Carnoustie - Fearsome or Fair

After playing five holes of the championship course at Carnoustie you could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. The holes are all par fours, only one of which (the second) is over 400 yards and, if you’ve managed to avoid bunkers you could be in pretty good shape and feeling rather pleased with yourself.

And then you’re staring down the barrel of Hogan’s Alley - the 500-yard, par five sixth that was re-named in 2003 on the 50th anniversary of the one time the great man played our national championship - which of course he won. The tee shot has to be threaded between bunkers in the right half of the fairway and OB left. The lay-up needs to be equally accurate because a burn snakes in front of the green and down the right side of the fairway, and the final approach has to negotiate a gruesome pot bunker, guarding a green with such a steep swale in it that you need crampons just to walk to the flagstick.

When Hogan played it, perceived wisdom suggested that flirting with the OB fence was just too dangerous so the ’smart’ play was to go right of the bunkers from the tee. This meant you were firing towards OB for your second but at least you’d have an iron in your hand. Hogan eschewed this nonsense and went straight down the middle every day with such relentless accuracy that one observer swore he played his second shot in the afternoon (in those days they played 36 holes a day) from the divots he’d made in the morning. Which begs the question - if he was that accurate, why didn’t he avoid the divots?

But it is here that you first start to get an inkling of what Carnoustie is about and the sixth hole sums up the challenges it offers. As with most links courses, the first secret of good scoring is to avoid the bunkers but unlike most other great links - St Andrews and Royal Lytham spring instantly to mind - at Carnoustie you can see them from the tee and know exactly what shot you’re trying to hit - or more accurately perhaps, what sandpits from hell you’re trying to avoid.

The original architect was James Braid - one of the best and most under-rated there has ever been - and as soon as you step onto the first tee you realise that you’re playing a course which did not evolve by accident but was touched by the hand of genius - albeit a genius with a slightly malicious bent. The best way to describe this feeling is to offer the following challenge.

Stand on any tee on the course and look carefully at the hole ahead of you for a few seconds. Now close your eyes and imagine the hole with no sand on it at all. Finally, think about where you would least like bunkers to be sited, open your eyes again and there they are. Braid was a man who knew golf and golfers, and particularly understood the best way to challenge us to perform at our best.

Willie Gardner, vice-chairman of the Carnoustie golf links management committee, a man who can’t remember how many times he’s played the course but it must be in the tens of thousands, says: ‘I think it’s the toughest course on the Open rota, mainly because of the bunker placement; there isn’t really a place where you can freewheel.

‘I remember a quote from Nick Faldo at the Scottish Open and he said that when he got to the 15th he felt as if he’d played a full round; not physically but mentally. Because you have to think so much about every shot it takes its toll. And the course asks questions to which you don’t always have answers. The bunkering is pretty strategic.

‘If you hit the shots you get the benefit but it doesn’t forgive bad shots. The tee shots are the real challenge. If you get in a fairway bunker there’s no way you can hit a 3-iron or go for the green; you just get out as best you can and think about your approach shot [if you’re lucky, you’ll have advanced 20-40 yards from the sand, if not, you’ll be 20 yards further back because in many instances the only shot is backwards].

‘But even finding the fairway isn’t the whole story because sometimes being slap bang in the middle isn’t the best place; you need to be on a particular part of the fairway to have the best approach. Carnoustie has never had to rely solely on the pin positions to defend the course and in fact we rarely have what I would describe as stupid or extreme pin positions.’

According to golf services manager Colin McLeod, one visitor allegedly asked the pro: ‘How do I get out of the bunkers?’ When the pro started demonstrating the technique he said: ‘No, I don’t mean the ball; I can get that out. But how do I get myself out of the bunkers?’

And all of this is not to suggest that bunkers are Carnoustie’s only defence, far from it, but they are the most visible and ubiquitous weapon in its formidable armoury. The other, of course, is supplied by God, in the form of weather - particularly the wind.

If you play Carnoustie on a relatively still day and manage to avoid sand, you will proclaim to all and sundry that it’s a good, fair test of golf. But as soon as the breeze gets up it’s a completely different ball game, as it is on any Scottish links but especially so at Carnoustie. The reason for this is the course configuration, which involves you playing to any and all points of the compass within a few holes - this is not a ’straight out and straight back’ layout where you can rely on the wind being consistent and because the holes rather tack to port and starboard, the wind seems as if it’s always changing direction whereas in fact it’s you and not the elements that are capricious.

The final part of Carnoustie’s defence comes at the end of the round - more specifically, the final three holes and here there is no doubt and no argument that they represent the most fearsome finish in championship golf. In the same way that people on the Old Course at St Andrews start thinking about the 17th long before they reach it, so it is with this closing trio of holes in Angus.

The par three 16th, for example. It’s 235 yards from the yellow tees, has wickedly placed greenside bunkers and the putting surface, from the tee at least, looks long and emphatically not wide. When Tom Watson won the Open here in 1975 he played the hole five times and didn’t make par once - he bogied it four times in regulation play and then birdied it in his 18-hole playoff with Jack Newton.

Jack Nicklaus has said that it isn’t a short hole because, by his reckoning a par three must, by definition, be reachable in one and there have been times when he couldn’t get home with a driver.

It’s followed by a 421-yard par four which involves driving into an island around which the Barry Burn snakes. The best line to the green, from the left side of the fairway, involves putting your drive as close to the burn as possible. Negotiate this safely and you still have the 18th. Another par four (it used to be a five and many think it still could be), this time of 428 yards, it has OB all the way left, a burn right, well-sited fairway bunkers and a burn in front of the green.

Apart from that, it’s a piece of cake.

The 18th will forever be remembered as the place where Jean Van de Velde imploded during the ‘99 Open where, needing only a double-bogey six to win, he contrived the unlikeliest seven ever seen, fell back into a playoff and allowed Paul Lawrie to play four superlative holes and pinch the claret jug from his back pocket.

Talk of that Open around Carnoustie and you will get a mixed response. Some gnarled locals, admittedly a minority, are delighted that ‘Carnastie’ lived up to its sometimes fearsome reputation but most think the championship gave a false impression, and I’m inclined to agree with them.

What happened is that on a routine visit a couple of months before the Open, the R&A suggested growing the rough in a few places to tighten things up a bit. There then followed two months of warm, wet weather in which the rough grew particularly thick. And then the wind blew. Cue Sergio Garcia crying in his mother’s arms after missing the cut after rounds of 89, 83 and Tiger Woods managing to finish tied seventh after 74, 72, 74, 74.

But that Open has to be seen in context and no greater contrast could be viewed than the Dunhill Links Championship, played in balmy weather last September. As a result, scoring was good but not stupendous, and rounds in the mid-low 60s were not uncommon.

That’s how Carnoustie should be seen and remembered - difficult, yes, unfair, certainly not. As for fearsome - just make sure you play it on a windless day.

Contact details
Carnoustie Golf Course
Links Parade
Carnoustie
Angus DD7 7JE
01241 853789
Email: golf@carnoustiegolflinks.co.uk
Web: www. carnoustiegolflinks.co.uk

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