Coffins, Grave but get ‘Out of Hell in One’

enough – as that famous early 20th century golf writer Bernard Darwin once said – for “an angry man and his niblick”.

The names of some of these bunkers tell a chilling story. The fifth and 14th holes – both par-5s – share that huge, nasty pit (it’s all of 300m and 10 feet deep) known simply as “Hell”. Getting trapped in there – as Jack Nicklaus did in 2010 on his way to a quintuple-bogey 10 at the 14th – may well lead you to the gloomy conclusion that perhaps this is divine punishment for a wayward life.

Of course, today’s top players – as will be evident next week – are able to fly their second shots to the par-5 14th comfortably past Hell (and, we could add, find the green, sink the putt for eagle and feel like they’re in Heaven!).

But, for the most part, many of the aptly named pot bunkers will be in play for the unwary – like the deadly “Coffins” lying across the fairway where a decent tee-shot might land at No 6 and No 13, and the forbidding “Grave”, also at 14.

These bunkers, along with the heathery hills, the humps and hollows, the enormous greens with their mysterious slopes, the wind that whistles across the exposed links, the rain, the cold (yes, it may be summer in the northern hemisphere but this, after all, is Scotland), the blind shots, the terrifying Road Hole, the Swilken Burn, and the beastly Beardies (another cluster of sand traps) provide an intriguing and a searching test.

Quite simply put, the long hitters of today are not immune from St Andrews’ many troubles. A bad stroke will almost always be punished, and a judgment flaw will lead to a lost shot.

So, will we see Jordan Spieth in a Coffin next week, or our own Louis Oosthuizen – winner of the last Open staged at St Andrews in 2010 – trapped in the ghastly Grave? Hopefully not, and – let’s be clear on this – on a warm, windless day the Old Lady can be kind to players. Five of the par-4s are able to be driven on the firm, fast-running turf – translating to plenty of birdies (in winning the 2000 Open at St Andrews, Tiger Woods regularly drove some of these par-4s and didn’t visit a single bunker all week in setting an Open scoring record of 19-under-par).

Often, players do not like St Andrews the first time they play it. But they then grow to love and respect the Grand Old Lady. The great Bobby Jones back in the 1920s and 1930s fell into this category. “It didn’t appeal to me to begin with,” he said. “But the more I studied it, the more I loved it. And the more I loved it, the more I studied it. I came to feel that for me it was the most favourable meeting place for an important contest.”

How true that is. There’s a magic about the Old Course, and watching