Lytham sand traps lie in wait for those who stray off course
Should he again find sand off the 18th tee at Royal Lytham & St Annes in this week’s British Open, he will do well to extricate his ball with a wedge!
Avoiding the traps at Lytham, all 206 of them, will be crucial to deciding the 141st champion, with those at the 413-yard 18th hole set to play a key role.
Lytham is far from the most picturesque course on the British Open rota, surrounded by a railway line on one side and row after row of red brick houses just about everywhere else. It is also a little on the short side at 7,118 yards, par 70. However, accuracy is everything because of the string of treacherous bunkers averaging more than 11 per hole that line every fairway and protect all 18 greens.
And that’s where the 18th shows it’s teeth. Miss the fairway to the right off the tee and you will catch one of four traps. Even more penal are the three pot bunkers craftily located 280 yards out on the left.
There are another seven surrounding the green under the imposing clubhouse which along with the massive grandstands create a dramatic amphitheatre effect.
In the 1958 British Open, the great Irish golfer Christy O’Connor Senior arrived on the 18th tee at Lytham needing a birdie to win, a par to tie and his failure to sign for either has always been the great regret of an illustrious career. The final two rounds were played on the same day at the time and O’Connor, in the group immediately behind Peter Thomson, has often claimed that the Australian’s slow play cost him the title.
“I was aware of the bunkers on the left so I decided not to take a chance with my driver and played my three-wood for safety,” O’Connor explained. “I was happy with the shot and even though I couldn’t see the finish of the ball because of the crowd, I was satisfied that I was on the fairway and in very good shape.
“What a disappointment it was when I reached the ball and found it bunkered and in a bad lie. I had no option but to splash out and hope for a chip and putt to get into a play-off. My pitch went past the hole and the putt stopped on the lip. I had lost my great chance of victory and it wasn’t all my fault, while Thomson went on to beat Dave Thomas in a play-off.”
That’s about as near as an Irishman has come to winning the British Open at Lytham.
Darren Clarke tied for 11th in 1996 and for third in 2001, with Pádraig Harrington 18th and 37th respectively in each of those two years.
The other four in contention this week, Graeme McDowell, Rory McIlroy, Michael Hoey and Alan Dunbar, will be contesting a Lytham British Open for the first time.
Clarke has played 21 British Opens and is, of course, the reigning champion and has three other top-seven finishes to his credit. Harrington (teeing it up for the 16th time) won back-to-back titles in 2007 and ’08 and has twice come home in a share of fifth. McDowell (eight British Opens) has a best finish of 11th while McIlroy was third two years ago. Hoey missed the cut in his only appearance as an amateur in 2001 while Dunbar, a rookie, will take encouragement from the fact the first Lytham champion never joined the paid ranks — the immortal Bobby Jones in 1926.
The week promises to be a golf course of two halves. Thirty on the outward nine has been broken in previous British Opens — most memorably by Paul McGinley in 1996 when he aced the ninth to turn in 29 — but the back nine can be a fearsome proposition and many will struggle to match the par of 35.
