Carnoustie will push players to limit
CARNOUSTIE, Scotland – From the first days in the mid-1800s that golfers took to this ancient ground on the east coast of Scotland, Carnoustie has tested the bravery and skill of one and all.
Exposed to the variable winds blowing off the North Sea, Carnoustie and its sea of hazards featuring 112 bunkers, a minor river meandering through the course known as the Barry Burn, and rough, ditches, out-of-bounds stakes and gorse bushes has crushed the nerve of thousands of golfers, including the best in the world.
“When the wind is blowing, it is the toughest course in Britain,” Sir Michael Bonallack, former secretary of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, once said. “And when it’s not blowing, it’s probably still the toughest.”
Playing host to the British Open for the eighth time, the links remains a mystery from the first tee through the 18th green, a 7,402-yard trial that demands a variety of strategical decisions to arrive at a fruitful conclusion.
“You have to adapt,” four-time major champion Rory McIlroy said on the eve of the 147th edition of the oldest championship in golf. “There’s not going to be one player in this field that has a game plan on Wednesday night and is going to stick to that game plan the whole way around for 72 holes. “It’s just not going to happen.” Carnoustie was where Tiger Woods went an entire round without recording a birdie for the first time in a major. That was in the 1999 Open, the year Rod Pampling was the only player to match par in taking the first-round lead with a 71, only to shoot 86 and miss the cut the next day. And there was Jean Van de Velde’s Sunday disaster, when he made a triple bogey on the last hole when a double bogey would have won him the Claret Jug, the picture of him standing in shin-high water in the Barry Burn forever etched in golf’s hall of horrors. Conditions were so difficult that year that the course earned a nickname – CarNasty.
It’s been called other names throughout the years, ones not suitable for print. At Carnoustie, one can land their tee shot on the green at the par-3, 187-yard eighth hole and watch it roll out of bounds. The same is true for approach shots on the 18th hole, where players face the Barry Burn on two occasions.
The par-4, 499-yard 18th, with out of bounds running down the entire left side of the hole, is also the end of a closing four-hole stretch that could ruin scorecards. The 15th is a par-4 of 472 yards, the 16th a par-3 of 248 yards. The 17th is 460 yards and requires two carries of the Barry Burn.
Hogan’s Alley, the 580-yard, par-5 sixth, features a split fairway. While it affords the player the best line to the green, going up the left side is the riskier play because bunkers on one side and out-ofbounds on the other guard the tight landing area. The much safer route is to go up the much wider right side of the hole. In his only appearance in the Open, Ben Hogan successfully took the more dangerous route in all four rounds en route to victory.
The course’s only other par-5 is the 14th, where the famous, and menacing, Spectacles bunkers and their steep walls 50 yards short of the green await.
“There’s always going to be shots that you’re just going to have to grow up and hit,” said Padraig Harrington, who defeated Sergio Garcia in a playoff the last time Carnoustie hosted the Open in 2007. “You can’t hide all the time around Carnoustie. You just continually need to keep hitting big shots. There’s a lot of questions to be asked.”
A dry, warm summer has turned Carnoustie brown, bouncy and brick-hard and left the rough on the thin side. Some players are hitting 5-irons 315 yards, others are hitting driver more than 425 yards. The greens are running a tad slow and are receptive. High winds are not expected this week.
Thus, players are deciding on their strategy to attack the course, and whether to be bold and use driver as much as possible, or bring caution into play and use irons, even an 8-iron, off the tee on the par-4s.
“If I can hit driver and take the bunkers out of play, I absolutely am going to do that,” world No. 1 Dustin Johnson said. “This week, the bunkers, if you hit it in there, it’s a penalty shot. Navigating the bunkers is definitely the biggest key this week because the rough is not very penal. “So yeah, I’m going to hit driver a lot.” Woods will not. The three-time Open champion doesn’t feel the risk of hitting driver is worth taking.
“This course can be played in so many different ways,” Woods said. “The test is how we’re going to manage our way around the golf course, and a lot of it is dependent on which way the wind blows.”