Executive Golf Magazine

When in 2006, after a 39-year absence, the Open Championship returned to the links at Royal Liverpool so the dust was knocked off the cover of a book that contains much of golf’s finest history. It also enabled arguably the game’s finest ever exponent, Tiger Woods, to add his name to a list of some of golf’s greatest players – JH Taylor, Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones and Peter Thomson – who are among the 10 other champions crowned over the links commonly known as Hoylake.

Once through the entrance off Meols Drive the splendour of the club is there for all to see. The clubhouse underwent a significant re-fit before the 2006 Open – the locker rooms are everything that you’d expect of one of the finest clubs in the land - while Hoylake’s championship history is told around the walls of the spike bar. The club’s staff are welcoming and the steak sandwich I was served up to munch on while staring out over the famous links was just the ticket before or after an 18-hole mid January slog.

You would be foolish to judge Royal Liverpool at first view. The holes that run close to the clubhouse are on land bordered on two sides by the grand homes that run along Meols Drive and Stanley Road while the links between them is as flat as a cricket pitch prompting Bernard Darwin, the renowned golf correspondent of The Times for the first half of the 20th century, to describe the scene as “of dull and rather mean appearance”.

Soon enough, though, the challenge and charm reveals itself; Darwin completing the sentence by describing it as “one of the most interesting and difficult courses in the world.”

Open week in 2006 saw the Wirral scorched by a Mediterranean summer and the links parched to fast-bounding shades of brown. On reflection, it was probably the sun-burning as well as the inevitable lengthening of a number of holes in tandem with the course’s brilliant bunkering that made Hoylake the test it was. The course was certainly praised for the way it was set up and presented for its Open renewal.

In mid January, Hoylake offers an altogether different and bleaker challenge. Darwin described it as “blown upon by mighty winds, breeder of mighty champions”; on the day I was there, there weren’t many mighty champions in evidence yet the buffeting of a westerly blowing from the Dee Estuary was felt the moment I stepped out of the shade of the grand clubhouse.

“The first tee at any course is the scene of much nervous twitching yet this, above almost all others, is a poor time to panic”

It made the first hole, a 427-yard par four off the medal tees, a virtually unfair challenge; straight into the teeth of the prevailing wind, the feature of the hole is the internal out-of-bounds which creates a sharp right-hand dogleg, with the approach to a large green.

The white line is painted along the top of the two-foot high “cop” and runs virtually the full length of the hole to within a few feet of the right-hand side of the putting surface.

The first tee at any course is the scene of much nervous twitching yet this, above almost all others, is a poor time to panic. When in 1971 Tony Jacklin and Arnold Palmer put together a television programme compiling Britain’s greatest holes, the 1st at Royal Liverpool was among them.

It’s not that often that you can argue that the pros get it easy over us weekend warriors. But at the 2006 Open, the course was re-configured with the round starting at the 17th and finishing with the par five 16th which, by a matter of yards, is actually the closest green to the clubhouse.

That meant the tee shot down the traditional 1st was played as the 3rd. The 17th, as we know it, is a tough enough challenge for the handicapper. It too takes you out to sea – and often into the breeze -though it runs almost perpendicular to the 1st. At 429 yards it is long but to a wide fairway and the largest green on the course. And there lies a story.

The “old” 17th at Hoylake had much in common with the Old Course’s Road Hole at St Andrews where the approach was once as intimidating as anything offered by the 1st.

“The 8th takes you to the furthest point on the course from the clubhouse and, for the first time in the round, you feel truly off the flat and out into the dunes. It’s also where two of the game’s greatest names have come unstuck”

The “Royal”, named after the old Royal Hotel which housed the first clubhouse, had its putting surface right up against Stanley Road. It was said that its location offered the chance to actually putt out of bounds. Sadly, our progressively more litigious world did for the hole as we now know it and eight years ago Donald Steel was brought in to design a new green 30 yards in from the road. Though he produced a masterpiece some critics believe its size and undulations put it slightly out of character with the other 17.

The short 7th, “Dowie”, is another of the course’s great holes – it too made Jacklin’s and Palmer’s finest – and was also singled out by Darwin as “one of the finest short holes in the world”. Yet they were judgments passed before the internal out-of-bounds to the left of the green was declared in-play and the propensity for tee shots to be pushed into the dips and swales to the right was removed. That said, it remains a marvelous par-3; indeed the combination of all four on the course probably make it the best-served in terms of short holes on the Open rota.

The 8th takes you to the furthest point on the course from the clubhouse and, for the first time in the round, you feel truly off the flat and out into the dunes. It is a 493-yard par-5 played inevitably with the wind blowing from the sea to your right. It’s also where two of the game’s greatest names have come unstuck.

In his opening round in 2006, Woods took two blows to get out of the seemingly bottomless bunker to the front-right of the green while, 76 years earlier, an escapade on the opposite side of the raised putting surface – had threatened to derail Bobby Jones as he closed in on the second leg of his “Impregnable Quadrilateral”.

Jones wrote in his autobiography: “After a good drive my spoon second just missed the left edge of the green and rolled off some 10 or 15 yards down an innocent slope. It lay still in the fairway with absolutely nothing between it and the flag.

“The events of the next few moments caused much wonderment among the spectators and golfing authorities present. Mr Darwin said later that a nice old lady with a croquet mallet could have saved me two shots from this point. Yet I will swear that I took seven on that hole in the most reasonable manner possible.”

Once a 5, or perhaps greater, is marked on the card for the 8th, it is time to turn back towards home and a run of four holes with magnificent views over the estuary and waves breaking over the sands.

The last of these, the 412-yard 12th, “Hilbre” was the scene of the defining moment of Woods’ Open triumph. It happened in the second round when, as Woods did much of the week, he laid up short off the tee before rifling a magnificent 4-iron towards the flag. It pitched on the front of the raised green, skipped a couple of times, and dived into the cup for an eagle two.

When you walk off the 12th and on to the short 13th, you leave the dunes behind you and head for the flats where, once again, the cop that circles the practice ground comes back into play and the run of holes that switchback on one another all the way to the 18th.

As Darwin wrote: “They may not be much to look at, those last five, but they are horribly good golf.” And at an aggregate of 2400 yards it would be hard to disagree.

In comparison with other courses on the championship rota, Hoylake is easily accessible. It sits on the Wirral peninsula, a short drive from Liverpool, and just 10 minutes from junction 2 of the M53. Hoylake itself is a delightful small town with the clubhouse just a few minutes’ walk from the centre.

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