A Few Holes to Watch at the 2023 Open Championship (and How They Evolved)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my ball in a bride egg Friday Egg, the dread and Frida Egg Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Bride.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the the huff Course.

00:00:34
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Friday Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and it is the day before the Open Championship. Very excited for things to get under way at Royal Liverpool. In this episode, we're going to be talking about a few of Hoylake's most interesting holes and how they evolved into their current form. My guest is going to be Joe McDonell, who knows more about the history of this course's architecture than just about anyone. So there's been a lot of discussion early in the week about internal out of bounds at Royal Liverpool. Basically, there are out of bounds lines very close along the right side of both the third and eighteenth holes. As you would expect, a few intrepid Twitter users posted photos of these lines without much context, and a fair amount of people got pretty angry about them. This is unfair. Internal ob is terrible, et cetera, etc. Now. Joe briefly addresses this topic later in our conversation, but I just wanted to clarify a few things about it. First of all, there's a separate discussion to be had about the ob rule, which hasn't always been the way it is now. Stroking distance is a brutal penalty, and it leads to very conservative play around ob hazards. I'm happy to hear a debate about whether that's a good thing, But when it comes to Hoylake specifically, people should know that these ob lines that they're seeing on social media haven't just been painted there for the tournament. The lines on three and eighteen actually travel along the top of a built up berm that encloses a practice area. Often you'll hear these berms refer to as cops. That's what they've been called locally for a long time. So the cops and the area inside them have been there since the beginning of the course. They've always played as hazards. They've always been features that visitors have remarked on. In fact, I was just doing a little bit of research on Hoylake and I revisited Horace Hutchinson's book from eighteen ninety one called Famous Golf Links, and in his chapter on Hoylake he immediately, almost immediately refers to the cops. So this has been a word, a concept that has been in use and discussed a lot for that long, you know, since the early eighteen nineties. So these weren't just invented by the RNA this week to make things harder for the players. And initially the practice area didn't even belong to the club, so it was a proper boundary line what people would consider real ob as opposed to internal ob. So this is just a long way of saying that the ob lines that you're seeing on three and eighteen are not completely arbitrary. They are traditional elements of Hoylake, and you can certainly say that they're lame, that they shouldn't have been there in the first place. That's your opinion. I guess I think they help make the course distinctive, but there can be reasonable disagreement about that. The thing that's not really accurate is to imply that the ob was just invented for this tournament, as internal ob usually is. All right, So the rest of this episode will be my interview with Joe McDonnell. It's a really fun one. Joe's a great guy, so knowledgeable about this subject. I actually can't believe how deeply steeped he is in this course and its evolution. So he's coming up right after this break. All right. This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast is brought to you by Club TFFE. You can check out CLUBTFE at the Frida Egg dot com slash membership. CLUBTFE is our subscription, our membership, our community. It is the single best way to support the content that we do at the Frida Egg. And it's also a really wonderful place to talk about golf and to read some more stuff about golf. So we're posting things there just about every day. Recently, just this past Friday, we had what we call a weekend chat post, you know, every Friday we put up just a place to chat, and the most recent one was on links golf links, travel and stuff like that, and we just have some really wonderful comments in there, just great writing about people's experience ands with links golf courses and travel in Great Britain and Ireland. And I got a lot out of just reading what people had experienced. It gave me some ideas for what I want to do when I travel there, as I hopefully will do someday soon. So that's kind of what CLUBTFE is all about. It's about that community. But in addition to the content, in addition to those comments sections and those other people who are members that you get to interact with, there are a lot of benefits for clubtf You get early access to our events, you get an annual number gift, you get an ongoing discount in the pro shop. So there's a lot that you gain from joining CLUBTFE. Again, it's at the Frida egg dot com slash membership. All the information is there. It's one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and I would love for you to join us there. All right, back to the episode, John McDonald, you are the head of imagery at the golf architecture firm Clayton, Devrees and Pond, as well as a longtime member of Royal Liverpool. As I understand it, when did you start playing at the course.

00:06:15
Speaker 2: Hi, Garrett, A long time ago. I joined when I was I was young. I don't think I was even teenager, and that was about nineteen ninety two, so quite a way back.

00:06:26
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, So you know when you say you joined, did you join with your family you were living in the area.

00:06:33
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.

00:06:34
Speaker 2: I grew up near Ish to Hoylake, four or five miles away, and my dad had been playing for some years before I was born, and yeah, I sort of got the taste for it. A bit later, probably about the age of about eight or nine, I got really into messing around with chipping and putting and then and eventually was able to take full swing shots, you know, and then started playing a little bit with my dad after dark. And I remember playing the old.

00:07:01
Speaker 3: Before it was changed. I did two. So yeah, memories go right back.

00:07:06
Speaker 1: This was a very fortunate place to grow up, as I'm sure you've thought a number of times.

00:07:12
Speaker 2: Amazingly, I think every year that goes past now I'm more appreciative of the sort of winning the golf lottery in a certain sense.

00:07:21
Speaker 1: So at what point did you become interested in this course beyond just playing it? At what point did you realize that you wanted to study it?

00:07:32
Speaker 2: It was when it was when I was deprived of it, So, you know, absence making the heart grow fonder and all that sort of thing. I moved down for work reasons. I moved down to London, and I was there for a long time, and part of my job involved getting on a long train ride to and from the office, and I spent that time reading books. And some of those books happened to be Hoylake related, Oylake history stuff. And I've always had a soft spot for landscapes, and you know, beauty of landscapes particularly sort of start an end of the day when things start to pop. And yeah, I was reading these great books that people had written, and you know, not all of them were crossed over. You know, there's different information in each of them, partly because they've been written in different eras. You know, there might be twenty years between two books, and you know, each one was sort of giving me more info. And I couldn't believe it. All these years that I've been playing golf at this place, I felt so familiar with the ground, yet I'd never really considered just how it had been used and how much it had been pushed and pulled and changed over all these years that it had been functioning. And by virtue of being away from home for such a long time, even though I would dop back and see family and friends for things like parties and weddings and whatever else, and I would play golf, you know, continue to play golf. As a distance member. I was getting really into the history of the course because of this slight, you know, distance between me and the golf course. So I would really look forward to coming home and playing golf and then spotting these things that I'd read about, but I couldn't, obviously very easily just go and get it. So it was yeah, lovely to come back and find these things that people have talked about in a book, but seeing them in the flesh and realizing fabulous.

