THE GENESIS SCOTTISH OPEN returns to the Renaissance Club, Nth. Berwick, from 12-16th July. After it hosted the 2019 Scottish Open there was a certain amount of grumbling from the players about European courses and the Renaissance in particular. Rory McIlroy complained: “There are no penalties for bad shots, the European Tour needs to make the golf courses and setups tougher for the top events.”
Other players agreed. Renaissance Course designer Tom Doak admits it may have played easy at first. “We decided to toughen it up but it’s difficult, it’s normally a windy place, just like Muirfield next door, but we don’t control the weather. If you design a links course and make it hard in benign conditions, when it’s windy the course is impossible to play. You have to have some leeway.”
They have let the rough grow, and new fairway pot bunkers should make players think more carefully about their shots. Doak said: “We’ve made subtle changes; the penalties are there, and if a player wants to take them on, great, but they’ll separate the winner from the guy who finishes 10th.”
The players may just be bored with playing The Renaissance Club again. It’s not as though Scotland were hard up for golf courses.
BEFORE BOBBY JONES won the Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake in 1930 he was invited to a players’ reception at the club, and found himself sitting next to the previous year’s Captain, Kenneth Stoker. All the captains were wearing their formal red jackets. Jones was fascinated by them, and eventually Stoker said: ‘Now look here Mr. Jones, if you win the tournament this week I’ll give you my coat.’ The rest is history, and Jones was presented with the coat.
He arrived back in New York to a ticker-tape parade with the British Open and Amateur titles, and that red blazer from Hoylake in his suitcase. The idea for Augusta’s Green Jacket was born. Incidentally, Jones bet on himself to win the Grand Slam that year at odds of 50-1 and collected over 60,000 dollars.
Hoylake, host venue for this month’s Open, stands proudly on the Wirral peninsula. Built in 1869, it hosted the first Amateur Championship in 1885. It hasn’t changed much since 2014, when Rory McIlroy got his hands on the Claret Jug. In all it has hosted 11 Opens, the last in 2006 when Tiger Woods triumphed with his 11th major.
Woods was ruthless on Hoylake’s brown, baked links, using his driver only once during the entire week — the 16th hole of the first round — and relied on iron play that was so impeccable his caddie Steve Williams kept a sheet of paper of all the shots Woods missed, afterwards saying: “There were three of them, I don’t think anyone has ever hit long irons that well.” No-one was complaining then about European courses being too easy.
IN THE HARRY POTTER stories the combination of wizard and wand worked the magic. But what if your wand isn’t doing it’s stuff? You could try a L.A.B. putter. The Lie Angle Balance (L.A.B.) of these putters supposedly gives them the edge. Lie Angle Balance is the zero-torque design that keeps the putter face square to the putting arc throughout the stroke.
If your putter doesn’t twist, then you should have an easier time bringing it back to square at impact. With an in-person or online fitting, a L.A.B. Golf expert will determine the exact length, lie angle and grip you need. Just send L.A.B. a five-second video of your putting and they will let you know your lie angle (with me it would be when they’d stopped laughing.) Your custom-built putter will be lie angle balanced to your stroke. So, one wave of your L.A.B. putter and it’s “Expecto puttrollin!”
“I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.” Greg Norman (Brain the size of a planet)
Until next time: Happy Golfing.
Contact Mick for regripping and repairs. Tel 638 859 475. or visit https://mickthegrip.blogspot.com
Image – The Renaissance Club, 13th green
