Bumpy fairways and blind tee shots: why golf pros hate Royal St George's

Goldfinger famously played against James Bond at Royal St George’s. Wretched, without mercy and universally despised, Royal St George’s is just off the A256 …”

A cheap joke, perhaps, but one earning nods in the locker room this week.

Take Brooks Koepka’s withering assessment here on Tuesday. “Quite a few blind tee shots, kind of hitting to nothing,” he said.

“Fairways are quite undulating. I don’t know, it’s not my favourite of the rotation, put it that way. I’m not too big a fan.”

Brutal, although the four-time major winner is hardly on his own in that opinion. Jack Nicklaus once said that “the Open courses get worse the further you go south” and as this Sandwich links picks up the mobile networks of France, that emphasises the point perfectly.

“Let’s be honest, St George’s is nobody’s favourite layout on the Open rota,” Rory McIlroy said. “Except perhaps, Clarkey.”

Clarkey is Darren Clarke, the genial Ulsterman who lifted the Claret Jug here in 2011. At 42, he was a 200-1 shot. The previous Open champion at St George’s was Ben Curtis, and he was a 500-1 shot.

In fairness, Clarke knows why his colleagues are not keen on the 1878 creation of Laidlaw Purves. “The fairways are more unpredictable than any other on the Open rota,” Clarke said. “It can drive a golfer mad as you can hit a ball straight down the middle of the fairway and you don’t know which rough to walk to – right or left. There are that many mounds.”

Curtis, meanwhile, once ranked Sandwich, the scene of his fairy tale, as “my fifth favourite Open course”. That is not too bad, considering there are 11 of them. “Erm, I’ve only played seven,” the American replied.

If Royal Birkdale, considered the fairest, is played between the dunes, then RGS is played straight through them. Over the years, the R & A and the club have sought to flatten the worst of the scorecard wreckers, with the 18th notably less bumpy. Yet uncertainty still reigns.

The greats have lined up to criticise over the years. Nicklaus said: “What I do know is I’ve never played particularly well at St George’s. I won a tournament there as an amateur, when I was 19, and never played a good round after that. It’s always been a hard course for me.”

Gary Player said: “It’s really not a great Open course. Should it stay on the Open rota? No, I don’t think so.”

Tom Watson said: “St George’s is a course you never really understand. There are at least a dozen places there where you hit the ball and you won’t know until you’re 50 yards from it whether it’s gone into a bunker, it’s in the rough or, glory be, it’s on the green.’

Who will stand up and protect its honour? Mike Clayton, the former European Tour winner turned respected course architect, believes the bellyaching says much about elite golfers.

“Sandwich is unloved because pros crave predictability and ‘fairness’,” the Australian said. “To be really interesting and fun – and frustrating – the game needs elements of both unpredictability and things that aren’t entirely ‘fair’ because dealing with those things is the game’s great mental challenge.

“Great courses also need world-class holes and it’s got them in abundance. There are some brilliant holes. Bernard Darwin called it ‘as nearly my idea of heaven as it is to be attained on any earthly links’. I’m on his side and believe it to be a brilliant place to play.”

Darwin, the celebrated golf writer who was the grandson of naturalist Charles Darwin, was actually fully understanding of the gripes. “I know they are perfectly right,” he wrote, “and I have even agreed with them that this is a blind shot and this an indefensibly bad hole.”

And “there were faults at Sandwich, it was nothing but a driver’s course and the art of golf did not consist of hitting a ball over a sandhill and then running up to the top to see what happened on the other side. But what does any of this matter?” Darwin argued.

“The beauty of Sandwich is the extraordinary solitude that surrounds an individual player.”

Ian Fleming was a huge admirer of Darwin and St George’s and the peace it brought. In his book Goldfinger, Fleming chose to rename the course “Royal St Marks”, apparently because he did not want readers flocking there.

Lee Westwood is a fan, however.

“I’d rank it my No 1 [course of the Open rota] this week,” he said. “You’ve got to love it and get on with it. There’s no point in coming to a course and saying, ‘I don’t like this place’. You can mentally get in your own way straightaway. There are reasons why the R & A come back here and they should be respected.”

Indeed, there are obvious factors, not least that this was the first course outside of Scotland to host the Open in 1894 and has staged 14 more since.