00:09:09
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about some of those things today, but before we get there, I'm going to ask you a really hard question, which is, what do you love most about this golf course. Often I hear, especially from Americans who are just watching the Open at Royal Liverpool, that they find this course somewhat dull. You know, that it's a little bit flat in some places. It doesn't really pop on television except for obviously a few holes which are a little bit more dramatic. You know, I'm aware that that is a simplistic take on the course, certainly, But what is your argument for the course's greatness? What do you love most about it?

00:09:48
Speaker 2: Being a naturally a natural contrarian, I would say I think I slightly love the fact that the course doesn't instantly get you. I think, you know, I know it's a bit of a hit answer, but I kind of like the idea that it takes a few plays before it really lands. I also like the same thing about the old course. I think that's the beauty of those courses, the fact that it does attract some negativity from people who assume that by playing a course once they sort of are justified in slagging somewhere off. I mean, it's quite a bold thing to do, isn't it, To go to a course the lots and lots of people have loved for one hundred and fifty plus years and decide that you are the authority. It's quite suthing, But yeah, I love it. I just love the fact that it doesn't get you straight away. Perhaps you know it does some people, and then it just sort of reveals new secrets over time, and I think it rewards those who keep coming back. And there are relatively few people that I know who've played the course a handful of times and don't love it. I think the more you play it, the better you get to love the place.

00:10:50
Speaker 1: All right, let's dig into the real meat of what we're talking about today. So just to give listeners an idea of the course's evolution without giveing like too too deep in the weeds, I asked you to pick a few holes that you wanted to talk about and dig into some history with. And the first one I'd like to touch on with you is what will be for this Championship seventeen. It's the new short Part three designed by Martin Eebert that plays out to the coast. We're going to see a lot of this hole. We're going to hear a lot about this hole, but its history actually goes way back to the beginnings of the course basically, And I find that really interesting because most people just know about its most recent changes and the switch and the routing and things like that. So how did this hole begin?

00:11:46
Speaker 3: Okay?

00:11:46
Speaker 2: So is that the course was first set up as a nine hole course in eighteen sixty nine. At that point, the hole that we've just been talking about was not part of the routing. Those nine holes were closer to the old racetrack, which is sort of the field inside the practice ground that sort of ran around that. Those original nine holes were closer to today's clubhouse and the old clubhouse, which was the Royal Hotel over on the other side of the property. But the hole that we want to talk about first appeared in the routing in the second iteration of the eighteen hole course built in eighteen seventy one, and that was the same year that it received its royal patronage from the Duke of Connaugh, who was Queen Victoria's young son. So I say the second iteration. What happened was we can get into the hole in one second. But the first nine holes were appended to twelve, a few extra holes were added, and then as far as we can see from the records, there weren't basically nine holes tacked onto the original nine. And these nine holes went off down southwards alongside the coast, and they were sharing a lot of very cramped space. They weren't a great addition, and it took six months I think before they realized, okay, let's have a rethink. We can put a name to I think a main name to the changes was Jack Morris, who was George Morris's son, who came down sort of slightly after his father and Robert Chambers set up the original nine holes. So Jack Morris was son of George and nephew of old Tom. So he came down and served as the club's long standing pro for many, many years, and also was highly instrumental in the club's initial changes, routings, adaptations, everything else. So he should be credited with a lot of the good stuff that remains. So he was the first guy, we think to set up what was known as the Rushes Hole, and it doesn't quite occupy the same space as today's little Eye hole does, but it's been through a set of changes that have almost seen it sort of jump and flip flack. And this name Rushes was retained as it moved across these sites to where it is today. Should we go right back to the start and carry on?

00:14:00
Speaker 3: Wale?

00:14:00
Speaker 2: Do you want to talk about what it is today? I think we've seen quite a lot of coverage of what it is today.

00:14:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's the hole that it plays out to the ocean and people. We'll see it a lot this week. Yeah, why don't we go back.

00:14:13
Speaker 2: To the start cool, so right at the start this Rushes hole, and the word Rushes was named for that. The whole site along the beach was coated in these coarse sea rushes, a bit like a westward ho for anybody's played oryal North Devon that those sorts of sea rush that are really intense, an amazing sort of seaside ball grabbing hazard. So those were all over the dune side and actually made that sort of portion of land quite hard to use for golf at the time. But there was enough to form this hole called Rushes and it played. It was a short path three and it played on the sort of flatish land. We hadn't got to the June bit yet by that time, so in eighteen seventy two very little of the dunes were used for golf. As I say, they were covered in sort of course rushes. The ground was almost unusable for anything kind of golfy without huge amounts of work being done.

00:15:02
Speaker 3: So anyway, the.

00:15:03
Speaker 2: Rushes hole played on a flatish portion of land. And my pal Sam Cooper, who you I think you may have mess or spoken to in the past. Sam and I were working on things with drones at the time and Sam had taken this one particular picture that stood out to me straight away. I'd been looking in tandem with this picture at some old history books and showing these sort of rudimentary maps in the books. Some features were just there and they jumped out at me. And this photo had taken at very low light in the evening, and we could see there was the Russia's green. It was right where today's black tea for the thirteenth members whole fifteenth Championship hole is and it's got some really bold features that you can still still see in the ground today at certain times of the day. There's a strip bunker sort sort of gouge bunker across the front of the green, and then these sort of pock marks, these old pop bunkers, and then right in the middle, it's amazing, the black tea is there, and that would have been the green surface, so it's still there. It's quite quite incredible. So that when I discovered that, it set me off.

00:16:08
Speaker 3: I was, how can I.

