The Return to Hoylake

With the Open Championship coming to my college team’s home course, I figured it was time to go back.

Tony Dear | Photograph by David Cannon/ Getty Images

Eight years ago, Mike Creswell, an English financial planner from Hertfordshire, had a client who sat on the Greens Committee at the R&A. Shortly after the 2006 Open Championship at Hoylake’s Royal Liverpool Golf Club, the R&A man told Creswell that Tiger Woods had spent his practice rounds stalking the greens and locating soft spots on which it might be possible to land the ball and stop it before it bounded out of control over the back.

You might recall that in 2006 Hoylake— which hadn’t hosted an Open since 1967— had been burned brown by a hot, dry spell that turned the links into a pinball machine requiring careful course management to avoid spending time in the rough and fairway bunkers…or behind the green. Woods won his third Claret Jug that week using his mightily effective long-iron stinger off the tee to avoid the trouble. The stinger took most of the credit for Woods’s emotional victory (it was his first major since the death of his father 12 weeks before), but his typically thorough study of the putting surfaces was likely just as important.

Creswell doesn’t have time to stalk greens finding soft spots. And neither do I. Preparation for our round at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in early April consists of stuffing bacon baps and cups of tea down our necks, then swapping stories from our spells on the Liverpool University golf team—his from the early ’80s, mine a decade later.

The University of Liverpool Golf Club Alumni Day is played on the venerable course the college team calls home and which Robert Chambers and Old Tom Morris’s younger brother George first laid out in 1869. Just a nine-holer then, it has since been added to, redesigned and bolstered by Harry Colt (1924), Fred Hawtree (1960s), Donald Steel & Martin Ebert (2000) and Martin Hawtree (2007). Regardless, today we walk between the dunes and avoid the course’s notorious internal outof- bounds, knowing golf has been played on this ground for 145 years.

Creswell left Liverpool in 1986 but didn’t return to Hoylake until 2005. He filled the 19-year gap the way most golfers of a certain vintage do—by getting married, building his career, and having kids. It was inevitable, though, that one day he’d start feeling pangs. “I had to go back,” he says. “Royal Liverpool is such a great course and I had such fond memories of it. For a start, I love links golf because I hit a high fade and therefore have no fear of crashing into the trees 30 yards down the hole like I do at my home course. Hoylake is a different challenge every time you play, because the wind dictates the tempo of the round and changes speed and direction so often. And I always loved the view across the Dee Estuary from the ninth tee to the Clwydian Hills in Wales. It’s one of my favorite places in golf.”

Like Creswell, I’d allowed a lengthy period to grow between leaving Liverpool in 1991 and returning to Hoylake. It had been 23 years since I’d seen the old place in fact, during which I too had got married, worked hard, and had kids. Unlike Creswell, however, I had another pretty good reason for not having been back in so long—I’d emigrated to America with my American wife who had spent three years in Britain trying desperately to get used to the weather, driving a stick shift on the left side of the road, our coin-operated electric meter, and Yorkshire Pudding.

Mike and I are joined by Arthur Jennings, a one-handicap and former county cricketer who had graduated from Liverpool in 2005. He too hasn’t played Hoylake in a while, so he is likewise as eager as Mike and I are to take on the course “…blown upon by mighty winds, breeder of mighty champions” as Bernard Darwin once said (JH Taylor, Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, Peter Thomson, Roberto de Vicenzo, and Woods have all won Opens here).

On the first tee, we are greeted by a short, heavily-bearded man wearing a thick rain jacket and holding a clipboard. He wants to know if we use a rangefinder, asks to see the grooves on our wedges and enquires about our reaction to the anchoring ban. It isn’t clear who this gentleman is, but I tell him I will never use a rangefinder because knowing the exact yardage to the hole doesn’t seem to make one iota of difference to my score or my level of enjoyment, my grooves are indeed competition-worthy, and the anchoring ban is ridiculous and should have occurred 50 years ago. The man smiles, jots down my responses, and walks away. Before I can ask who he is, our group is called to the tee.

