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The 147th Open Championship returns to the site of some clbadics over the years – Carnoustie in Angus, Scotland, just across the North Sea from its most famous brothers, St. Andrews. Some of the most brutal and tumultuous openings ever played came on these links (more on that in a minute), but the boy has produced some wonderful champions over the last century.
Here are nine things to know about this unpleasant course, the Opens it hosted and what it all means for this 2018 Open Championship.
1. The hardest by the numbers and the anecdotes: Two of the four most significant openings since the Second World War were played at Carnoustie. Gary Player won the 1968 Open on this course with a score of 289. Paul Lawrie won in 1999 with a score of 290. It's not just a matter of numbers. The consensus among the pros is that of the courses of the Open, this one is the hardest.
"It's just a tough and bloody golf course, especially if there is rough," said David Howell at Golfweek. "I had the word" Car-nasty "for a reason: the first time, when Lawrie won, I remember seeing Sergio crying, it's hard, it's the hardest in the wind, then it's brutal, and by the time you get to those last four holes, you're already drained. "
Three-time defending champion Tiger Woods is in agreement. "I think I did a birdie on the weekend and I finished three or four recesses of the playoffs," Woods said at AP. "It was ridiculous as it was hard."
This 1999 Open has resulted in a total of 2,660 over par for the field. A bloodbath there was one in major. The same is not expected this year with the rough down and the fairway is accelerating. But be careful, if the weather gets up, it could go crazy.
Here are the winning scores by year at the Seven Carnoustie Opens
- 1931: 296 (Tommy Armor)
- 1937: 290 (Henry Cotton) [19659009] 1953: 282 (Ben Hogan)
- 1968: 289 (Gary Player)
- 1975: 279 (Tom Watson)
- 1999: 290 (Paul Lawrie)
- 2007: 277 (Padraig Harrington) [19659015] 2. This famous burn: You know this- there, the Barry Burn snaking through the last holes and touching the 18th hole several times. Here is an overview of the overhead costs near box 18.
He knew (or maybe sadly) the last two Opens as Jean Van de Velde took the triple bogey seven after hitting him towards the front and literally find ankles in things (a lot more on that here). Padraig Harrington hit in the same burn twice (off the tee and near the green) but made the game six and beat Sergio Garcia in a playoff
Speaking of the burn, I thought that Was a pretty good description of the burn and the course of a 1968 Sports Illustrated article on the player's victory.
Carnoustie is so difficult because of several reasons, the main one being that there is no safe place to hit a golf ball. The course is located on a flat plain of sandy soil between the settlement of small, square, stucco cottages that is the city of Carnoustie and the great beaches of the North Sea. But the flat plains do not smooth the fairways, at least not here. The fairways of Carnoustie are shaped like waves of green waves and are as hard and dry as marble.
The rough is deep, the bunkers abound and the greens almost as firm as the fairways. Tying this dangerous package is a serpentine ribbon, a twisted and filled trench of water known as Barry Burn, who walks three times on the fairway 17 and crosses the 18th three times. When the wind blows at Carnoustie, what it usually does, the only safe place is in the clubhouse.
3. How the course started: There are rumors that golf at Carnoustie was played as early as the 1500s. It's pretty hard to believe (though I liked to drop a ProV1 box on these guys), but we do know that the club started in the mid-1800s and had 18 holes in 1867. [19659002] It was designed by Old Tom Morris and Allan Robertson, but later reformed by James Braid in the early 1900s before the first Open in 1931. Finally, James Wright made some modifications between the 1931 Opena and the 1937 Open which was formed one of the toughest three holes in the game. Here's Golf Monthly
In time for the 1937 Open, local man James Wright has completed a new design of the last three holes. James Braid had reworked the course in 1926 but many thought his finish was not severe enough and Wright's modifications have remained largely unchanged to this day.
4. Hogan's Heroism: One of my favorite statistics in golf is that Ben Hogan won the only Open that he had ever played in 1953. The career slam is a legend, and apparently he has never materialized. Hogan won this Open by four strokes, and he does not even want to play. Here's the Golf Monthly again
But Hogan almost came home when he discovered that his room at the Bruce hotel did not have a private bath – after the accident he needed to soak his legs every night. He and Valerie, his wife, moved to the Tay Park guest house in Dundee, but his first view of Carnoustie, the burnt alleyways, the messy nature of the layout and the slow greens, were not to his taste. He offered to buy a lawn mower.
"When I saw the conditions and the transition I had to make to play at any decent golf course, I thought:" I made a mistake when coming ".
Even more crazy, it is that The Open apparently made you play with a different ball at that time!
He arrived in Scotland two weeks before the event for s & # 39; acclimatize, train on the links and get used to playing with the smallest British ball.
5. More clbadics: Gary Player and Jack Nickalus clashed in 1968, just before that Nicklaus continues his series of absurd events in the 1970s. The player hung him by two on the back of an eagle at the 14th hole par-5
"In the last round, "Player told New York Times " I hit a 3-wood 14 at 2 feet for an eagle if there is a career shot, this one qualifies, he gave me a two-stroke lead over Jack Nicklaus, and that was my margin of victory. "
Player also recently lamented the sad state of the modern game where players do not agree with scores below 300, which is hilarious and amazing.
" If you have a wind of note, 300 could win the tournament "Player said." And I would have liked it to happen because it would give people around the world a lesson they are not aware of that a golf tournament can to be won with 300.
6. Carnoustie proselytizers: St. Andrews is the home of golf, of course, but Carnoustie could be the basis of the greatest movement of this sport to the mbades of the world whole: here is the Times .
But the charm of Carnoustie In the years of golf formation, more than 100 young people emigrated to the United States as pros of the small Scottish town near the North Sea with its small street of small stone houses, his railroad tracks and his Gary Player described him as "a good swamp, spoiled", but in the truest sense, Jack Nicklaus' development sits there: one of Carnoustie's missionaries was Stewart Maiden, who inspired Bobby. Jones, who inspired Jack Nicklaus, who now inspires his successor somewhere.
7. The course of the man of thought? It has been argued that it is a course of thinking man. Certainly, his list of champions – Tommy Armor, Tom Watson, Hogan, Player and Padraig Harrington among them – were great managers of their own games. I think all open courses are to some extent human tracks, but when a course changes as much as this one (see below) and more (not less) options are presented , I can see the evidence
8. Scottish Drought: You have all seen the pictures and videos now. Carnoustie has cooked because of an unusually hot and dry weather, and the result is a firm and fast experience that looks more like golf in a parking lot than near a sea. How it goes affect the event, no one knows it.
He could take the driver off the hands of the players and mean, as I noted above, that the thought of your way around the course becomes paramount. But I still have not figured out if it makes the event any more difficult (because you can not stop the ball anywhere) or easier (because it's happening for always).
"The experience of links is exceptionally important – go back to Hoylake in 2006 to see something so fiery," Padraig Harrington said recently. "It plays in the hands of guys who can put the ball on."
Whatever it is, it will be different from what you normally see on this track – either in 1999 when 6 over won the event or 2007 "But I think that with the this year's setup – the lack of rain, the fairways being firm, the fescue being not thick at all – it almost looks like a golf course completely different from what I am. " I usually hear, "Jon Rahm told AP
9. Home: The last hole at Carnoustie is called" house. "It's okay, and it's a place where everyone will mix to arrive Sunday night
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