The best Open Championships have one thing in common, and this week they will deliver it
SOUTHPORT, England — At the Open Championship, the sky can be blue or gray and it doesn't matter. The buildings may be sandstone or ivy-covered, and it's just beautiful. Bunkers can be made raked flat or with a small slope, and not much has been changed; they are still dangerous.
But the fairways? They can be green or olive or yellow and the difference is everything. At the best Opens, the fairways are there – choose your description – brown, hazelnut, granola.
Take a course along the way, at Royal Lytham and St. Annes – maybe six miles as the crow flies – where Cameron Smith and Lucas Herbert started preparing for the links last week. The fairway hue they encountered is best described as flapjackto that English delicacy of hard-baked golden oatmeal. Give the venue another two weeks of rain-free heat, and the Women's Open, on the beach at Royal Lytham, could present a historically tough test.
It's the men's turn this week, of course, at Royal Birkdale, which already has the look and feel of the '22 Open at St. Andrews, where Smith won, or the '18 Open at Carnoustie, where high shots went together like hardwood basketballs, or the '06 Open, where Tiger Woods' spikes could. still I roll over. In all three, the shawl was like the one in Birkdale, burnt brown in an instant as if it had been bathed in fire all summer. In many ways, it has been. The second half of June produced no rain in West Lancashire, and the beginning of July was no different.
Players who can't control their balls are confused by these beige fairways. Players can start salivating. Their imagination switch is on. They're hitting chippy irons and 60-yard putts and shots they haven't thought of … for about 12 months. And isn't that what we want to reward, anyway? The smartest gents have their balls on the line, guided by caddies that cost more yards than usual: handle the numbers again outgoing numbers.
These July days are long, and with 156 players on the field, Thursday and Friday sheets result in sunrise-to-sunset action. But if the Open has this hue, it's more taxing on golfers. Their brains are gone. Just walking on hard pavement does different things to your ankles, your toes, your heels.
With this special summer trip to the UK, golf fans are set to worry about the green. We're told that Augusta National is the best in the sport, and every April it lives up to its trademark, pink, purple, and white color scheme. . . and not just vegetables either the hunter vegetables. You can google “Pantone 342” — that dark, rich green that populates the most popular golf jackets, the packaging of those cheap sandwiches and the crosswalks. Green goodespecially if you're a fan of the PGA Tour, where it's all green, all the time. Take last month's Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands, where the ball is played only in the air, and compare it to the week before, at Shinnecock Hills, where there is a story that's what happens when the ball is on the ground.
That is fascinating golf. Inspirational golf. Don't-look-away-because-it-can-run-into-a-bunker golf course. That course up the road at Lytham doesn't feel close enough to test the world's best pros on the green. But with its army of seating areas around the lawn as uncompromising as your dinner table, yes, it will be challenging enough when the Open tour in 2028.
Royal Birkdale will combine the best of those two tests: as tough as you like, too too long, too. The course designers who specialize in renovating these century-old tracks have changed parts of the structure to force players to consider their balls much lower than before. Do yourself a favor again indeed watch the bounces on holes 5, 13, 17 and 18 this week. And remember that if it rained all month, this wouldn't be nearly as fun. With a hat tip to Mother Nature, these beautiful trails are as crisp as Wheat Thins and surrounded by fescue that resembles a field of wheat. How lucky we are! When Englishman Aaron Rai visited Birkdale two weeks ago, he saw a green golf course.
“It was really nice when I got here and it's soft, it's soft and it's green,” Rai said on Tuesday. “So it was amazing to play a few holes on Sunday, seeing the brown as it has been in the space of 10 days.”
The forecast for the next few days is exciting. Sun, wind, no rain and, perhaps, brown-out for years.