Swale to the right of the 12th green

The 1st hole for the 2006 and 2014 Open Championships—called “Royal,” because it sat just across Stanley Road from the now-demolished Royal Hotel that served as the club’s original clubhouse—is usually the 17th at Hoylake. Before the ’06 Open, however, the R&A decided the existing 18th was too weak a climax for the Open Championship so the 17th and 18th became the 1st and 2nd, and the par 5 16th the finishing hole.

Over the small kop to the right of the 3rd is OB

The move made sense, but it did mean the fantastic, if controversial, 1st hole now became the 3rd. The 426-yard bruiser may not be terribly long, but out of bounds stretches down the entire right side of the hole threatening both the drive and the approach. For members who have not had the chance to warm up and work the slice out of their swing, it must be an absolutely terrifying prospect on a cold winter’s morning. It’s not much fun for Open competitors either, even if they have spent an hour on the range and played two holes already.

The hole—known as “Course” for its link to the Liverpool Hunt Club’s racecourse on which Chambers and Morris’s original nine holes were laid out—is perhaps Hoylake’s most famous. But it is only one of many great tests on a course that is perhaps lowlier than the sum of its parts. Hoylake is not as beautiful as Turnberry, nor do the names of its holes suggest anything as romantic.

It is not as difficult as Carnoustie, nor as brilliantly strategic as the Old Course. It is not as quirky as Royal Lytham or Royal St. George’s. Its sand hills are not as grand as those at Royal Birkdale or Royal Troon, and it probably doesn’t have quite as many great holes as Muirfield. It is pretty flat for the most part, and has ocean views from only three or four holes.

Approaching the green at the par 3 6th

And yet, and yet… there isn’t a single weak hole out there. Some are better to look at and more fun to play than others, but whether by beauty, intrigue or difficulty, all 18 justify their place on an Open Championship course.

“In 2006, Tiger said how great he thought Hoylake was, and I think the pros will love it this year,” says Jennings. “There are none of the blind shots some of the other Open venues have, and there certainly aren’t as many funny bounces as you get at a course like Royal St. George’s. It’s just a great, fair test.”

After the round, during which Jennings demonstrates why he plays off one, Creswell shows how he maintains a solid five handicap, and I prove that flying across the Atlantic Ocean then driving 300 miles is no way to tune up for a course that has no breather hole, we each shower, don a jacket and tie and repair to the upstairs dining room for roast beef. Despite having played Hoylake dozens of times during my time in Liverpool, I never once went upstairs in the clubhouse. Seeing all the club’s memorabilia is almost as big a thrill as playing the course.

The green at the short 13th overlooks the Dee Estuary

After cheese and port, the gathered alumni stand and toast the Royal Liverpool Golf Club. The Club Captain addresses the room then gives way to the wee, bewhiskered man—minus rain jacket and clipboard—we’d met earlier on the course. Turns out he is Dr. Steve Otto, head of the R&A’s Research and Testing department who no doubt played a pivotal role in having the anchored stroke banned. Fortunately he doesn’t bring up the rather pointed opinion I had given him earlier in the day, but instead gives a surprisingly amusing speech for a math PhD and professor who once worked with NASA on a top secret military project. Otto takes golf equipment marketers to task, busting their most inane myths and highlighting the absurdity of commercials that claim this particular club gives you 15 more yards. “Fifteen more than what?” he laughs. “And whose drives are being measured?”

Following dinner, my new friends and I have a little wager on who might win this year’s Open. Arthur says it’s Lee Westwood’s turn to land a major and Hoylake will suit his near flawless ball striking. Mike says it will be a big hitter like Nicolas Colsaerts, Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy. Me? I go for Tiger Woods because he hadn’t yet told the world he’d undergone back surgery days before. There’s no guarantee Woods will be back for this year’s Open, but if he does return in time, is feeling properly motivated and can swing a golf club without discomfort, I still think he can find soft spots on the greens more often than anybody else.

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