NEWSLETTER
The 151st Open Championship returns to Royal Liverpool Golf Club for the 13th time, continuing a tradition that began in 1897. It was a frequent Open host until 1967 then was forgotten about for nearly 40 years before entering the Open rotation again in 2006. Royal Liverpool has consistently identified and rewarded the truly elite as some of the most illustrious golfers in the history of the game have raised the Claret Jug on its hallowed grounds including Walter Hagen (1924), Bobby Jones (1930), Tiger Woods (2006), and Rory McIlroy (2014).
Royal Liverpool Golf Club is not located in Liverpool but 10 miles northwest on the Wirral Peninsula on England’s northwest coast between two rivers in the village of Hoylake, the nickname which is commonly given to the course. It’s a true links layout that sits atop sandy loam deposited ages ago by the River Dee whose shoreline forms the western edge of the course. As is typical of links courses, there are sand dunes, which at Hoylake mostly lie in the southwest portion of the property. But compared to other links tracks, the majority of the course is dune-less and one of the flattest links courses found anywhere. In fact, it’s as flat as a horse race track which it once was in the mid-nineteenth century.
An excellent layout with a variety of hole types and superb routing, Royal Liverpool features landmines at every turn. While its hazards are not flashy, they are tenacious. The consequences of even small misses are amplified if shots find the “out-of-bounds” that line six fairways, or the riveted bunkers, or the knee-deep fescue and thorny gorse that lurk along the perimeter.
Every shot is carried out over wide-open swaths of land with firm turf and complicated even further by shifting winds. Said famed British writer Bernard Darwin more than 100 years ago, “There is none of your smug smoothness and trimness about Hoylake; it is rather hard and bare and bumpy and needs a man to conquer it.” Journalist Pat Ward-Thomas was even more blunt describing the Hoylake experience as an “an exercise in fear.”
To win the Open this week will take a strategic and creative performance – when to take chances and be aggressive versus knowing when to lay back – along with calculating distance and angles and roll-out both on the fairways and leading to the greens. The equation entails calculating the effects of distance, angles, bunkers, wind, turf, and bounce.
All aspects of a player’s game will be tested at Hoylake. Along with tactical aptitude, accuracy off the tee and avoiding the numerous hazards will be paramount for success this week. Players who don’t keep the ball in the fairway have little chance to score. Royal Liverpool will also test efficiency with mid-to-long irons in potentially fierce crosswinds, short-game skills from a variety of recovery locations, and lag putting on slower greens. It’s one of the more fair links courses and favors the elite ball-strikers. As Phil Mickelson said back in 2014, “Well-struck shots are rewarded and poorly struck shots are penalized.”
The Field
Overall, this looks to be the strongest field of the year with every single player in the top-50 of the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) in attendance with the exception of the injured 13th-ranked, Will Zalatoris. As was the case for the other three majors, eligible LIV players who qualified their way into the Open will bring some added spice into the mix, which includes the 7th-ranked player in the world and 2022 Open Championship winner, Cameron Smith. Along with Smith, 15 other LIV players will be in action this week including Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, and Bryson DeChambeau. The DP World Tour’s best will also once again have a strong presence at the table with Min Woo Lee, Ryan Fox, Adrian Meronk, Lucas Herbert, and Yannick Paul being the biggest names to watch.
As far as the headliners at Hoylake, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is looking to add a second major trophy to his collection. Amazingly, he has seven consecutive top-5s and has not finished outside the top-12 in 19 straight starts going all the way back to October. He has two wins this season including THE PLAYERS Championship. Masters winner, John Rahm, is looking to become the first player since Tiger Woods in 2005 to win the green jacket and the Claret Jug in the same year. Rahm has four wins on the PGA Tour this season. He will be well rested having not played in three weeks since the Travelers Championship. And of course, the 2014 winner here at Hoylake, Rory McIlroy is coming off a win at the Scottish Open and looks to win his first major since the PGA Championship in that same year.
Royal Liverpool Golf Club – History
Built in 1869, on what was then the racecourse of the Liverpool Hunt Club, Hoylake is the second oldest of the English seaside courses. It received the “Royal” designation in 1871 due to the patronage of Prince Arthur the Duke of Connaught, one of Queen Victoria’s younger sons. Robert Chambers and George Morris (younger brother of Old Tom Morris) were commissioned to lay out the original course, which was extended to 18 holes in 1871.
