It meant a lot to Tiger Woods to be able to play in the 150th Open Championship this week.
Still hobbled from that near-fatal car accident more than a year ago, Woods even skipped the U.S. Open last month to give his body enough time to recover from previous events and allow him to play.
Fans at St Andrews showed their appreciation with a huge applause as Woods wrapped his second round below the cut line, which caused him to get emotional. He admitted afterwards that the tears came from knowing it could very well be his last British Open at the Old Course — where he won two of his three British Open titles.
“I've been lucky enough to have been doing this since 1995, and I don’t know if I'll be lucky enough to play another British open here at St. Andrews … the warmth and ovation on 18, it got to me.” pic.twitter.com/Qg6Sg2evod
Despite his physical limitations, fans gave Woods a good chance to win this event because of how great he’s been in his career. So even as he doubts his own future, we will no doubt hold out hope that the G.O.A.T. has a few more of these left in him.
Don’t be surprised to see plenty of three-putts and worse on the giant greens of the Old Course at St. Andrews.
Jordan Spieth was one shot back of the lead on No. 8 tee in the final round of the 2015 British Open on the Old Course at St. Andrews, and he knocked his tee shot at the 174-yard par 3 onto the green. Normally that would be cause for at least a little satisfaction, but not necessarily on the Old Course.
That’s because most of the putting surfaces on the Old Course – which this week hosts its 30th British Open – are gigantic double greens that serve two holes with flagsticks planted on opposite sides. As can so easily happen after an approach shot finds the wrong portion of one of these greens, Spieth faced a putt of some 100 feet. His ensuing four-putt – his first attempt sailed off the green – and the double-bogey 5 left him playing catchup the rest of the day, and he eventually fell one shot short of a playoff won by Zach Johnson.
None of this is a knock on Spieth’s putting – he was a top-10 putter on the PGA Tour that year, and that double bogey clearly was caused by an errant iron shot. On a normal course, Spieth would have missed the green, likely by a wide margin, and he probably would have pitched a wedge shot of some kind onto the putting surface without ever leaving such a dent in his putting stats.
Jordan Spieth throws his ball into the crowd after four-putting for double-bogey on No. 8 in the final round of the British Open on the Old Course at St Andrews in Scotland on July 20, 2015. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
The Old Course is different, and errant iron shots don’t always lead to pitches or chips. Instead, players often face massive putts for which they must judge distance, extreme mounding and even the wind if they are to have any hope of getting their first putt close.
The Old Course has only four greens that serve just one hole, at Nos. 1, 9, 17 and 18. The rest of the holes play to one side of seven giant double greens. An interesting note for the hardcore golf nerds: If the two hole numbers served by a double green are added together, they always equal 18. For example, No. 2 and No. 16 share a green, so they equal 18. Other shared greens are Nos. 3 and 15, Nos. 4 and 14, Nos. 5 and 13, Nos. 6 and 12, Nos. 7 and 11, and Nos. 8 and 10.
And they are huge.
The average size of the putting surfaces at the Old Course is 22,267 square feet, more than half an acre, and the double green for Nos. 5 and 13 is over 37,000 square feet. By comparison, the average green size at Pebble Beach Golf Links, another seaside course famed for hosting major championships, is about 3,500 feet. Augusta National, another major staple, has greens that average just over 6,400 square feet.
Even if you halve the size of the double greens at the Old Course to make an apples-to-apples comparison equaling 18 greens, the putting surfaces at the Old average more than 13,600 feet per hole, nearly four times the size of the greens at Pebble Beach.
Perhaps most telling, several of the double greens are more than 100 yards across. Play to the wrong flag – it happens, even for the pros – and you will face one of the longest putts of your life.
The out-and-back layout of the Old Course makes such greens possible, as most of the holes are situated in a long, somewhat narrow stretch of land between other courses as they play away from the massive R&A clubhouse toward an estuary before turning back toward the clubhouse. Parallel holes play in opposite directions through the corridor, making it possible to approach the shared double greens from opposite directions.
And their size isn’t their only feature. The greens of the Old Course are packed with humps and hollows that following the natural contours of the lumpy ground. Some of the slopes wouldn’t work on smaller putting surfaces, but because the greens of the Old Course are so big, the extreme contours fit. If a modern designer tried to squeeze such slopes into a normal-sized green, there would be almost no puttable areas were a ball would stop rolling, and the usable portion of the green would be too small.