00:16:09
Speaker 2: Put all of these together and take it right from day one eighteen seventy two and seventy one right through to today and see how the chain connects. So that was the start, and then the tea moved over to one side to accommodate a slight change in the holes previous, and then again what happened was in nineteen twenty three Harry Colt was invited to do a full course master plan, which involved lots more than just this hole. But he suggested, in changing the hole that came before the Hillbrey hole, you just shift the tee to the other side of this Russia's Green, so that instead of playing on a sort of flat at grade tea to green, you'd be playing from a raised tea, which was closer to his proposed green. Anyway, they went for this. They retained the Russia's Green and had it playing from almost one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. John Ball was quoted as not liking this at all because he was still of the sort of old mentality in the Victorian days where you should absolutely, under no circumstances get away with a bad shot. And bad shot to him was some sort of skull or thinned or you know, not crisply struck iron, which would in those days obviously just dive headfirst into the garbage in front of you. And he thought by virtue of being on a raised tea. It was like giving a free pass to a bad shot. So he was on the record as absolutely hating this idea, but anyway, they stuck with it and they had this raised tea, and then it was decided about four years later, so late twenties, Colt was invited back again to come and build a new green, an entirely new green, which he did, and we can just about see that green in the bottom of a great old aeriel from the late twenties. It's just at the very bottom of the frame. So if you don't if you don't really know what you're looking at, it can be a bit confusing. But when you sit with it for a bit and you kind of draw some lines to give yourself some orientation sixteen seventeen, this sort of thing you can see. Actually he's got both greens in view in this picture, so at the base of the picture you've got the new green which he's just built, and then the other one which is to its side. And that once again confirmed my suspicions about where this green was. And it's kind of cool because you're looking at this fresh green which had just come off of the block.

00:18:19
Speaker 3: And it's wild.

00:18:21
Speaker 2: I mean, you've got some very kind of scraggy sand around the outside of this putting surface, playing from the raised tea that was previously used for the green we were talking about before. He retained the tea position but shifted the green to where the former Russi's hole was, So the last iteration of the Russis hole that was where the green was. But his surrounding bunkers were very very wild. Now, I don't ask me my opinion about it, but I think today's green that we've got, the little eye that Martin EBA's built, has got these sorts of sand features and elements around the green. And what's amazing is that there is a bit of mirroring of this. So so actually it's, uh, it's interesting to see because because it doesn't look as though it necessarily belongs to the course at that time in the late twenties.

00:19:11
Speaker 3: And it's funny with.

00:19:12
Speaker 2: The criticism has been leveled at the whole for not looking as that it belongs in the course today. So it's it's an interesting one history sort of repeating. But the funny thing was Harry Colt was invited back a few years later to come and soften the whole. It was considered too difficult by the members.

00:19:29
Speaker 3: So there we go. I won't go any further.

00:19:32
Speaker 1: Is it a preview for the next few years, we'll see.

00:19:35
Speaker 2: I don't ask me, I won't get.

00:19:39
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not not gonna, not gonna force you there. But that's highly interesting history. As we know, you know, the past is not the past, but that that's that's fascinating. So basically, the original Russia's Hole that came about during the time of Jack Morris, who, in addition to being the nephew of Old Tom Morris, was I guess the cousin of Young Tom Morris and so and George Morris was in part responsible for the original layout of the course. So lots of wonderful connections here to the great golfing family of Scotland. But in any case, that Russia's Hole didn't play directly out to the ocean, as I understand it, but was more oriented kind of in that direction. You would have been more or less looking at the ocean on kind of a diagonal when you were playing that original Russia's Hole. And then Harry Colt was the one who came in because of the rerouting of the Hillbrey hole, which we'll talk about soon. Harry Colt was responsible for reversing the direction of that hole to the same green, but it was determined that that hole, when you just reversed it was sort of unsatisfactory. So a new green was built. And you know, am I right that that green location that Harry Colt, you know, when he eventually softened to that green, that is ultimately basically what the hole was by the two thousand and six twenty fourteen open pretty much.

00:21:12
Speaker 2: I think the major change in how it appeared and how it looked was that the fashion four bunker faces to be raised in order to make a suitable test for the top pros, you know, and sort of better players. This idea of keeping bunker faces low had gone out of fashion. So it's quite a small green and there were sort of five or six levels of revetment added to the top, and in doing that it had created much more of a sort of bowl shape from the tops of these bunkers leading straight into the green surface. So actually it had gathered a sort of bowl feel to it. Particularly from the tea, it felt as though you're playing into more of a channel but that was never really how it was pre sixties. I think I think sixties was the turning point where where revetting took over across the course and across famous links courses really came the fashion. And you know it's now derryger and more revetted revetments being added to make these faces sharper and pop bunkers. They've got smaller and that's what we were left with, so quite quite severe hazards on the green sides, gotcha?

00:22:15
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, let's go to number fourteen for the championship, the Hillbrey Hole. A lot of people consider this the best hole at Royal Liverpool. I've heard that quite a bit from people who are familiar with the chorus. So why don't you start with telling me about the hole that we'll see in this championship, what its basic character is, what its strategies are, and then take me back through some of the history that you discovered about it.

00:22:45
Speaker 2: So the tea that the guys would be playing from this time right at the back was a F. W. Hartree addition in the pre you know, ahead of the sixty seven Open that Davis Enzo won, he added that, which is a great tea. It sits sort nestled into that back dune there, and that was Yeah, that hole has basically been the sort of same shape for a long time now. It's you know, it's a long ish drive. We remember Tiger playing his playing his two iron off the tee all around the place in two thousand and six. That was just another example, and he played a great t shot. But it's for our money if you ask regular members who are playing that hole, he just about found one of the worst places you could find on the fairway if you want to approach the green with any confidence, particularly as he had a tailwind. So if I remember rightly looking back at it, he had wind slightly behind him. He was playing his four iron, and for those who've played it, they'll probably see it in their mind's eye. But on the short left side of today's bunkers, you're then playing over a slightly blind shot initially because the first june cuts into your line of play, and then there's another june in front of the green which cuts into your line of play. So really his flag was kind of double blind. So actually, given the choice, you know, of course he was a genius, but you know whether or not he'd actually want to go back and put his ball. There is another question. Entirely I doubt it. You probably want to be right to that and allow yourself a look at the flag at least, because they can really tuck a flag around the back of those dunes and take it out of your sight unless you actually accept. Because it's a forty five degree dog leg left. You know, if the further right you go, that sort of doubles your distance away from the flag, So you know, there we go. But it's a great hole. I mean, the beauty of the green size is that it has quite a severe runoff on the right side of it, and it sits on a plateau, and the right side, up until about thirty years ago, wasn't mon as short as it is today. And I think the character of the hole has really it's just taken a massive boost since the decision was taken to shave that down and create this variety of shots. So it's become a great hole. I mean, it's always been a good hole, but it's become a really great hole. Should we go back a step?