Royal Liverpool was the host for the inaugural men’s amateur championship in 1885, which later became The R&A’s Amateur Championship. It hosted its first Open Championship in 1897 with England’s own Harold Hilton bringing home the victory. It was also host to the first-ever international match between Scotland and England in 1902. It hosted the first Home International matches between Great Britain & Ireland and the United States in 1921, an event that became the Walker Cup.
Harry Colt, one of the world’s leading golf course architects, redesigned the course in the 1920s, and it has since been tweaked periodically in the quest for a better layout, mainly as a response to advances in equipment.
Recent Course Changes
With scoring at Royal Liverpool averaging 0.57 strokes over par in its last two iterations, it has ranked as one of the easier courses in the Open rotation. Winning totals of -18 by Woods in 2006 and -17 by McIlroy in 2014 combined with calm winds highlighted a course that could not be defended solely via set-up. Thus, over the past decade, there has been a concerted effort to make the course more challenging.
There have been upwards of 15 significant changes made to the course – mostly on the back nine – and the overall par has changed from 72 to 71 with the conversion of the 10th hole from a par 5 to a 507-yard par 4. Royal Liverpool’s length has also been extended to 7,383 yards.
Architects Martin Ebert and Tom Mackenzie have made numerous changes for the 2023 Open including adding new bunkers and championship tees, introducing sandy areas in the dunes on holes 13 and 14, and shifting several fairways and greens.
All of the bunkers at Royal Liverpool have riveted faces that were rebuilt in preparation for this year’s championship. While many of the bunkers were reduced in size, the grounds surrounding each bunker has been reshaped to direct wayward shots toward and into the bunkers rather than away from them.
According to Sporting Life’s Matt Cooper, renovations to specific holes include…
A bunker has been introduced at 325-yards on the left of the first fairway (adding some peril for big-hitters) and the false front to the green been removed while there is now a run-off back left instead of a bunker.
The fourth and seventh greens are often attacked with short irons and have therefore had their size reduced. The former now has a steep run-off at the back.
In-between them, the par-5 fifth has been shortened but extended gorse on the left and a new bunker on the right add new threat at around 325-yards.
The par-4 eighth and par-3 ninth have been lengthened slightly, while the 10th is shorter and now a potentially brutal par-4 rather than par-5. The raised green remains swift from back to front, the bunker short right continues to act as a ball magnet, a new run-off on the left will now repel slightly errant blows.
The 11th, 12th and 13th greens now feature extended run-offs in what were bail out areas. The 14th and 15th have been extended, the latter has two new bunkers to threaten drives. The 16th also has a new sand trap aiming to limit drives and 18 is now 58-yards longer with a narrowed fairway at driver length. RLGC member Matthew Jordan has said of the latter: “A lot better, a brilliant change. It’s now a proper risk and reward hole.”
Finish Position and Strokes Gained Event History (2014-2022)
This includes the average finish position and Strokes Gained per round in each category. Players are sorted by SG: Total.
The sheet also includes the finish position on all other links courses going back to 2017. The number under the tournament name is the “Strength of Field” rating.
Scot – Scottish Open
Abu – Abu Dhabi HSBC
Dun – Alfred Dunhill Links
Caz – Cazoo Classic
PGA – PGA Championship (Kiawah)
Irish – Irish Open
BBM – Betfred British Masters
USO – U.S. Open (Shinnecock Hills)
Course Features
For the Open Championship, Royal Liverpool will play as a 7,383-yard par 71. It is slightly more lengthy than the average PGA Tour course and will play even longer thanks to the abundant number of strategically placed fairway bunkers along with both internal and external out-of-bounds that will force players to either layup or use “less than driver” on many holes.
Royal Liverpool’s main consistent defense lies in its 84 riveted pot bunkers, challenging fairways, firm turf, knee-deep fescue, six holes with out-of-bounds, and demanding green complexes. That being said, even with the many defenses that Hoylake will test players with this week, like all other Open venues, it needs wind to provide a true links challenge. And if the wind shows up, each direction it blows presents its own unique challenge and impacts how each hole is played.
