Well done the R&A!

IT has to be said that David Hill, the R&A’s long-serving director of championships, is not widely regarded as one of life’s great jokers.

So, when he stood before the assembled press at the Open Championship Media Day at this year’s Royal Birkdale and suggested the famous big, yellow, manual Open scoreboards were about to be scrapped, we tended to believe him.

“It’s time for a change,” he said with a straight face that would have made monosyllabic American comedian Steve Wright proud.

“I’ve been over to the Players Championship and they’ve got fancy electronic boards. Others have digital, or video, so we had a real dilemma (knowing) what to do.

“We’ve done the research,” he added. “We’ve asked a lot of people and this is what we’ve come up with,” unveiling a photograph of (wait for it) a big, yellow, manual scoreboard.

It seems the Great British public have told the R&A in no uncertain terms they liked the yellow boards just as they are and, sensibly, the R&A chose to listen.

That is something they do rather well, I would suggest, and is one of the many reasons why The Open is by far the best of golf’s four Majors.

Until recently, most British golfers used to put the Masters up on a pedestal alongside the Open but not now, I’m afraid.

Instead, in their efforts to protect their course from the advances in modern club and ball technology, all the Augusta authorities have succeeded in doing is creating an annual bore-fest, all-too similar to the US Open.

In contrast, this year’s Open venue provides an object lesson in how to protect a course without destroying its natural playing characteristics.

I suspect the re-modelled 17th green will be criticised, and probably rightly too, but the new bunkering is exceptional and the re-contouring work done around the greens will succeed in confounding the one-dimensional golfer while at the same time playing into the hands of those competitors who possess a deft touch and vivid imagination.

Golf, it seems to me, should be all about natural ability which is why I abhor the sort of thick, clinging rough you find just off the greens at a typical US Open venue.

Once in it, all you can do is pull out a 60˚ wedge, have a thrash at the ball and hope it squirts out somewhere close to the hole.

On a links, however, with its firm, fast turf and sharp contours, you can pick and choose the shot you want to play.
Sometimes, it might involve something flighted high in the air, but more often than not, a shot played close to the ground will be the better option.

The point is, you need to think about it, then play the shot precisely.

Mention of firm, fast fairways bring us to another thing the R&A does considerably better than Augusta, the USGA or the USPGA and that is course set-up.

Occasionally, it should be said, they get it wrong but when it’s good, it’s very good, most noticably at Lytham in 2001 but also at Hoylake in 2006 and Carnoustie last year.

The R&A believes an Open course should be a product of the weather, rather than the size of the club’s fertiliser budget, which is why Hoylake was baked brown but Carnoustie rather less so.

As a governing body, it does a great deal to promote sustainable golf, both at Open courses and elsewhere.

“The challenge for golf is to maintain course quality and playability while respecting and positively contributing to the social and natural environment,” is how chief executive Peter Dawson puts it but, to the best of my knowledge at least, that is not a sentiment that has ever been endorsed by current Augusta chairman, Billy Payne, or any of his predecessors.

In its hey-day, during the period between the 1970s and the 1990s, the Masters became required TV viewing for golfers and, unwittingly, many of them fell into the trap of believing that ‘green’ conditions equated to ‘good’ conditions.

All over the country, misguided individuals wanted their greens staff to replicate the verdant, lush conditions seen at Augusta and the result was not just a conspicuous deterioration in course conditions, but also a marked increase in on-course expenditure to produce these unnatural conditions.

Happily, at least some of these ‘green is good’ merchants are belatedly beginning to see the error of their ways and that might well be the R&A’s greatest single contribution to world golf.

This year, as we watch the Open unfold at Birkdale, we will see a natural, not artificial golf course in all its glory.

I hazard a guess we will also witness much drama and that, I suggest, is no coincidence.