00:24:56
Speaker 1: Absolutely?

00:24:57
Speaker 3: In evilution?

00:24:58
Speaker 1: Ok, you have a video on this that I've watched. I'm not sure if it's for public consumption. But I've got to say it's one of the most fascinating golf architecture history videos that I've ever seen, the way that you sort of piece together what is happening at this green site. So yes, please do tell that story.

00:25:20
Speaker 2: Okay, we have a selection, like most clubs do, have a selection of aerials, aerial imagery from over the years, you know, going right through the decades. In UK, we don't tend to have many that go back beyond the First World War, Second World War apologies, so that they tend to be forties and onwards.

00:25:38
Speaker 3: If you have something from.

00:25:39
Speaker 2: The thirties or earlier, it's quite it's quite rare. I know, the US has lots of that sort of thing, you know, thirties, twenties everything, definitely.

00:25:47
Speaker 1: But it's more rare prior to World War Two, just assuming that the technology for creating these kinds of aerials advanced. And something about those twenties and thirties aerials, which I believe you discovered as well, is that often they are kind of stitched together with multiple different photographs, and so sometimes they can be a little bit funky.

00:26:09
Speaker 2: Precisely, that's exactly it so you know, we know about distortions of lenses and fish eyeing and the sort of weird things that happen when you try to piece two things together. But we at the club have a nineteen thirty five aerial so in that you can see there's quite a pronounced overlap of the photos that have been used for this collage this mosaic, and the overlap happens to cross almost through the Hillbury Green the fourteenth. So over the years, when I was trying to merge these these aerial photos together to try to put together the sort of evolution of these holes and how they change, because when you flick between them, it really helps you to see these characteristics that may have been lost or added over the years. And in doing that, I'd assume that the way that the twelfth Green wasn't really matching up from nineteen thirty five to the nineteen forty eight area that we have. The reason for that was just heavy distortion in the lens of the camera that had taken the shot. So I just sort of put it to the back of my mind and accepted that that was that. And we had lots and lots of photos of the green from different eras and decades showing these sort of different looking green this Harry Coult one which was surrounded by pop bunkers, and not just pop bunkers, it had one at the back of sort of splash bunker. And it's really interesting because you look at those photos and the assumption was that's just how the green was. It had bunkers around it. It looks a bit slowpier in the old pictures, but you know whatever, that's just how it was. These days, there's no bunkers. It's got the big run off, and it looks a bit more like a tabletop in terms of plateau ish than it used to. But I just put that down again to some sort of position that the camera person was taking the shot in and some sort of distortion or like trick of the camera. But actually going back and really studying it hard and messing about, I was able to slice where I thought this sort of badly overlapped photograph was, and in doing that, it suddenly dawned on me that actually it looks like the green was about fifteen yards further right and away from the water than it is today. And also when you look back at those photos, you see, okay, this is what's happened. There's a big sloping front to back angle of the green, probably also slightly left to right as well. I suspect, with the advent of I don't know, interest in faster green speeds, it might have been too slopy to accept a decent sort of stimp value. I hate that word stimp, but you know I mean, but you know, a fast running green, it had become sort of impossible to put pins on it or cut it short. I would suspect that that was one of the motivating factors for slightly leveling out the green. But in whatever whatever happened, it appears that that the green has been shifted fifteen yards to the left and flattened into a sort of platter and the land now that we play as this big runoff which we were talking about earlier, you can see it almost looks like those are borrow pits of earth that have been used to vault up the land. So instead of having this big sloping axis green, it's a much more sort of flat tabletoppish thing with this severe runoff.

00:29:16
Speaker 3: We'd love to.

00:29:18
Speaker 2: Credit somebody with this piece of work because it's great. I mean, it's become one of the very best features on the course. And as I said, it's turned what was already a good hole into perhaps the best hole on the course and a contender for one of the best on the open rotor in my opinion, in my massively biased opinion. But I just think it's a fantastic hole. And we don't know who to give credit to. There's a strong chance it's Guy Ferrar, who's the sort of famous secretary of the fifties era at Hoylake. He was heavily and massively instrumental in it, any of the changes that took place at that time. He is directly credited with several other changes, but nobody. We can't put a name to this one. So that's that. I mean, there's a chance Cult was involved. We I think it's pretty clear.

00:30:02
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:30:02
Speaker 2: Adam Lawrence is releasing his book about Cult soon. I don't know whether he'll he'll shed any light on this, or at least I can have a read and see if I can pull anything out of it. But the chances are Cult I don't think was working beyond the Second World Well, he was certainly quite old by that stage. I think he died in fifty one at the age of whatever. He was eighty two, but there's a chance he may have consulted and advised from Afar.

00:30:27
Speaker 1: And this change in the green would have been prior to fred Harte's time at the Classics. I understand it. Yeah, okay, because fred Hartrey made changes. I believe he was maybe asked to do a plan in the late fifties or fifty nine even, but made his changes in the run up to the sixty seven open. Yeah, apologies if those dates aren't correct, but that's around when Fred Hartree Martin Hattree's father and kind of a member of the next generation of British architects after the great generation of Colt and Mackenzie and Simpson, et cetera. So Fred Hattree was there in the post war era, but it was more postwar than this change seems to have taken place. And you know, just a note for listeners. The reason that Joe and I are so interested in what's happening here is that original Cult green that you're talking about. When Cult redesigned the hole and built this new green, it was very different from the green we see today and that we associate with one of the best holes in Great Britain, and the fact that it's not an original cult green it comes as a bit of a shock because I and I'm sure you consider Harry cult to be sort of sacricynct, one of the best golf architects of all time, maybe the best, certainly one of the most influential, and so whenever we talk about features that Harry Colt built, we do so with a sort of ah, like this is clearly there's something that has to be great about this. But what we're confronting here is a green that is no doubt really wonderful and that maybe a lot of people think is a cult green because this is a cult golf hole. But we're finding out that some unnamed person, you know, not the greatest architect of all time, is responsible for this particular green. So for golf history golf architecture nerds, this qualifies as a bit of a shock.