Thanks to ever-changing routing, the wind direction off the tee will shift from hole to hole. This prevents a constant slog into the wind. It also challenges players to focus on distance control with the looming fairway bunkers always in the back of their minds. The holes that play into the wind will seem enormously long. And even those that are downwind will force players to consider using “less than driver” due to potential gusts causing balls to run out through the fairway and into the fescue.
As mentioned earlier, Royal Liverpool, overall, is a very flat course and is straightforward topographically including on the greens. It does not have the typical dunes and hollows seen on most links courses. When the predominant westerly winds blow over the Irish Sea, there is no place to hide. Though the course is quite level on appearance, the fairways and rough contain countless subtle undulations that can influence stance, swing, and the amount and direction of run-out on the ball. The 10th hole is a great example of this as players will get uphill, downhill, and sidehill lies.
Early reports this week have the course being quite scoreable thanks to a couple of inches of recent rainfall. During the last three weeks it has been persistently damp in the Hoylake area. Both Jason Day and Michael Kim have said that the course is softer than expected with fairways lush and green. This is quite the opposite of The 2006 Open Championship which was the epitome of firm and fast as the course was completely brown and baked out and which led to Tiger Woods to use his driver only once during the competition.
Agronomically, Royal Liverpool contains fine fescue grass throughout. Along with the fairways, the greens are part fescue, part Browntop bentgrass overseed. The rough is a blend of fescue, bentgrass and other dune land species. It is more wispy than thick and is listed at two inches, but reports have it as deep as one foot just yards from the fairways.
Hole Preview
While the front nine is quite straightforward, the back nine seems more undulating in spots and much more adventurous. It includes blind shots off the tee and on approach, splashes of sand carved from the faces of tumbling dunes, and linear earthen berms that mark the out-of-bounds line.
Royal Liverpool features three par 5s, four par 3s, and 11 par 4s. Two of the par 5s are over 600 yards and will be difficult to reach in two shots. The par 3s are also quite lengthy with thee of them playing over 190 yards. And with seven of the par 4s measuring over 450 yards, long iron play will be crucial this week. Two of the main scoring opportunities come from the potentially driveable par-4 4th and the short 520-yard par-5 5th.
The newest hole at Hoylake is the par 3 17th created in 2021 by Ebert. While only 136 yds in length, it now plays in the exact opposite direction as it did in 2014. The tee shot is uphill and into the wind over sand pits to a “horizon” green which is set diagonal to the line of play. Though there is no water in sight, it’s an elevated green that gives off major island green vibes. But instead of water, it is surrounded by deep and penal greenside bunkers. Any approach that misses the green results in a variety of sandy hazards well below the putting surface.
With the 17th hole now being an intense and potentially penal short par 3, it is followed by a 609-yard 18th hole that has seen its length extended 50 yards. It gives players one last brush with the “out-of-bounds” berm that hugs the edge of the right fairway for almost the entire length of the hole. While it would take a helping wind for most to reach this green in two, anything from an eagle to a double bogey is possible in this magnificent closing hole. A couple months back, Martin Ebert summed up this potentially dramatic two-hole finishing stretch to PGATour.com by saying, “I think with even a four- or five-shot lead, there will no certainty of the outcome. A two or a five or a six is possible at the short 17th, and eagle or double bogey at the 18th green are also in play given the fact that the hole is longer and the out-of-bounds closer to the playing line.”
Strokes Gained Analysis
Off the Tee
With six of the driving holes having out-of-bounds in close proximity to the fairway along with an abundance of penalizing fairway bunkers near the landing zones, off-the-tee performance may decide who wins the 151st Open Championship. Strategy, in the form of club selection, and accuracy will be of the utmost importance. Players confident in their driving abilities definitely have the option to hit more high-risk, high-reward shots off the tee.
So while gaining strokes with distance is possible, with fairways not being that wide (32-yard average in the landing zones), along with the variety of hazards and fescue rough coming into play from errant drives or excessive roll-out, it will be like trying to thread a needle on some holes. The downside to taking “less than driver” off the tee is that laying back places more stress on long irons and the short game. With winds calm on Tuesday morning, Collin Morikawa said, “Today with no wind I was hitting 3-iron, 3-wood, driver. I hit every club off the tee. It’s going to be a mix. It really is how much you want to take on the bunkers, how aggressive you want to be off the tee.”
