Royal Liverpool Golf Club
Royal Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake is a ‘proper’ golf club, my wedge was fixed as a matter of course. The 3 iron my son broke with his opening tee shot was more problematic. Although the head was almost back in the pro shop the right shaft was elusive and the starter caught us halfway round to let us know. I must give my son less Weetabix or new clubs.
It was a friendly, if eerily quiet place, and our caddies had only been out twice previously. Heaven knows how caddies and courses will survive so it was particularly kind of RLGC to donate half their green fee to Alzheimer’s Society. Thank you.
Hoylake, as you would expect, are genuinely old school links; experienced bunkers have crabbed into all the right places, knowledgeable gorse bushes crane their necks onto the fairways like spectators pressing against the ropes just where the drama unfolds. Greens are defended by wind and gullies, on up turned saucers, beyond dead ground and across deceptive swales.
If you complete a hole nonchalantly to par it is probably because the wind was at your back and the pin generous for the conditions. But as you pluck the ball out the pin whispers ‘try that again tomorrow and I might just rip your card apart’.
Topographically it gets more interesting from 8 through 12 with more changes in elevation a blind punchbowl and a cantankerous par 3. And then looms the new, par 3, 15th. I am afraid that this is where I really lost it. An 8 iron shank says it all. I was spooked by the shallowness of the green, the zero tolerance behind, the face of the bunker, the stiff wind, my socks, the fact it was Wednesday; anything and everything. I flunked it.
I would like to say my good humour returned, but it didn’t. It was perched on my shoulders by the 18th green to watch my plu-perfect Mickelson flop shot flight over the bunker to land on the sixpence. Peter Alliss in the commentary box would have renamed it the O’Reilly flop shot but instead of landing like an angel with sore feet it careered off the edge of said six pence and took off like Usain Bolt. If I had known better I would have hurled my wedge as well as the imprecations into the Conservative Club and beyond.
What to make of it all. Undoubtedly RLGC is a great test of golf but is the urge to make a TV spectacular tricksing up our old favourites, and altering our perception of a great course? It feels like the new par 3, as well as solving a routing issue has been designed to do that. And it would certainly have been entertaining to watch me blow up but I am not sure that it felt like part of the same course I had played until that point. It is early days and hasn’t bedded in yet, and I did shank it.
A lower handicap golfer playing week in, week out would probably enjoy and appreciate it more as it rewards consistency and experience, for it unveils it’s charms and mysteries only through more intimate knowledge.
The more widely spoken criticism is of it’s being pancake flat and rather expensive. I have mentioned topography already but pricing generally is a concern. Green fees are underwritten by it’s place on the rota, overseas visitors and bucket list golfers. The knock on effect is that other local clubs on the overseas tourists itinerary charge commensurate pricing without all the trimmings. There is no doubt that large sums have been re-invested by RLGC in the design, the daily care and the visitor experience. But I am not sure with our current future mapped out how sustainable this is. We must be wary of creating white elephants that become too expensive to run and thus set themselves so far distant from the local population that a reputation for excellence becomes a reputation for divisive elitism.
Seagull’s view. 30/36
Greens & bunkers. 17/18
Links appeal 16/18
Total. 63