00:32:39
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

00:32:40
Speaker 2: When I have to give a shout out to a chap who goes by Willie Park Junior on Twitter, I posted his handle is Willie Park Jr.

00:32:49
Speaker 3: One Willi Park Junior one.

00:32:51
Speaker 1: It's not the actual Willie Park Junior who designed Sunningdale in nineteen oh one. We assume that this is not this is not the man himself.

00:32:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, he lives with Elvis.

00:33:00
Speaker 2: We Yeah, he said something on a post I put on Twitter about this hole, and I'd put a photo on there, and he'd said, has the green been changed? And we'd all, everybody I know had assumed it had not been changed other than bunkers being removed, you know, in a moderate bit of shaping or whatever else. But the you know, realistically it was it was Harry Colt's green minus bunkers, and I went back to it, and that's what really spurred it on. I had to look at it, and I was doing I was working with the Open to do some some historical deep dives on the holes, you know, showing these pictures, and as I was doing it, it just I couldn't get away from that. I just couldn't get away from it. And it's so him coming from this angle and doing this other thing in tandem. The two came together, and I spent several hours trying to get this thing, you know, clear in my head. And the real kicker was that you could see across these these sort of photos from the different eras and championships. I think it was an amateur championship in thirty nine, so so that one just before the outbreak of war had the old Colt Green, the old sort of tilted thing going on, and then post war in the forty eight aerial it's gone. So whatever happened was it certainly wouldn't have been during the war because things were put on hold. Basically the course was kind of unusable for most of those years, and then you know, the close of war. It must have been quite soon after in those sort of four years for somebody to have come along and or three years, i should say, to come along and done what they've done. So you know, that's been there since as far as we can see it, some three years after forty five. It's pretty cool, but not go. We don't know. We don't know. Maybe it's Harry Cult from Afar, we don't know.

00:34:41
Speaker 1: Well, I think the green today is terrific. And one thing about what you're saying that's striking to me is that the Colt Green was well to the right of where today's green is. And one of the things that's really wonderful about that whole I think, you know, just as just judging from Afar, I haven't been to Royal Liverpool and played it myself, but you can confirm whether this is true. That one of the great things about the location of the current green is that, as you were sort of describing earlier, from certain places in the fairway, it's blind. If you're more aggressive, then you can get a view of the green. Now. I would assume that if the green were more to the right, that it would be more visible from a variety of positions in the fairway. And so what moving the green to the left has done is it sort of raised the stakes of the drive because it is more blind now, it is more behind kind of those big dunes, that big dune ridge that it sits on, and so the angles are different, the sight lines are different, and I think they seem to work really well. Now with this location of the green.

00:35:56
Speaker 2: There's no doubt it's become a real strategic beauty. And you know where it fits in the round, you know, it's kind of late central. I just think it's a great hole. It's a really fab fab hole. The cult change came off the bat. Its predecessor played as a straight more of a straight hole, but the drive would have been in front of today's Alps Green on those sort of hummocks at the time when the Alps Green obviously wasn't there because Harry Colt at the same time built his Alps Hole, which will come onto. But the drive would have played as a blind one over the shoulder of the dune which six next to the Alps Green onto a sort of more flat landing zone with bunker's left and right in channels, you know, very sort of throwback Victorian stuff, and playing to a green that sat off the sort of distant side of today's first leg of fairway. On that hole, it was kind of had a pond to one side, which was sort of central to the rushes hole that played next. But yeah, that was a straight hole, and Bernard Darwin was famous for saying that he actually lamented the loss of that hole and and sort of missed it and thought it was better than its replacements. There you go, you got John Ball slagging off his tea, and then you got you got Bernard Darwin saying that he's made a crab hole, and yeah, you're getting it from all sides. So yeah, so poor old cult he's this.

00:37:14
Speaker 3: This is the thing.

00:37:15
Speaker 2: If somebody said to me, like like you mentioned the other day, what you know, if you were to restore the course to a cult course, you know, if you could, let's just say you could do that, how would you go about doing that? Why would you why would you not go about doing that? My answer would be, I think it takes a brave person to be absolutely sure what's cult? What was cult or Hoylake. That's the I think that's the problem we have. The closest we can do is say, okay, he turned up in twenty three. We know what his remit was, which was to round off these huge rectangular well certain holes were huge rectangular greens sixty yards by sixty yard, big croquet lawn things, you know, make them all more irregular and interesting to that sort of age. And and look at the bunkering, because we used to have these strip bunkers everywhere that were the turf walls, you know, and then these trenches next to them used as hurdles in lots of cases, like a sort of just a lateral hurdle in front of teas and greens, and it was a bit sort of.

00:38:15
Speaker 3: Steeplecha.

00:38:17
Speaker 1: His basic, uh, you know, task was to de victorian as the course it had had a lot of elements that we would associate with Victorian architecture, kind of angular geometric cross bunkers and and squared off greens precisely.

00:38:34
Speaker 2: So yeah, that that was some of some of the remit. The other one was to get rid of blind shots where you where you could. So it's not it's actually not a surprise when I say that back to myself when we talk about his Hillbrey Green site and the blindness of the of the drive. Perhaps he was a bit scared of installing a new hole which would have been pretty radical to the likes of Bernadarwin, you know, which which contained a blind approach shot should you not hit in the right spot. It's an interesting one that could possibly be a reason for that, But anyway, that's just conjecture.

00:39:05
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's one of the Sorry, I'll let you go in a second. But what you're saying reminds me of one of the great facts of golf history. And one of the really interesting things about reading what people were writing about golf architecture is that whenever there's a change to a course that we all consider to be a vast improvement, especially when you look at changes to the old course at Saint Andrew's that happened at a great pace in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. When we look at those changes today, we often say those were good changes, because by the time we got to the early nineteen hundreds, that course was amazing. But when you look at when those changes were made and look at what people were writing about them, very often they are regretting the change and feeling nostalgic for what the course was before. And that's That's just one of the really fascinating things about history is that when you're when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to see whether something is truly an improvement because only time tells, of.

