A Mystery Wrapped In History

You might as well call it Royal Dangerfield. This year's British Open venue gets no respect. Tiger Woods, student of golf history, told a reporter that he'd never even seen a picture of Royal Liverpool. Luke Donald took one look and said, "Boy, those fairways are wide." A TV golf announcer hit the club with this zinger: "Is that a new course you've got there?"

Well, no. While H.S. Colt is the architect of record, Royal Liverpool was first laid out by Old Tom Morris's older brother, George. That was in 1869, when this track on the northwest coast of England really was a track. In those days the course shared space with a horse racing oval. Golfers tried to putt while thoroughbreds thundered past and railbirds yelled their heads off. Then as now the course was often called Hoylake, after the town it's in, a sleepy burg across the River Mersey from Liverpool. (The town gets its name from Hoyle Lake, a long-vanished port King William III used to launch an invasion of Ireland.) In 1872 Hoylake hosted the first significant pro tournament held in England. Young Tom Morris won and took home �15. That's about $1,500 today. Walter Hagen won the 1924 British Open at Hoylake. In '30 Bobby Jones grabbed the claret jug there en route to his Grand Slam, despite making a snowman on the 8th hole. "The most inexcusable hole I have ever played," he groused after taking five shots to get down from the fringe. "An old man with a croquet mallet could have got down in two." Still, local lore says Jones liked Hoylake enough to cop a move: Recalling the red jacket the club's captain sported, he figured the winner of his Masters tournament would look sharp in a green jacket.

Royal Liverpool's last British Open was in '67, when Roberto De Vicenzo dueled Jack Nicklaus down the stretch. Nicklaus birdied the par-5 16th on Sunday, smacking a fairway wood over the no-man's-land of O.B. that juts into the fairway. De Vicenzo, playing in the next group, matched Jack with his own three-wood over perdition to paradise. After De Vicenzo two-putted for birdie, his playing partner, Gary Player, said, "Well, Roberto, the Open Championship is yours."

"Oh, my God," said De Vicenzo, so stoked that he dropped his ball at the tee box on the par-4 17th and cranked a drive off the deck. He parred in to win by a shot. First prize: �2,100, equal to $42,000 today--about 3% of the 2006 winner's take.

Then Hoylake, like Hoyle Lake, disappeared. "We lost our way," says club historian Joe Pinnington. As the Open Championship grew, Royal Liverpool's role shrank. There wasn't room for parking or big galleries, particularly at the mediocre 18th hole. The course was flat and nondescript.

Finally, 10 years ago, the club's leaders decided to go for the claret. "With our history and our course we knew we could bring the Open back," says Pinnington, who rallied some American-style can-do spirit. "There was an enormous amount of work to do. Too much work, some said. Or they said all the attention would be vulgar. But we said, 'This is doable, so let's damn well do it!'"

There was English pride at work too. Like many English golfers, the Royal Liverpudlians tire of hearing that Scotland is the game's home. Pinnington wants to remind the world that his club staged that Grand National Tournament of 1872 as well as 10 Opens, and that Liverpool exported tons of golf talent to America. "It was the English who popularized golf, not the Scots," he says. "They'd been sitting on it for 400 years!"

The doers of Hoylake bought enough adjacent land to accommodate merchandise tents and TV trailers. They hired architect Donald Steele, who played in the 1962 British Amateur at Hoylake. He added 263 yards to a course that played at 6,995 in '67. He refurbished Royal Liverpool's 94 bunkers, built three new tee boxes and reshaped several greens. " Hoylake will always be Hoylake," said Steele. "I'm simply rearranging the furniture." The bunkers are beauties, deep and steep-faced, but visible, not hidden like the craters you see on Scottish links.

But Steele's roller-coaster rearrangement of the old 18th green, intended to make the hole a worthy finisher, instead made the green seem airlifted in from another links. The club did better with its $4 million renovation of an ivied clubhouse that holds one of the best hoards of memorabilia anywhere, including Jones's 1930 scorecards; a replica of the claret jug that this year's Open champ will take home (the original lives at R&A headquarters in St. Andrews); primordial golf clubs used by local celebs; and a loverly portrait of the Queen.

The finishing touch came when club honchos gave in (as if they had a choice) to a revolutionary "suggestion" from the R&A: They agreed to turn the last two holes into the first two, so that the heroic 16th could be the new finisher. Brilliant!

A 558-yard par-5, the new 18th could provide one of the more dramatic endings in Open history. The club sold the change to members with talk of the hole's "potential for glory or disaster." Bunkers and knee-high rough to the left invite players to flirt with O.B. on the other side, where the fairway doglegs rightward 400 yards from the tee. A 300-yard drive leaves you with the De Vicenzo Special: 260 over O.B. to victory. A safer second shot, to the left, leaves a pitch over a hungry bunker to a tight pin on a hard green. Don't be a stupid and make 6 here; the leaders will be making birdie on this hole and on the three other par-5s, which gives Royal Liverpool an effective par of 68. The best thing about the new 18th is the tantalizing possibility that this year's victor will top De Vicenzo's heroics by finishing with an eagle 3. Phil, Tiger or Ernie might do it like this: Drive, eight-iron, putt.

The 16th and 17th are fun too. "We'll witness some dramatic swings of fortune as the final round unfolds," says John Heggarty, Royal Liverpool's head pro. The 16th, a 552-yard par-5, calls for a drive that carries 265 yards over the rough. The par-4 17th plays 457 into the molars of the prevailing wind to a two-tiered green that will see a few 100-foot putts. You want to wear soft spikes on the green: There are three unexploded ack-ack shells just under the surface, relics of the World War II bombing of Britain.

You'll see some hack-hack in the tall fescue that borders the fairways. "It's lovely wispy grass, but it grabs the hosel like that," says Heggarty, snapping his fingers. In '67 Peter Alliss, still a touring pro in his pre- BBC days, took a mighty swing in the hay, threw out his back and had to be carried off the course. De Vicenzo hit a drive into the rough and found his ball beside a seagull's egg. Next week the pros will tee off with plenty of irons and fairway metals to avoid the rough, a simple enough task unless the wind kicks up to 20 mph. The R&A will mandate a top stimp of 10.5; anything quicker and the greens might shoot off the scale if the wind blows. "Nobody wants a Shinnecock," says one Hoylaker, referring to the baked greens at the 2004 U.S. Open.