Tiger Woods practices on the 18th green Tuesday on the Old Course at St Andrews in Scotland. No. 18 features one of only four single greens serving just one hole on the course. (Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)
The size, the slopes – they all factors into strategy and thinking. The Old Course requires precision, often along the ground, to small targets within giant greens. Even with big overall targets, big misses still lead to big numbers.
Two of the best American public-access examples of such huge greens would be Old Macdonald at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and Streamsong’s Black Course in Florida, both of them modern courses where three-putts, four-putts and worse happen every day. Like the Old Course, the greens at Old Mac and the Black feature tremendous contours that force players to concentrate on hitting small targets within all that square-footage.
The perfect example as we head into this week’s British Open was Spieth’s four-putt in 2015, when he proved that a green hit in regulation doesn’t always mean much at St. Andrews.
How does St. Andrews, site of this week’s Open Championship, stack up against the rest of the course rota?
Each of the 10 layouts on the modern British Open course rota score highly in Golfweek’s Best ranking of top classic golf courses built before 1960 in Great Britain and Ireland, as would be expected. But that doesn’t mean they all are equals.
Check out the rankings of each course on the modern rota below. The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings, and they are included for each course below.
From the castle and cathedral to the golf courses, there’s just something special about St. Andrews.
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – No matter the direction one looks in this ancient, gray seaside town on Scotland’s east coast, which was founded in the 12th century on the legend that the bones of the Christian apostle St. Andrew were brought here, the eyes explode with lasting reminders from centuries past.
The ruins of St. Andrews Castle, built around 1200 A.D. and rebuilt several times during the Wars of Scottish Independence, still stand proud. The remains of St. Andrews Cathedral, established in 1158, continue to successfully battle harsh elements off the North Sea. The University of St. Andrews which was founded in 1413 continues to be a force in education.
There are markings on cobblestones scattered throughout the city indicating where executions took place. On the pleasant outskirts of the city by the massive beach is where Witch Hill resided, the unpleasant local where accused witches in the 16th and 17th centuries were taken down to the water and, with their thumb tied to the opposite toe, were submerged. If they drowned, they were deemed as witches. If they survived, they were deemed as witches and dragged to Witch Hill and burned at the stake (the odds were not in their favor).
Witch Hill is now Martyrs’ Hill, where the imposing Martyrs’ Monument commemorates the Protestant martyrs who were burned at the stake for purported heresy between 1520 and 1560.
“You go back in time when you are in St. Andrews,” said three-time Open Championship winner Sir Nick Faldo.
The journey into the past reveals history has a mighty ally to form the fabric of the Auld Grey Toon – golf. Just a few stones’ throws from Martyrs’ Hill is the headquarters of the Royal & Ancient, which was established in 1754 and lays down the rules of golf for all the world except in the USA and Mexico. In a small corner of the ancient ruins of the Cathedral of St. Andrews, golf royalty Old Tom Morris and his son, Young Tom, lay side by side in rest.
This is the Morris’s section of the cemetery at St. Andrews. Off the west wall, left of St. Rule Tower, is where Old and Young Tom are buried.
More than 30 golf shops are scattered across this town of roughly 20,000 year-round residents. There are seven public golf courses controlled by St. Andrews Links, including the New Course next to the Old Course. The New Course, incidentally, opened in 1895. Numerous pubs speak to the game with historic golf paraphernalia, vast collections which can be found at places such as The Dunvegan and Number 1 Golf Place.
And the jewel of the city, and the junction of Links Place and Golf Place, is the Old Course of St. Andrews Links, where some form of the game created in the 12th century has been played across the barren stretch of rumpled turf for hundreds of years – except in the 15th century when the parliaments of three successive Scottish kings prohibited the game.
“The hair on the back of your neck stands up when you are here, no matter where you are in the town,” said two-time Open Championship winner Padraig Harrington. “Everything that has happened here in the town, the game was born here, it’s spine chilling. There is no other place in the world like it.”
Aussie and 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy realized that on his first visit.
“It is the perfect place for a golfer,” he said. “I fell in love with the town before I fell in love with the golf course. At other great golf courses in the world, they might have a nice clubhouse but then you leave. Here at St. Andrews, it’s the town first, and then the course. You leave this course and you walk straight into this magical place.
“The first time I came here in 1993, people were walking the streets with metal spikes. It was just unbelievable to me. For a golf nut like me, it was the perfect place. All the golf shops with old and new equipment. The pubs, the restaurants, the buildings that have been here for centuries. When you’re here it’s hard to not love everything about the game.”
