SOUTHPORT, England — Please do not enter the basement. The bunker sand here is real: coarse, heavy, black – hard. This Royal Birkdale course is not a country club, and its 104 residences will never be confused with the trappings of American country clubs. At Hartford, Colony, and even Augusta National, the bunker is often where you want to be. The American basement, often filled with man-made sand and fine-tuned with gas-powered machines, is a spin town. Hence the player-and-caddy phrase, “Get in the basement.” Players, week in and week out on the PGA Tour, can do magic. Here they don't know.
“This is linksland sand,” English golfer Matt Wallace said during a practice session on Wednesday afternoon. Wallace had been discussing how the sand at Augusta National and many other American courses is being trucked in. Subsurface sand here, apparently, does not exist. “Golf at Linksland is all about the sand. The ball sits in these bunkers. You can't hit it high. You can't do much with it, at all.”
Australian golfer Lucas Herbert, when he heard that Tiger Woods had won the Open down the beach in 2006 on the baked courses of Royal Liverpool without playing a single shot, said, “I signed up for that.” His caddy, Nick Pugh, noted that not only is the open sand different from the sand at other tournaments, it's also laid out differently. “These R&A approved rakes, with different teeth, ensure that there will be ridges” in these bunkers, he said. Those ugly valleys!
Michael Bamberger
Standing sod walls, a feature of bunkers throughout beach golf in the British Isles, are justifiably popular and challenging. But the grooves left by the R&A rakes by using real sand traps add to the trauma of it all, too. If your ball lands on one of these ridges, your options shrink quickly.
Yes, the sand in the basements here is real. To use the phrase of the farm-to-table movement, it's “locally sourced.” At Augusta National, sand is trucked in. In almost all new courses, sand is trucked in. Course operators order sand in the shape and size they want. At Royal Birkdale, golfers get what nature has to offer.
The course here never comes within half a mile of the Irish Sea. There is a wide, flat beach, a wide range of dunes, a coastal road, another wide area of duneland and a trail. You can see a small mountain of sand, dug by the club, between the course and the dunes that border it. There is a tractor next to it. That sand finds its way to where it is needed.
That mining plan might sound, to Americans who grew up protected by dunes to fight coastal erosion, like rebellion. The opposite view prevails here. The excavation of these mounds is actually authorized by a national conservation group called Natural England. First, trucked sand leaves a carbon footprint – it has an environmental cost. What's more, golfers say this stretch of dune is too stagnant, with invasive trees holding back the dunes and stopping their natural movement. These original linksland courses were created by wind currents that sent sand and grass flying. Wallace seemed to understand all that only instinctively when he said, “This is the sand of linksland.”
The Old Course at St. Andrews, on the east coast of Scotland, takes you down the coast. Turnberry, on the west coast of Scotland, takes you right down to the sea. When people think of British Open golf, that's what comes to mind: the beach, the beach, the sandy beach. Royal Birkdale is not. It is not difficult at all against the sea. But such a duney. There is sand like any course in the open circuit. People often say that Royal Birkdale is the most American Open course. Hmm. Here's another look: It's as connected as a lesson can be. It's as sandy as it gets. This should be a big and true Open.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at [email protected].
