I learned 5 things after playing Royal Lytham & St Annes under championship conditions

I had played Royal Lytham & St Annes before, last November, when the course looked very different compared to the present day, in this sunniest of summers.

I certainly didn’t walk off the famous 18th green with harsh sun and wind burn last winter, that’s for sure. I have no complaints though, and never will when taking the magical drive down Links Gate and into one of the most iconic venues in the sport.

The Ladies European Tour had kindly invited me to play the course the day after Shiho Kuwaki beat Esther Henseleit in a playoff to win the AIG Women’s Open.

What a venue for the best women’s players to compete on. It certainly beat a few of them up, and crowned an outstanding winner, who didn’t come out of the blue quite so much as some have suggested, having won twice this year on the LPGA of Japan Tour.

In its baked, white guise with stunningly crisp and fast greens, I took to the course at 10.30 am, and gratefully cracked a 4-iron into the heart of the first green – that daunting par 3. Unfortunately, I couldn’t maintain that quality for each of the 18 holes, but you don’t want to hear about that anyway.

What I think you’d prefer to hear about is the golf course – which has now hosted the Women’s Open six times, and will host The Open Championship for the 12th time in 2028, bookending a gap of 16 years without it.

While it was a fascinating privilege to experience what the best players in the women’s game had experienced, it is difficult not to look ahead and ponder how the best men’s players might get on at this compact and challenging links on the Fylde coast.

Here is what I picked out…

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A concerning Par 5 trend on The Open rota

The 2024 Open at Royal Troon featured the longest hole in Open Championship history. The par-5 6th was extended to 623 yards, 22 yards longer than when the famous Ayrshire track hosted the event in 2016.

This beat the record previously set from The Open the year before at Royal Liverpool – the par-5 15th hole was stretched to 620 yards. All in all, Troon was 195 yards longer between Opens.

The new 14th hole at Royal Birkdale that we saw at this year’s Open was 602 yards, and if you squint, it isn’t too dissimilar from the par-5 7th at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. Each of them is extremely long, with bunkers running up both sides. The green at Lytham is smaller than the one at Birkdale, but they’re both precariously perched and punish inaccurate approaches.

The 11th hole at Lytham is a wide par 5 with bunkers on each side, too. As much as I never, ever criticise golf courses, or architects, especially at world-class venues, I fail to see the imagination here. The 7th at Lytham is a little more narrow than the 11th, but at 589 yards, again, this matches the trend.

In the sport’s battle against distance, the R&A has decided that the only way to truly test the best and most powerful players in the game on par 5s is to make them into airport runways, and construct them in a straight line.

There are bunkers there to gobble up bad lay-up shots, but I think it would be fair to have a concern for this direction of travel. Just adding more yards to these holes doesn’t make them particularly more exciting, especially when The Open leaves town, and the members are to tackle what is left.

Par 3s reward solid long iron play

I mentioned a 4-iron I hit into the 1st hole at RLSA earlier. That was a real thrill, as much as a pleasant surprise. But if you are to find the putting surfaces on the short holes at Lytham, this is what you need to do, if you can.

I hit a 5-iron into the 5th hole, then 8-irons into the 9th and 12th. My tee shot on the 9th was horrific, and annoyed me as this is such a picturesque and perfect par 3 – you don’t want to ruin your experience by virtually losing your ball in the gorse.

While the green on the 1st hole is fairly flat, there is more slope and jeopardy on holes 5 and 9. The 12th green can also punish you if you fail to perform a straight mid-iron. It is on these holes where I suggest you pitch your tent at the 2028 Open. You might just find the winner from the player who can display the best ball-striking when they have an iron in hand, instead of their driver.

The par 3s at Royal Lytham & St Annes

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The finish at Royal Lytham is brutal

You are made to sing for your supper/earn your money/pull your weight in the last four holes at Royal Lytham. Whatever you’re doing, it is tough.

Even the last five holes – the 14th requires an accurate and long tee shot between bunkers before an approach to a putting surface protected by gnarly greenside traps, and no obvious bail-out.

The 15th hole is just remarkable. You are asked to play a small fade off the tee, but there is more space on the right side of the hole than you would think standing on the tee box. The further left you hit it, the more blind your approach is to a green that really isn’t that big.

Once the players reach this green at The Open, they’re back into the throng and the inevitable hustle and bustle that will surround the 18th tee, and the opening holes down the railway line.

16 could be described as respite. There is, at least, no car park there anymore which Seve Ballesteros famously had to contend with in 1979. It will probably be driveable with the right wind – I had a putter in my hand with my second shot, albeit this was from 50 yards away and my confidence with nipping chips is in the floor.

17 is an all-timer. You fire down a corridor for your tee shot, then shoot left to a green surrounded by sand traps. You can feel the history, and see it marked among the fairway bunkers. There is a plaque that commemorates Bobby Jones’ second shot from the bunkers in the final round in 1926. He made a par from what used to be a sandy waste area, and went on to hoist the Claret Jug.

As I saw my drive soaring through the air on the 18th hole, I actually shocked myself. I’m going to be playing from the fairway with my second shot on 18 at Lytham, I thought. This doesn’t happen to many people. Well, it turns out it didn’t happen to me either.

As my ball came down the left side, it landed in a trap and sand puffed up into the air. Gutted. I chopped out, pulled my third long of the green, then scrambled Gary Player-style for a bogey. All you can see from this tee shot is bunkers, and it is so narrow. What a hole, and what a way to end a brutal stretch of championship golf.

Golf balls are flying everywhere

As my playing partners and I walked down the long par-4 14th, a ball came bounding over from the 13th tee – it is probably the closest I’ve ever been to being struck on the fly on the golf course.

On my walk from the 17th green to the 18th tee, a ball rolled near my feet from the 2nd tee box. This wasn’t a coincidence anymore – it was the nature of the golf course. This could be a particular problem on the opening holes that follow the railway. It is compact, and if there is going to be more than 200,000 fans here in two years’ time, it will be a squeeze.

I hit a fade (try to, anyway). So, I was naturally aiming left on the 2nd, 3rd, 7th and 8th tees with the hope it would spin back in my desired direction. All tour players do now is hit fades, and given they will be aiming away from the out-of-bounds railway line anyway, at least subconsciously, this could cause a problem for fans.

In the areas to the left of these holes, especially the 2nd and the 3rd, there will be plenty of trampled-down rough, and favourable lies for missing the fairways. They might lead to blind approach shots, but links golf and championship golf can be as much about missing in the right place as anything else, and the players are alert to that, too.

There isn’t much to be done about this. In a more suffocating piece of land and narrower holes, there will be errant tee shots, and there will be fore shouts. Be careful out there.

And finally, the bunkers…

I left the Lytham cliché until last. But, a cliché is a cliché for a reason. You simply cannot go in the fairway bunkers at Royal Lytham & St Annes. The well-protected and nuanced green complexes and surrounds are more than enough to confuse you, and the very best players, so you absolutely do not want to be coming into them having just splashed out of a bunker.

There are exceptions. The bunkers on the left of the 17th fairway do allow you to hit a full iron shot towards the green, if you get a good lie. I was able to hoick an 8-iron out of one and on to the green. But this is a rarity. Most of them are deep and extremely penal.

There are 174 pot bunkers in the fairways and the greens at RLSA. The players will likely be able to tolerate the greenside traps, as they are all too good to be too bamboozled by them.

But again, as I discovered and my playing partners discovered, a bad lie in these deep hazards can make any score possible on occasion.

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