00:40:18
Speaker 3: Course was it.

00:40:19
Speaker 2: I think it's Bill Corr who said, you know, time is the architect's greatest tool.

00:40:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, Cory, but both Bill Cora and Ben Crenshaw'll love to love to use that line, and it's It's absolutely true.

00:40:30
Speaker 3: It's spot on, isn't it.

00:40:31
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, okay, if you give something thirty years, you give it a chance for thirty years and it's still not working, you think, okay, you know, maybe not, but yeah, there we go.

00:40:42
Speaker 1: You were about to say something about blind shots, I believe when when I interrupted you, well.

00:40:46
Speaker 2: We had we had a few blind shots across the course, one of the you know, shots being the twelveth the old Hillbrey drive, and part and parcel of changing those two holes was to I'll get now onto the alpshole if that's okay.

00:40:58
Speaker 1: So yeah, absolutely, yeah, we're going to go back to kind of twelve and thirteen in tandem. And yeah, so those are obviously the holes right before the Hillbrey hole which we were just talking about, and also have some cult lineage.

00:41:10
Speaker 3: To them exactly.

00:41:11
Speaker 2: So what's what's crazy about these two holes is that the whole of the sort of June ridge, as I said earlier on was deemed unusable. Their first forays into using those those dunes and more interesting pieces of land were using teas because obviously you can imagine that tea is very fairly easy to install in comparison with a fairway or green, so that the tea started to make the way into the dunes, playing out of the dunes onto the sort of slightly less Juney land. But over time it was it was considered we can actually do it now, you know, cult taking his hole up to the left and onto the dune side. And and also Cults Green, which back in those days, in the early twenties, it would have been a beachside green. So his his ALP's hole that we have today which is now next to the marsh, would have been much closer to the water. Water used to come almost right up to the to the side of the green there.

00:42:04
Speaker 1: And now, just for clarification, that's because the geology was different, not because the location of the green was different.

00:42:11
Speaker 2: No, the geology only. Yeah, so pre cult what happened was this was a blind path.

00:42:17
Speaker 3: Three.

00:42:19
Speaker 2: The name Alps was actually inherited from the previous hole, so at one time it was called short Alps, and there was a Alps, there was a long Alps, and the long Alps involved the two holes merged into one, so they were quite Yeah, there was quite an experiment going on down this sort of dune land at the time. So they have what is roughly today's d hole which will play as twelve, and roughly the old Alps hole which will players thirteen. Those two merged into one, so you played two long shots across from the twelfth tee and then you played a final shot which was a blind one straight over the top of this peak. And the peak is where we played the fourteenth tee shot from the Whore Tree tea, so over the top of that into a sunken not totally sunken, but a sunken sort of square Victorian punch bowlish style green and that was your yours, sort of three shotter called the Long Alps. And then they split it into two, and they called the first one Alps and the second one the Short Alps. The Short Alps is the one that's been replaced by today's Alps. The other Alps. This is getting confusing, isn't it. The other Alps is now called D. However, that D played as a strata hole, and it used to play almost directly straight. It was named Alps initially because it's in front of the tea. It had three bunkers June Ridge, and those three bunkers became more formalized and became known as colloquial as the Three Sisters bunkers. They were taken out in the fifties because people were picnicking in them.

00:43:57
Speaker 1: You know, a common problem.

00:43:58
Speaker 2: We have it at every Yeah, Obviously, there's a there's a footpath that takes you from the Pinfol Road over to the to the beach, and it's one of the paths that goes across the course and it's just a public right of way. And yeah, there were three bunkers then and they were just too appetizing for certain people, so they couldn't help themselves. So those got those we got rid of. But yeah, you used to play this, this blind drive over the top of these bunkers or this ridge into a fair way waiting beyond, and then instead of turning left like we do today up and sort of tabletop green onto onto a June, you would have carried on straight with your your second approach shot into a more sunken green, which was you know, traditionally Victorians loved a sunken green because it sort of hold water and you didn't have any irrigation in those times, so it was seen as a really positive thing to find a site that was good for a sort of bowlish green. And that green would have been in front of today's championship tee for the telegraph hole which is now sounds grape, so that, yeah, you can sort of see the you can see it in your mind's eye, so that that back to when you're watching them play that seventh hole for the Championship in front of them is a big, sprawling sort of amba sanscrape, and that was the old.

00:45:05
Speaker 3: D green.

00:45:06
Speaker 1: The story sort of answers a question that I've had about the name the Alps for today's thirteenth Championship hole, and that is that an Alps hole usually refers to a hole with a blind shot, where you're playing over a dune to a green that's hidden on the other side, and that's not the case with today's Alps hole. It is not a blind shot. It's definitely in some large dunes by the standards of Hoylake, but it's not blind right. You can see the green surface from the tee.

00:45:40
Speaker 3: True.

00:45:41
Speaker 2: And it's really interesting that the sort of naming nominica chure of the holes is it's inconsistent because we've like today's Little Eye took over from Rushes. It was briefly called Rushes when it had just been installed in late twenty nineteen early twenty twenty, and I think it was called Rushes for about a year before the decision was taken to change the name of it. The previous example of this being the Dowie Hole, the famous, infamous Dowie hole, which was synonymous with internal out of bounds and being brutally polishing. But when that was changed and remodeled in the nineties early nineties, there were some members who are very upset that this name Dowie had been retained because it was hearkening to a hole that was entirely different in character, even if it was sort of occupying the same space on the course.

00:46:29
Speaker 3: So anyway, I.

00:46:31
Speaker 2: Don't know, don't quote me on this, but I think there were some people who said, well, we've changed the character of this whole so much we can't possibly call it rushes. So there was a vote taken, I think, and then Little Eye was chosen as the name. But that has precedent because we've across the years, starting right from the very get go, there have always been whole names on the course. Punch Bowl, incidentally, has been long running, and punch Bowl is one of the holes that has been basically in the same space forever since eighteen seventy one seventy two routing.

