TESTING TIMES
Our mOst welcOme guest writer Art spAnder visited HOylAke lAst yeAr fOr bOtH business And pleAsure. tHese Are sOme Of His memOries And reflectiOns
The words were more ominous Than welcoming. A visitor to Hoylake sat in the locker room, tying his shoes, when the man nearby, a total stranger no less, spoke out. “Hope you brought enough balls,” he said. “The rough is long.” Thanks. Just what one needed to
hear. A warning. Please, I am a sports columnist, a golf writer, certainly not a golfer, although I accept the challenge. I have trouble when I can find the ball. Still, I am not easily frightened by double- break greens. How come Tiger, that lucky dog, gets
Royal Liverpool for the 2006 Open at its most inviting but I get what the man in the locker room said would be a “true test.” Who needs a true test? What was needed were pars. Isn’t golf supposed to be fun? Not at all. Two months after my summer visit, at
the Ricoh Women’s Open, golf at Royal Liverpool was agony. The course had become a beast, a situation seemingly unimaginable in Britain. The entire Friday round was scrubbed because the wind was blowing something like 60 mph. Karen Stupples, the 2004 winner, said conditions were “laughable,” although not in the comedy sense.
Kind, enticing Hoylake, such a gentle,
delightful venue, with Wales just across the River Dee, had become as nasty as a
“Hope you brought enough balls,” he said
Clockwise: Tiger Woods, Harold Hilton and Roberto De Vicenzo
dock worker at midnight. But that is links golf. And that is Royal
Liverpool. Always has been apparently. “Hoylake,” wrote the legendary Bernard Darwin eight decades past, “blown upon by mighty winds, breeder of mighty champions.” Champions like Harold Hilton and
Bobby Jones, Roberto de Vicenzo and Tiger Woods. And after that tormented but rewarding women’s Open, the first ever at Royal Liverpool, Jayai Shin of North Korea. My introduction to Royal Liverpool
came vicariously, when the sports editor of the paper for which I then worked, Art Rosenbaum of the San Francisco
Chronicle, won a trip to the 1967 Open and described in full the charms and dangers of the course across the Mersey from the Beatles’ home. It slipped out of mind, if not out of
sight, without an Open. The tournament would come to Muirfield, to Royal
ROYAL LIVERPOOL GOLF CLUB 2013 MAGAZINE
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