Carnoustie will push Open players to the 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 have 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 champ Rory McIlroy said on the eve of the 147th edition of golf ’s oldest championship. “There’s not going to be one player in this field that has a game plan on Wednesday and is going to stick to that 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 Pam- pling 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. 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.
At Carnoustie, one can land a 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.
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-of-bounds on the other guard the tight landing area. The much safer route is to go up the much wider right side.
The 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. And you’ve got to believe in yourself, don’t doubt your strategy and don’t lose your head when things go wrong.”
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 a tad slow and are receptive. High winds aren’t expected.
“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. So yeah, I’m going to hit driver a lot.”
Tiger 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,” he 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.
“There’s not a lot of opportunities to hit the driver just because the ball is going to be rolling 80 yards. It’s just hard to keep the ball in play.
“Feel has a lot to do with playing the Open. And here, especially with these conditions, you’re going to have to use your mind on every tee box.”