00:47:00
Speaker 1: The championship eleventh hole, I believe.

00:47:02
Speaker 2: Right, yes, correct, Beggy Pont eighteen ninety seven, So since the first Open Championship at Hoylake in eighteen ninety seven. The punch bowl hole has been there and has been called punch Bowl. We've also had the name punch bowl at the club since the eighteen seventies. And I was trying to find another example of punch bowl used an older club, but I can't find it. Maybe somebody, maybe somebody knows better than I do, But eighteen seventies, I don't know of a punch bowl older than that.

00:47:26
Speaker 1: Maybe some much so that your home club invented the term punch bowl. Is that what I'm hearing.

00:47:33
Speaker 2: It's a wild claim, isn't it. But you know, there you go. If somebody knows of an earlier one than the eighteen seventies, then go.

00:47:42
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, the open invitation. I think that that's yeah, that's not a bad conjecture. And certainly the club has been so enormously influential in golf that it would not be surprising if that name, which is basically the name for an entire type of green complex now indeed originated at this club. That I don't think that would be too surprising to me.

00:48:05
Speaker 3: No, you know, it would be a bit of fun.

00:48:07
Speaker 2: It's definitely not solid history, so I'm not going to go down that road and start sort of you know, dying on that hill. The but but C B McDonald was a member of Hoylake, as he was member of multiple places. But yeah, he was definitely a member of Oilake. So who knows, maybe it seeped into his consciousness and then when he was writing his his things he didn't remember to quote Hoylake.

00:48:29
Speaker 1: Maybe it wouldn't be the first time that CB mcbattell didn't exactly give credit to something or someone that maybe deserved it.

00:48:40
Speaker 2: So no, indeed, But yeah, no, it's great. The whole names have pushed and pulled. We've lost so many, we've gained many, but there are a few sort of long standing names that have stuck around, one of those being Alps. But as I described before, it's chopped and changed all over. The show originally called Alps for those that June Ridge rather than the one that's next to today's Alps. So actually it's inherited the name, yet doesn't really have the feature that gave it its name in the hole, so.

00:49:05
Speaker 1: We good stuff, all right. So basically we've gotten a picture through some of this historical description you've done of the most striking stretch of Royal Liverpool, which is those holes along the dune ridge near the estuary. These are holes that I think people are going to focus on during the Championship because the visuals are bold and beautiful and involve some fairly large dunes. A lot of the rest of the course is somewhat less dramatic, and some holes in fact are on an old race course which is quite flat. But some of these holes, to me, even looking at their designs, are really interesting and there's a lot to pay attention to and be in tristed in when players are on these holes. Could you maybe pick out one that you think people should keep an eye out for on the inland portion of the course, the kind of northern I don't know if I have my directions right, but the northern area of the course, which is a little bit flatter, Is there a hole there that you think is underrated and people should keep an eye out for.

00:50:24
Speaker 2: Well, I'd say there's a hole that is among the most divisive, certainly on the course, possibly on the rotor. Obviously, playing is the third in the Championship, which is a slightly different feeling to how we used to playing it, which was stepping up sometimes without a practice swing and getting on with it. You know, it's got that out of bounds looming on your right side the whole way down the hole. You've also got the massive clubhouse to your left, probably full of people on the putting green and the terrace outside sort of watching you, you know, waiting for you to smother hook onorn into the putting green and possibly in just somebody. You know, it's just a great hole. It's a tricky one because it's not you know, as we say, it's not visually spectacular. It doesn't instantly grab you. It's a weird start. It's a really weird way to start.

00:51:14
Speaker 3: Around a golf.

00:51:16
Speaker 2: But I think the beauty of that hole is that it's incredibly difficult, and nobody building a golf course today would get away with building that either at all, especially not as the first hole in a routine. But I think that's what makes it great. I think it's got so much character that isn't necessarily immediately visual, but the character just it stays with you. It has an impact, a huge impact. I think it's a terrifying hole. It scores comfortably the most difficult for members on the scorecard to par. It's fearsome, and it's a hell of a start, and if the wind's blowing, you know, in any direction, doesn't matter where it's coming from. If the wind's blowing, you've got to do things to stay in bounds to make a score. Most people take a boat and say that's a good start, you know. And I know we talk about bogies and pars being ridiculous and vulgar and not meaning anything, but when you're you're mentally trying to set up for a game and you take double on the first hole, it's always a bit depressing, isn't it.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: You're like, I've been done by it again.

00:52:15
Speaker 1: Not again.

00:52:16
Speaker 2: It's just a great hole. And I think what's fun is that I know that the pros hit the ball that much further and it becomes slightly less of a daunting thing when you're playing it as your third hole and you've had time to settle, but still that out of bounds. The cost is huge to go out of bounds, and I imagine we won't be seeing many go out of bounds because they won't really get TV coverage, you know, unless it happens to one of the top dogs who's doing really well and making a charge. If they do something horrendous and go out of bounds, then we'll see it. But I imagine a few will go out of bounds there and they might might not make it on TV, So want to watch. That's had a great evolution as well, because that was a true bogie five back in its original day. It used to have some bunkers going down the left side, which you can still see the footprints off, you know, very much, sort of protect a second shot. And then it used to have an insane unbroken strip bunker that went right round the outside of today's practice ground cop wall. So you had bunkers on one side, you know, this this horrendous strip of bunker, and then you had three bunkers protecting the left side of the approach. You've got your clubhouse, you've got out of bounds. It was just set up to slap you in the face. I mean it's like it's the absolute opposite of your gentle handshake, and I love that.

00:53:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's great. And it is the third hole in the championship routing, which I always regret a little bit because as a starting hole, I find it almost somewhat hilarious.

00:53:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's absurd. I mean it's I just love it for that. I love that. You know, if you allowed the sort of the general consensus to have a say in your architecture, I think you're doing something massively wrong. That's what I would say, general consensus of wisdom of crowds almost the opposite of when.

00:53:58
Speaker 3: It should be.

00:54:00
Speaker 1: If you're going to commit to not doing a gentle handshake opener, you might as well go all the way in the other direction.

00:54:05
Speaker 3: Hole.

