Royal Liverpool Gold Club - The Open Returns
- Three new greens constructed on this historic links
- The R&A have declared that the Open Championship will return
- The work started in October 2000 and the reconfigured course opened in May 2001
Plaudits for the Open championship’s return to Hoylake came thick and fast after Tiger Woods’s third victory (23 July 2006). In calling it “one of the greatest championships ever staged”, Tiger reflected in his moment of triumph, “It was a fantastic test. The fast conditions allowed every player to be creative. It is how golf used to be played and how it should be played now”.
Changes to the links, which last staged the Open in 1967, were part of a wide ranging plan submitted to the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in 1999 by Donald Steel described in The Official History of the Club, published in time for the Open, as “a fine amateur golfer, a writer of distinction and now a world-renowned golf course architect”. It recounted how “there were to be alterations on every hole, some small and some incredibly complex”.
The extent of the changes embraced three new greens, new tees, a critical review of the bunkering, emphasis on creating fast running links conditions to which Woods referred (especially around the greens), and creation of space for grandstands and the circulation of vast crowds. Aside from Tiger’s comments, Sam Torrance, Ryder Cup captain in 2002, wrote, “It’s a great course; the best protected by bunkers I’ve ever seen. They are in such good positions everywhere”.
In spite of its normal practice ground being such a central feature at Hoylake, there was a need to find an alternative. Practice grounds are as much the focus of attention as the course at a modern championship and a move across Meols Drive to Hoylake Municipal proved ideal. The Club's acquisition of two pieces of land outside its boundaries was another major advantage but the major part of construction work that took place in the winter of 2000/2001 centred on a total revision of the bunkers.
Although it proved to be the wettest winter on record, work on virtually all of the bunkers continued almost uninterrupted, the contractors carrying out the excavation and the Club's green keeping staff under Derek Green supplying the skilful finishing touches in the form of the characteristic revetted faces - or sod wall faces as the Irish call them.
In addition to the bunker reconstruction, vast areas of turf were laid, the last as late as March. However, the course was back in play by May 2001 presenting a new challenge that soon won warm acclaim.
The Daily Mail's conclusion was "far from being out-dated, as some feared, the course and its set-up pointed the game in a new direction. The usual response to the remorseless march of new technology is ever more length but at Hoylake the requirements were imagination and shot-making".
