5 experts offer diverse insights into success at St Andrews
Nick Faldo won the 1990 Open there in 18 under par, a record beaten by a stroke by Tiger Woods 10 years later, who returned in 2005 and matched Faldo’s score second time around. Both Dustin Johnson and Shane Lowry have major championship ambitions and count St Andrews as one of their favourite courses, while two-time Open champion Pádraig Harrington has twice won the Dunhill Links Championship at the Old Course.
Ask them for the secrets of success and take note at their varying takes, all of which underline both the beauty and the challenge of playing at the Home of Golf, the world’s most famous piece of golfing linksland.
“Let’s go back to hitting it really solid. I obviously managed to get pin high — St Andrews has a great way, if you miss a shot on a normal golf course, you finish 20, 25 feet away. Here they finish 25 yards away. I think that’s the skill. If you keep honing, if you are in a 20-to-30-foot circle all week as much as possible, then that’s the real key.”
“I think it fits all types of players. I think you’ve got to enjoy links golf. You’ve got to be able to use your imagination around here.
“It definitely helps the more times you play it to know the bounces and where to land the ball to get to certain flags and certain pins, where you want to be at in the fairway because a lot of times you can hit it — fairways can be really wide here, so what side of the fairway you want to hit it on, so those types of things definitely help.”
“It’s links. It’s the antithesis of target golf and it is difficult. That’s what you want to do well at St Andrews, you want to hit your wedges well. There’s so many holes that if you do drive it well, more so than any other golf course, you’ll be hitting 9 down to sand wedge a lot. So if you’re hitting them well you’re going to get a lot of chances. The other thing you’ve got to do at St Andrews is hole a lot of putts from 15 to 25 feet. It’s very hard to get the ball inside 10 feet so you’ve a lot of those 15, 18, 25 footers. I didn’t see too many of them drop this week so hopefully I’ve have a better week next week.”
“You’ve got to play the tougher holes well, the likes of four, 17, 16, 15, the par-threes. If you play those holes well, there’s a lot of chances. The first is a wedge (approach), the second is a wedge depending on the wind, the third is only a wedge, the fifth is a gettable par five, the sixth is a wedge, seven is a wedge. You need to take your chances but you need to play the hard holes well, the likes of the 11th. It’s amazing how different it plays in The Open, it plays a lot tougher. You’re hitting it in to that 11th green and all of a sudden the green is firm, the pin is up the back. If you go over that green, you’re dead. There’s things like that whereas the Dunhill Links, they don’t put the flag up there at all. You just knock it in past the flag and it rolls back to it. It feels a bit easier doing that.”
“I just love the creativity. You have to be able to hit all different type of shots. The first thing I ever heard about St Andrews is that all you do is hit it as hard as you can and aim left. That’s basically not how you play the golf course. You need to have the right angles. Over the years of learning how to play the golf course under all different type of wind conditions, it changes greatly, and it’s based on angles. You have to put the ball on certain sides of the fairways in order to get the ball close. To me that type of thinking and the strategy that goes into that is something I’ve always loved. You can run the ball up here on a lot of the holes. It won’t really be doing that this week because it’s a little bit softer, but still, you have that option. A five-degree wind change here changes the whole golf course completely. I’ve always found that very fascinating.”
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