Or as three-time Open champion Tiger Woods put it: “This is as good as it gets.”
St. Andrews and the Old Course are the proper place – the only place, really – for this week’s 150th Open Championship, the oldest tournament in the world; the inaugural was held when Abraham Lincoln was campaigning to become president of the United States.
The celebration of the milestone will be marked by numerous festivities. The tournament is expected to lure record attendance.
“I’ve watched the Open Championships here at St. Andrews, and I don’t think there’s anything more special in golf than playing an Open Championship at the Home of Golf,” 2017 Open champion Jordan Spieth said. “I have vivid memories of the Old Course. It’s one of those courses you play where you don’t really forget much. There’s only a couple of those maybe in the world. I think here and at Augusta National are my two favorite places in the world.
“Playing in the town is so cool. On a daily round day, not in the Open, it’s pretty unbelievable when you have people walking their dogs on the course. It’s just a casual day, a great place to go for a nice walk. There’s nowhere else like it.”
Phil Mickelson, Open champion in 2013, said St. Andrews is a spiritual place.
“You can’t help but feel emotion come over you as you play, knowing that this is where the game began,” he said.
That’s one of the things that gets to Adam Scott.
“This is where it all began,” he said. “And generally Scotland has embraced everything about the origins of the game and St. Andrews, the town itself is pretty special. It’s a really fun, fun town. And you can feel the history.
“There are so many things about the golf course that are unique. But everyone loves playing it. It has some features that are hard, or almost impossible to replicate and not be criticized. It all works really well here.”
The Old Course is home to a puzzling collection: 14 holes share greens, some of the double fairways are 100 yards wide, there are 112 bunkers (by all means stay out of the ones called Strath, Hell, Spectacles, Principal’s Nose and the Road Hole bunker, which is located on the par-4 17th where a gravel road runs against the back edge of the putting surface and is in play. And there’s the deep depression fronting the 18th green called the Valley of Sin.
Tiger Woods chips onto the green on the road hole during his third round on day three of the British Open at St Andrews in Scotland, on July 17, 2010. (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Legend holds that many of the pot bunkers were carved out of the Earth by animals seeking shelter from harsh winters — and even summers.
The roster of winners in St. Andrews includes Jack Nicklaus (twice), Woods (twice), Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Bobby Locke, Peter Thomson, Sam Snead, Bobby Jones and James Braid.
Nicklaus played the Open in St. Andrews eight times, the final in 2005.
“When I came here in 1964, I couldn’t believe that St. Andrews was a golf course that would test golfers of that time. Now, that’s, what, 60 years ago? It still tests the golfers at this time. It’s a magical golf course.
“The conditions, the weather, where you actually choose to put the pins, whether the golf course gets dry, whether the golf course gets wet, all those things that make St. Andrews a magical place.
“The game of golf essentially started here, and it just absolutely is mind-boggling to me that it still stands up to the golfers of today.”
On Tuesday, in a special ceremony, Nicklaus will be honored as an honorary citizen of St. Andrews. Only two other Americans have been so recognized – Bobby Jones and Benjamin Franklin.
“The replica is beautiful, but it’s not the same. It really isn’t. It will never be.”
ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Collin Morikawa’s possession of the Claret Jug came to an end Monday morning.
It was not an easy separation.
“It sucked. It really did,” Morikawa said in his pre-tournament meeting with the media Monday at the Old Course, home to the 150th Open Championship. “I woke up this morning and looked at it. The replica is beautiful, but it’s not the same. It really isn’t. It will never be.
“But I don’t want to dwell on the past. I think I’ve talked about that early on in my career. I always look forward to what’s next. Maybe hopefully just giving it back kind of frees me up and allows me just to focus on winning this week.”
In his first start in the Open Championship, Morikawa held off Jordan Spieth and Louis Oosthuizen to win the Claret Jug last year at Royal St. George’s (Morikawa also won the PGA Championship in 2020 at TPC Harding Park in his first start).
Morikawa is making his first start at the Old Course, the rumpled, flat grounds nestled in the city. The Home of Golf was love at first sight for Morikawa.
“I can see why guys love it,” he said. “I can see how special this week can be. I can see how the course can play a million different ways, depending on the weather.