For players not accustomed to links-style golf, they need to quickly adjust to the small pot bunkers that litter the fairways and almost function like vacuums that suck up balls as they run along the ground. Learning to get the ball to stop is something that comes with experience and why very few first-time links players have much initial success.
After playing the course for the first time, Grayson Jones, caddie for Zach Fischer described the internal out-of-bounds on the third hole as being only “six feet right of the fairway and ten yards max to the right of the green. On 18, it is slightly farther away, but not much. It is very much in play on both holes.”
Many of the driving holes have diagonal fairway bunkers 280-300 yards out with clusters of gorse on both sides. According to golfer, Michael Kim, there are some dogleg-left holes that are hit into a left-to-right wind and favor a draw. One bright spot for players is that for a links course, these fairways produce uncharacteristically fair bounces.
Royal Liverpool definitely asks different questions of players off-the-tee than they typically see each week on Tour. Both big and small misses will be penalized. Even compared to St. Andrews last year where players could swing freely with aggression on most holes, this year will be all about keeping the ball in play. Indiscriminate drivers who frequently spray the ball will not have a chance to see the weekend. Strategically sound drivers who have proven fairway accuracy and who have had success on other “less than driver” courses like TPC Sawgrass should be heavily targeted this week. Said Abraham Ancer when asked what the key to success was this week, “Avoid the bunkers and stay in the fairways. That’s it.”
Going back to 2014, Henrik Stenson who finished 39th in that year Open discussed the challenge off-the-tee by saying, “Hitting fairways is going to be key, if you do that, you give yourself the best chance to hit the greens. And it will be more or less costing you a shot every time you hit it in the fairway bunkers.”
Approach
With elevated green complexes that are surrounded by all sorts of bunkering in and around the greens, and that are smaller than normal for a links course, Royal Liverpool can be a real challenge on approach. With so many forced layups off the tee, around 50-65% of shots into the green will be from greater than 175 yards. Crosswinds will have a definite effect on many holes. Many of the greens have narrow entrances with bunkers on both sides forcing players who are using the ground game to advance the ball with accuracy as well. It also should be noted that special for this week’s Championship, edges of greens were removed in order to provide more pin positions. This creates even more runoff in almost every direction for players who are missing their target.
The terrain around the greens is also very fair. Players who hit good shots will be rewarded. Phil Mickelson has this to say about the green complexes back in 2014. “When you have to land a ball 20, 30 yards short of the green, if you hit it at the green, the ball will kick on. There is not these repellent hillsides in the landing area that kicks balls off into the trouble. If you hit offline, it will continue to go offline. It’s not going to hit a mound and kick back to the green. What I’m ultimately saying is well-struck shots are rewarded and poorly struck shots are penalized. And that’s not always the case in links golf.”
Around the Green and Putting
With many of Hoylake’s greens perched well above the surrounding areas, recovery shots will be difficult depending on the lie. Pot bunkers and hollows surround the flanks of most of the greens. The pot bunkers have near-vertical stack sod faces and the depth of some will be very penalizing. According to NBC analyst Brad Faxon the bottoms of the bunkers have been flattened, and with the sand being so soft, the ball gets depressed very easily into the rake grooves and also tends to roll near the lips creating near-impossible recovery shots when taking aim at the flag. Expertise out of the bunkers will be incredibly important.
As Jordan Spieth said earlier in the week, the biggest challenge around the greens is learning how to play out of the collection areas along with the need to hit higher bunker shots over the riveted faces. Club selection around the greens will also be key as players could use three different clubs for the same shot and will need to use creativity in playing the best option along with being committed to each shot.
While they have many subtle dips and humps and hidden burrows, these are some of the flattest greens at any Open venue. As is typical for links courses, green speeds are kept at a much slower pace to account for potentially windy conditions that could play havoc with the ball. Faxon said the greens are running at around 10.5 on the stimp-meter and are playing very smooth considering they are a combination of fescue and bentgrass. Lag putting and adjusting to the slower speeds will be another important skill for players to have this week.
Most Important Stats For Success at Royal Liverpool Golf Club
*In order of importance
Weather Forecast – Hoylake, Wirral, England
