Sandstorm brewing over Open bunkers
The Royal and Ancient ordered groundstaff to rake every Old Course bunker
here today after protests by players that some of them were impossible to get
out of.
"We had some comments and we like to think we listened to them," said Royal
and Ancient Golf Club secretary Peter Dawson.
Jack Nicklaus confessed he had never seen anything like them in his 40-odd
years playing links golf. "They're very, very, very difficult - the toughest
I've ever seen," said Nicklaus. "Nobody is going to hit any ball out of any
fairway bunker onto the green. You're going to spend a lot of time in the
bunkers if you get in one."
Masters champion Vijay Singh was even more vehement about the decision to
straighten up the faces and deepen nearly all of the 160 bunkers. "You will
be there forever if you are not careful. Some of the bunkers are unplayable
if you get in the wrong place. It is scary to get in there. You used to be
able to get away with it because if you run up against the face you have an
up slope.
"Now they have taken a lot of up slopes away and the ball rolls straight up
against the face."
The Fijian admitted that after two practice rounds he had considered the
unthinkable - taking an unplayable lie in a bunker. "If there is a point, I'm
going to do that," he said.
"The other option is to take an unplayable plug in the bunker, play sideways
to try to get out."
Nick Faldo, an Open winner here ten years ago, was stunned by the reshaped
bunkers. "Unbelievable. It is a wall. They are absolutely incredible. Even
playing out backwards is a hell of a good shot if you get a lip your way both
ways," he said Faldo, no doubt hoping to repeat his 1990 performance when he
only found one bunker.
Europe's top money winner this season, Darren Clarke also joined the chorus
of complaints. The Ulsterman, brought up on links golf, accused the Royal and
Ancient of going over the top. "They have gone a little bit silly," said
Clarke. "Some of them are totally unplayable. No matter what bunker you
should be able to get out, even if you have to go backwards."
Hugh Campbell, Chairman of the Championship Committee said Wednesday's action
by the groundstaff should solve the problem.
"There will still be places in there where you still have to play backwards.
Hopefully there are no places where they are totally unplayable," said
Campbell.
Dawson said the problem had been caused because the test they had carried out
failed to make note of the rock-hard fairways. "We went out at the back of
the bunkers and dropped balls very slowly to establish whether they would run
away from the faces down into the middle of the bunkers, they did," he said.
"I think the difficulty can be when the ball rolls into the front of the
bunker at such pace it stops under the back wall.
"The bunkers had been raked flat earlier in the week and this morning we went
out and sculpted them so there is more of a slope to the sand to take the
ball back into the middle of the bunker."