“Looks like we’re going to get some pretty consistent weather and some wind patterns this week. I think overall you’ve just got to be ready to play some good golf because you’re going to get some good bounces and probably some bad ones.”
Morikawa, ranked No. 8 in the Official World Golf Ranking, has not won in 2022. Trying to reclaim the Claret Jug might be the final push to victory.
“Now that I know what it’s like to have the Claret Jug for a year, there’s nothing like it. It’s a really special year,” he said. “Even though you won that tournament a year ago, it’s going to be in your history for the rest of your life. And it’s pretty cool. I think trying to defend this week at the 150th at St Andrews would be even more special.”
The Old Course at St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns make this a special week for the European Tour and for links lovers.
The European Tour takes a few knocks from golf course aficionados about the layouts the tour frequently plays as it takes events to new coordinates – and sponsors – around the world. Some criticism is fair, some less so.
But it’s all moot this week. Just kick back, turn on the tube and enjoy some of the best golf courses in the world for the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
St. Andrews Old Course. Carnoustie. Kingsbarns. They make up an incredible Scottish links triumvirate around St. Andrews, the best one-week professional rota in golf.
The Old Course is, of course, the Old Course. This is golf. Old Tom. Young Tom. All the way to Tiger Woods. This is the home of golf, the marketing says – and it’s right. And always exciting to watch.
Carnoustie is no slouch, itself. Home to eight past British Opens – ahem, Open Championships – Carnoustie’s Championship Course presents one of the most challenging and thrilling conclusions in golf. Just ask Jean van de Velde about the dreaded Barry Burn, where his chance at the 1999 British Open title was ingloriously drowned.
Kingsbarns (Golfweek files)
And to people who don’t follow modern golf architecture closely, Kingsbarns might seem like a third wheel in this rota. Trust us, it’s not. The Kyle Phillips design that opened in 2000 has climbed all the various course rankings – including Golfweek’s Best – to become one of the most desirable tee times in Europe.
The only thing that comes close to this rota on the PGA Tour is the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, with Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill and Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course hosting celebrities and pros alike each year. Pebble Beach ranks No. 9 on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list for the U.S., and Spyglass is No. 31 among all Modern U.S. courses. Not bad at all. It’s hard to beat the vibe on this section of California coastline.
But when it comes to elite course rankings, no rota compares to the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. And like the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the Dunhill Links also serves up a celebrity field in a pro-am format to make things a bit more interesting. Each team will play the three courses over the first three days, with teams and individuals that make the cut playing the Old Course on Sunday.
Keep scrolling for more on each of the courses in this week’s rota.
Golfweek’s Best includes the walking environment a key metric in developing its lists of great golf courses.
Of the 10 categories in which Golfweek’s Best course raters are asked to assign scores in their course evaluations, the “walk in the park test” is perhaps the least understood. It’s certainly the one we as panelists get the most questions about.
There’s no denying that assigning a number to how enjoyable a place is to spend half a day is a particularly slippery and subjective enterprise, but there are a few ways in which raters might gain a toehold in interpreting this category. (Other categories for raters include memorability of par 3s, par 4s and par 5s; conditioning; and the like.)
Here’s a story that might be illustrative. Last May, I had the great fortune to be invited for a round at the National Golf Links of America in Southampton, New York. The timing seemed auspicious, but when the day arrived the weather was less than ideal: low 40s, steady rain and a gusty, biting wind that made bogeys feel like pars. Despite the conditions, our host was both gracious and game, and our entire Gore-Tex-clad group had a blast from start to finish.
As we strolled down the hill on the wonderful 17th, a hole named Peconic, I said to our host, “You know, every time I come here I’m amazed by one thing above all – I seem to always finish my round with more energy than when I started.”
That is inspiring architecture. That’s a course that aces the walk in the park test.
Great golf courses tell a story. The genres may vary – perhaps it’s a tale of epic heroism (Pine Valley in New Jersey), or a subtle chamber drama (Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina) or a mystery with a solution key that varies day to day (the Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland) – but they always situate the golfer at the center of a compelling narrative.
The Old Course at St. Andrews is a walking shrine. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)
Architects use routing – which is the subject of its own Golfweek’s Best rating category – to pack as much interesting golf as they can into the property’s confines, but I would argue they do not always create great stories. Even some highly rated courses do not necessarily excel as walks in the park.
Naturally, some sites are more conducive to a great walk in the park than others, but the most talented architects have a knack for drawing out and amplifying their inherent sense of place. Inviting the golfer to explore how different environments transition from one to another often helps.