00:54:05
Speaker 1: And that's what you that's what you just have to respect about that hole.

00:54:09
Speaker 2: Do you think before we finish on that hole, because I think it's interesting, do you think we're going to get anybody who takes it over the corner on the drive?

00:54:15
Speaker 3: Oh?

00:54:15
Speaker 1: Man, I've thought about that. It's such a risk. And players, especially today, are so averse to playing near out of bounds, right, that's poison. They'll do anything but be out of bounds. But what do you do on that hole? Like, because left isn't very good either. You know, if you're blowing it into the rough on the left, I mean maybe they'll be looking for kind of trampled down lies from the galleries stuff like that. That that could be the play ultimately. But if the rough is sort of proper over there on the left, then that's a terrible approach shot to be hitting into that green, and dangerous in its own right because the out of bounds is still kind of there up by the green. So I don't know, what do you think? Do you think players are going to be taking that line over the wall?

00:55:08
Speaker 2: Imagine it goes for most holes. But I think the wind, if there is wind, which is I think is forecast where you know, if we get some wind, then that will play a huge part in decision making, particularly on that whole if it's helping left to right, which would actually be not the prevailing. If we do get an unusual left to right, maybe they'll send up a nice controlled high fade land it as soft as they can and feed one up there to about fifty yards. Maybe it'll be a rare, rare thing, won't it Because the risk is so high. Just leave you with this one. I know we were going to go then sorry, I can't can't help but say this one. You know where people have a bit of a moan about internal out of bounds, I mean, let's not get on to why it's there. You know, the club didn't own it in the initial days of you know, the setup of the club and such. But imagine that we're just a huge bank of gorse, not out of bounds. Just go, you know, imagine at Dornick. You know, you're playing brilliant holes like the sixth. You know, the gorse is just the gorse. It's there, you know. And if it were gorse or oil instead of out of bounds, you know, would you say that the strategy or the shape of the hole is somehow at fault. It's not. It's just brilliant. The punishment are the same. You're not going to find your ball, are you?

00:56:20
Speaker 3: You know so?

00:56:20
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, for a bank of gorse rather than out of bounds, would that somehow make it a better hole even though the punishment is the same and the strategy is the same.

00:56:27
Speaker 3: You know.

00:56:27
Speaker 2: I just think it's when you moan about internal out of bounds, I just think you're onto it wrongmin.

00:56:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's there. It's the course as it's presenting itself to you. The thing about that area that cuts into the numbers first hole, Championship, third hole at Hoylake is that it has a historical basis. That wasn't just built there to mess with people. It was part of the history of the property. And so to me, completely fair game to deem that out of bounds and to make it a hazard on the golf hole. Now, I am curious to know how the dynamics of the hole would change if it were a hazard penalty as opposed to an out of bounds penalty. Just a curiosity. I don't think the hole would necessarily be better, but I think it might change the calculus a little bit when it comes to aggression from really top level players.

00:57:25
Speaker 2: Well you say that, I mean it's funny that in the fifties it would have been a one shot penalty until the rule change. So actually, in the early days of the whole, there's some there's some debate and not fierce debate. There's a lot of shoulder shoggings. Say, I honestly don't know. Is that in an old picture, hand drawn sketch, or at least a couple of them that I've seen, it's marked as field and then very clearly in other places it's defined as unplayable field. And you know, putting sort of two and two together hoping to get four rather than five. You know, you say, okay, does that mean that actually you could play from that field or not? I mean unplayable obviously is self explanatory. But it's very clearly not marked as unplayable field, and there are other areas that are marked as field rather than unplayable field. Now, I don't know whether that means that the club owned the land or whether it was in play. There was certainly no practice going on at that time, and this map is from the eighteen seventies, so you know, this idea that it may have been playable if you wanted to is a really interesting one. So if you wanted to take her as the crow flies line and accept that this field, which was probably occupied by sheep or something, you know, maybe a load of hoof prints and whatever else in there that you don't want to play your ball from, that was a deterrent enough. And if it was coming with a one shot penalty of just the stroke penalty rather than the stroke and distance which came many years later, maybe it was on the cards if you wanted to take on that risk.

00:58:51
Speaker 1: Who knows, Joe, The answer is always bring back the sheep.

00:58:56
Speaker 3: Bring back the sheep.

00:58:58
Speaker 1: That's always when it comes to sheep, just bring them back. So that's my humble suggestion to the great club. All Right, So people can find your Twitter account at Joe mcd Underscore Golf. I would not say it's the most effective user name that I've seen in the history of Twitter, but that is indeed where you can be found and you post all sorts of wonderful stuff there. So I would highly encourage people to dig into some of the work that Joe does. We haven't even talked about the visuals that you do and how you create those, but they're really wonderful looking and so keep up the great work.

00:59:37
Speaker 3: Joe.

00:59:37
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on the podcast and I'll talk to you again soon.

00:59:40
Speaker 3: Thanks Garrett. That was great.

00:59:53
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Podcast was edited by Matt Rusius.

00:59:57
Speaker 3: Thank you, Matt.

00:59:59
Speaker 1: One thing to keep an eye on tonight or tomorrow, depending on where you are in the world, is that for the very first tea times at the Open Championship, I'm going to be manning the fried Egg Twitter account. That's the Underscore Fried Underscore Egg on Twitter. I'm going to stay up late on the West coast and kind of be reacting to things as they happen during the very first phases of the Open. It's one of my favorite parts of the golf year, is just that little vibe that gets going at the very beginning of an Open Championship in America. A lot of us are either up extremely early or up late to watch that stuff, and it's a true kind of golf sicko moment. So for the first round of the Open, basically, we're going to have a fried egg up all night kind of deal. I'm going to pass the keys to the Twitter account to Brendan Porath after a couple of hours. He's going to get up early on the East Coast to start tweeting from the Friday Egg and we're just gonna have a little bit of fun during that first round of the Open Championship. It should be really great. It's one of my favorite favorite days of the year. Really, it's kind of like a holiday. And since I'm staying up late, I'm probably going to be drinking a little bit of wine, So we'll see how that goes. All right, Thank you for listening, and we will be back again early next week with a recap of this open