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Ask the players at The Open this week for Royal Liverpool’s scoring key and you’ll hear a familiar refrain.
“Golf is about avoiding pitfalls and putting yourself in the right spot,” said Brooks Koepka.
Colin Morikawa, winner of the Claret Jug in 2021, added: “Obviously they always talked about staying out of the bunkers, but that’s really true. It’s a penalty if you hit it in these bunkers. That’s the first move this week.”
Scotty Scheffler, any ideas?
“If you avoid the bunkers, you can do whatever you want,” said the world No. 1.
Sounds simple, right? But it is not, of course. This is because there are 81 sandpits around the windward path, or an average of 4.5 holes. They pinch drive areas, cordon off greens like crocodile-infested trenches and generally act to intimidate.
“Any time his ball goes into the dugout, I get really nervous,” Scheffler continued. “I will just try to avoid bunkers at all costs.”
You rarely hear players talk about bunkers on US courts in such intimidating terms — well, in many cases, pros would rather their balls find sand than rough. This is a reflection not only of the juiciness of the long stuff in most PGA Tour venues but also of the relative gentleness of the sands. The bunkers are perfectly manicured in the US so that players Expect to get up and down.
At the Open Championship—and especially at Royal Liverpool—these calculations have been reversed, and not just because of the cavernous nature of the pot caches. The real secret to Hoylake’s bunkers’ difficulty lies in how they’re shoveled – and also in what lies beneath them.
James Pledger, Links Manager (aka Head Superintendent) at Royal Liverpool, explained a lot in A Video on golf presenter Iona Stephens’ YouTube channelOn the road with Iona. As Bledger gives Stephens a walking tour of the stadium, they pause at a newly installed shelter in the lane on the left side of the first fairway.
“If you throw a ball in there, it always ends up in the middle, which we collect with a spring rake,” says Pledger, referring to the rake technique traditionally used to clear leaves.
This is intentional – the club wants its members to have a chance to get their balls back to safety. But when the best players in the world come to town, that thinking changes.
“At the World Open, we’ll hold it in the straw, all the way up and flat,” says Pledger.
This modification did not go unnoticed by the players. “These bunkers have very wide teeth…” Michael Kim tweeted on Monday. “It can be hard to see with this video but the ball really does roll into the notch. It’s not plugged but not a good lie especially if you’re in a fairway shelter. Auto pitch 60 degrees. They might change the bunkers but that’s something to note.”
But friction patterns aren’t the only way Bledger and his team have made Royal Liverpool’s dugouts more punishing.
“We’re going to drill the bowl down to keep it flat so the balls run right on the lip,” says Pledger. in the video. “The next few days, we’re going to look. There are four or five pins stashed in there, and we’re going to pull it back so the middle of the stash is showing a little bit but the edge will be down and you’ll get the balls trapped inside.”
In other words, the bases of the bunker are laid out in such a way that the balls are collected not in the center, but on the walls.
Ergo, Scheffler concern.
“I feel like a lot of the dugouts in St. George had a tiny bit of an upward slope before they hit the face of the wall,” Scheffler said of the 2021 Open, and here the faces of every dugout almost seem to have a downward slope.
“I don’t think that’s something I particularly like on the golf course. I think it doesn’t reward good shots as much. If you’re closer to the green, you end up near the lip, and if you get a worse shot and you barely get into the bunker, you’ll actually play. So I prefer if there’s a bit of a slope there.
“But that’s what sets the majors apart. Every golf course is different and that’s a challenge, and I’m going to do everything I can to stay out of it this week.”
He will not be alone.