There is also proximity to London, and pertinent to the sponsors, the fact that without it more than half of the UK would be cut off – Hoylake is the next furthest south and that is on the Wirral. “It’s better than it was, “McIlroy said. “It used to be a pinball machine.”

Sandy Lyle's hole by hole guide

Hole 1 - 445yds par 4
Tiger Woods lost his ball here in 2003 in the rough. The hay is thick again this time around but the fairway is wider. Long iron for the second shot. Demanding.

Hole 2 - 421yds par 4
Opportunity for a birdie here. Some, like Bubba Watson, may go for the green by flying the corner bunkers at 250 yards. It is possible to roll it to the front if you can carry 310–320 yards.

Hole 3 - 239yds par 3
Wind tends to be left to right. Probably a four–iron here, maybe more. It's a narrow green, so the players will be thinking about the best place to miss.

Hole 4 - 491yds par 4
A par–five in 2003, from the back tees the huge bunker down the right is going to create a problem. It is 265 yards to carry the trap – no problem downwind with a three–wood; if the wind is in your face it's a different story and gives a small landing area. After that, it's out of bounds just yards beyond the back of the putting surface.

Hole 5 - 422yds par 4
A demanding tee shot with five bunkers and high dune ridges guarding the left side of the fairway. With a sharp dog–leg left often it will leave a blind second shot. The green is quite open, but you might be trying to find it with a three–iron.

Hole 6 - 174yds par 3
Fairly straightforward and normally downwind, so a seven–iron for most players, but you must find the right areas on a two–tiered green angled at 45 degrees to the tee. A few bunkers dotted about, but definitely a birdie opportunity.

Hole 7 - 566yds par 5
Dog–leg right to left. Tough tee shot, 32 yards longer than in 2003. In the right conditions it can be a drive and wedge, and an obvious birdie chance, if not eagle. Two big hits and a par is more likely.

Hole 8 - 451yds par 4
A nasty driving hole with a couple of hidden bunkers that can catch you unawares. A 180–yard–plus second shot to a well–guarded and often obscured green.

Hole 9 - 412yds par 4
Longish second shot into a nasty green with a big spine to the left and falls away to the right. Takes a bit of control in a cross wind to land the ball in the right place.

Hole 10 - 415yds par 4
The second shot used to be totally blind. It requires a precise approach to an elevated green. Tom Kite came to a dead end here in ’85 when getting out of position and making a double bogey.

Hole 11 - 238yds par 3
A daunting hole. Well bunkered. Humps and hollows make it hard to get close to the pin on the left. Happy to walk off here with par on all four days.

Hole 12 - 379yds par 4
Dog–leg right, shortest par four on the course, but doesn't make it the easiest. A good drive avoiding no fewer than eight fairway bunkers leaves a fairly short second. There is a birdie opportunity here, but the green is treacherous – Tiger Woods four–putted on it in 2003.

Hole 13 - 456yds par 4
Hitting blind to the fairway which pinches down at 260 yards leaves a long second shot, maybe a five– or six–iron. The clubhouse on the neighbouring course is usually a good target to aim at off the tee.

Hole 14 - 547yds par 5
This is the first of the altered par fives. The green is completely different from when I won here and is quite nasty. There is out of bounds all down the right and a burn at 330 yards reachable downwind. The rough on the left is not too bad so you might get away with one there, but not many will be going for the green in two.

Hole 15 - 496yds par 4
Lots of deep bunkers await poor drives and it can get nasty quickly if you find one. The green, with a very tight entry, requires a precise second shot with an eight–iron or less, and that's not possible into the wind. The place to miss is to the right, leaving either a flop shot or a links–type bump and run.

Hole 16 - 162yds par 3
A big green, but you only see a snippet of it. Thomas Bjorn famously came to grief here in 2003 with a double bogey after his ball tumbled into the right bunker and it took three blows to get out.

Hole 17 - 426yds par 4
One of the holes I don't much like. The slopes on the fairway are so bad in the landing areas that the ball nearly always rolls off into the semi–rough.

Hole 18 - 450yds par 4
A strong finishing hole. Not as much rough as before but more fairway bunkers and a narrow green. Second shot is from 200 yards – a 9–iron downwind for most of these guys.