie had hit the green at Nadir 5 in the 15th. When he hit an eagle’s 28-tail to score third under the opening run, he had a share of the early lead with amateur Christo Lamprecht.
But his fortune changed in Little Eye.
The hole is only playing 126 yards on Thursday in the breeze, but it can still wreak havoc. As Herbert pulled his approach left wide of the goal, he got a break, and his ball somehow curled over the edge of the left bunker and stopped before dropping into the sand below the shooting surface.
All things considered on the green that many considered unplayable if you missed it, Herbert had a nice looking second that apparently didn’t have to go past the bunker and was almost level with the hole position.
Seemingly benign.
“I probably hit the best place to miss it and it was still a very difficult chip,” he said.
Herbert said that fans were not particularly sympathetic to his plight. “I felt like there were about 5,000 professional golfers sitting around us in the stands watching,” he said. “But this is not easy.”
His chip avoided the first bunker with no problem, but the bunker on the other side became the problem as his ball was too fast and went over the green, finding the front left corner of the bunker.
“Oh no, Lucas is going to finish,” said an announcer on Open World. “Oh my God, look at that for a situation that comes our way.”
From there, Herbert never had a shot. From an awkward position with his hind leg out of the bunker, Herbert got his first attempt out of the sand, but not for long when he rolled back down into the bunker again.
“I kind of had one foot in the dugout, one foot,” said Herbert. “Look, in hindsight, it’s very easy to look at, maybe even from the stands, look at it and go, just take it to the green, but it wasn’t that easy. I felt like if I had hit it a little harder, I could have come back to the dugout on the other side. It was just a really hard shot. I had to go really low on it because I didn’t have a stance on the shorter side of the dugout, so I didn’t come out the way I wanted to and I fell back. Thankfully, I rolled where I could get a pause for a second.”
His second attempt, now his fourth shot, went better as the 27-year-old was able to slot into the dugout and explode to 18 feet.
From there, he put up two disastrous triple plays and put it back up to par, as he finished the day with a 71. The triple dropped him 19 spots on the leaderboard.
The first double or worse was during the first round on the 17th, which was the 10th most difficult first round starter, yielding only three birdies as of this writing.
When asked about the difficulty of pin placement on Thursday, Herbert said, “Honestly, it doesn’t matter where the pin is. I literally shoot at the same place every day no matter where the pin is.”