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw do this beautifully at Friar’s Head in New York and Bandon Dunes Golf Resort’s Bandon Trails in Oregon. Stanley Thompson exploded his routing at Cape Breton Highlands Links, justifying some longer walks between tees and greens to fully showcase the magnificent rivers, mountains and valleys of the Nova Scotia wilderness. At Dismal River Club’s Red Course in Nebraska, Tom Doak opted for an unconventional “open-jaw” routing – the course ends a solid half-mile away from where it began – to produce first-rate hole variety and a compelling environmental narrative.
Other courses may offer a collection of challenging or interesting shots, yet somehow they create a feel as if the player is tracking around the same piece of ground without much sense of purpose.
Let’s go back to basics, though.
The key word in this category is “walk.” At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, it is infinitely easier to evaluate a course’s merits in this category on foot rather than from the seat of a golf cart. There are plenty of good courses that were designed with motorized transport at the front of mind, but how many of them are truly great?
A few years ago, I played New Zealand’s famed Kauri Cliffs and stubbornly chose to walk it. Those who have been there probably will not be surprised that I didn’t enjoy it as much as my riding partners. It’s still an incredibly beautiful place, but the golf does not prioritize this most ancient of design imperatives.
This isn’t to directly equate the walk in the park test with walkability. After all, on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve all played our share of highly walkable courses that don’t tell much of a story. It’s merely to suggest that the latter should probably factor into consideration to some extent.
The hardest aspect to quantify in the walk in the park test, but perhaps the most rewarding to bear in mind while at play, may be that it leaves room for the rater – or any player, for that matter – to express his or her appreciation for non-architectural aspects that enhance the experience of spending half a day chasing a little white ball.
Those considerations are highly subjective. It might be a potent juxtaposition, such as the awesome feeling of watching a tee shot fly far and sure against the backdrop of Beverly Hills skyscrapers at Los Angeles Country Club. Or it might be an organic, human-scale connection with the surrounding community. Maybe for you it’s a club that welcomes dogs, or maybe it’s linked to a tightly knit routing that allows groups to whip around in three hours.
For me, there’s almost a sense of timelessness to a great walk in the park. One of my favorite rounds of 2019 came at Wisconsin’s Lawsonia Links with fellow Golfweek’s Best raters Mike Hopkins and Chris Hufnagel. We tackled William Langford and Theodore Moreau’s masterpiece on a hot and humid Midwestern summer afternoon. Hopkins played modern equipment, Hufnagel bagged a set of 1970s-vintage persimmons and blades, and I moved up a set of tees and played century-old hickories. We marveled at the course’s consistent ability to provide entertaining golf for all three of us.
We walked smoothly yet unhurriedly through a routing that highlighted, in turn, small-town farm country, dense pine forest and a grand, wide-open and boldly undulating stage reminiscent of nothing less than Shinnecock Hills. We spent a not-insignificant portion of the round expressing how downright lucky we felt to be on that particular golf course, on that day.
We were in the throes of a great walk in the park. Indeed, discovering and celebrating what makes for your ideal walk in the park should be at the heart of every golfer’s journey.
– Thomas Dunne serves as a rater panelist for Golfweek’s Best, helping to shepherd the Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
From TPC Sawgrass to St. Andrews, check out our top bucket-list holes in all of tournament golf.
The Players Championship. Penultimate hole. Island green. Safe or splash. What more is there to say?
The par 3 surrounded by water is certainly daunting to look at, particularly at the Players Championship, where Tour players tee it up from just inside 140 yards. The same goes for amateurs who get the chance to tee it up at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, though many are probably thinking about the iconic par 3 the whole round.
If the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass is on a golf fan’s bucket list for must-see-in-person tournament golf (and in some cases, must-play), what are some of the others? The Road Hole at St. Andrews? The seventh hole at Pebble Beach?
Here are 23 more of our choices for bucket-list holes you should get to in person if you ever get the chance:
17th hole, Old Course, St. Andrews
Par 4, 495 yards
Jack Nicklaus on the 17th hole at the 134th Open Championship at Old Course, St. Andrews Golf Links, July 11, 2005. (Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images)
There’s a blind tee shot over the old faux coal sheds outlined by the boundary fence for the Old Course Hotel. Too often the road becomes a resting place for wayward approach shots. The perched green wraps around the Road Hole Bunker, the one must-avoid spot on the course.
