Water-filled bunkers just part of the fun

Having only seen a links golf course via television, a visitor from America more than 10 years ago was fascinated to walk the hallowed sod of St Andrews.

What struck him about the bunkers, however, was how deep and small they were.

Particularly when he came to the famed Road Hole bunker that guards the 17th green, the American had to stop and stare. Fascinating. Beguiling.

Standing nearby, Christy O’Connor Jr, then 51 and an entrant into the British Open for the last time, suspected there was befuddlement and asked why.

“So penal,” said the American. “So unfair, it seems.”

O’Connor shook his head, seemingly sympathetic to what he perceived to be a lack of appreciation of this thing called links golf. O’Connor explained the problems with Americans when they first observe links golf is that they don’t appreciate the simple reality.

“The bunkers are hazards,” he said. “Like your American courses with all that water. The water is a hazard, so consider the bunkers as you would water.”

Struck by both O’Connor’s charm and wisdom, the American has never forgotten the explanation and it has served him well on annual visits to experience the joys of links golf. Hazards, indeed, these bunkers, and how O’Connor’s water-hazard comparison sprung into the mind while watching the second round of the British Open unfold at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club.

Strolling these majestic links, it felt like a walk on the beach there was such a teaming of water and sand. If there wasn’t standing water in all 206 bunkers — are they sure it’s not 1,206? — surely there was in the great majority of them.

“A lot of the bunkers out there, I think [they’re] pretty much unplayable,” said South African Branden Grace.

Keegan Bradley added: “I’ve never seen it before, at the professional level,” after his round of two-over 72. Never before had an Open competitor slipped into his wet-weather gear — to play a shot out of the sand.

Yet Bradley, like his fellow 155 competitors, didn’t have much choice.

“It’s the Open Championship,” he said.

In other words, play on.

Ok, so it was a bit disconcerting to see those overhead TV shots of this seaside course, as if dozens and dozens of small ponds had been airmailed in overnight and planted into the landscape. Good gracious, we had gone to bed in the shadows of a classic links and woken up at some Floridian resort where insufferable water hazards threaten every shot.

But it was not a dream. Instead, it was something that even the most veteran links observers had never seen. An overnight rain had pelted down and on top of the 20 or 30 or 300 days of moisture that has inundated the area, it was too much. As absorbent as this rich sand-based land is, it has been no match for Mother Nature’s fury this summer.

But the British Open is golf’s oldest and grandest Major championship for a bevy of reasons, chief among them the iron-like spirit that must be employed.

If the initial reaction was to hang a head and scream to the unfairness of the golf gods, fortunately most of the assembled crowd gathered their emotions and took even greater hold of a philosophy that should accompany you on any round over a links.

“You want to avoid the bunkers,” Bradley said. “Well, today you really wanted to avoid them.”

The rule was a simple one. If you could get relief from the casual water and remain in the bunker, you were free to take a drop, though more than likely your ball would plug slightly. If your nearest point of relief was outside the bunker, you were assessed a one-stroke penalty.

Awkward? Perhaps. But once you accepted that we are in the grasp of some unusual and uncontrollable weather circumstances, it was easier to get on with the joy of watching golf’s greatest showcase.