Royal St. George's presents a unique challenge

During a trip to London last fall, Ben Curtis hopped a train two hours east to Royal St. George's Golf Club. Curtis didn't play. He was merely sightseeing with his family, revisiting the site of his greatest victory, the 2003 British Open. It was a blustery day — at one point Curtis and Co. took shelter in a pot bunker — and without the Open infrastructure in place, the course looked different to Curtis.
The grandstands, merchandise tent and makeshift meat carveries are back in business this week at St. George's, and so is one of the quirkiest and most confounding exams on the Open rota. Indeed it's remarkable that Curtis won here on his first try eight years ago, because the humps and bumps and swales that define this layout can take a lifetime to learn.( TaylorMade R11 Driver)
At the par-4 second, Luke Donald pulled two drives — one into a fairway bunker, the other into gnarly fescue left of that bunker. At the par-3 third, he tugged another tee shot, thinning a long iron that left him shortsided. ("You don't really want to be here, do you?" he said to his caddie when they arrived at his ball.) And at the par-4 fourth, he struck what looked like a perfect drive over the towering bunker that protrudes from the front end of the fairway only to find his ball had leaked into the left rough. From there, Donald, maybe the game's best iron player, couldn't hold the green.
When pushed for a number, Harrington said, "If you shot 59 that would be a good score. I know that's one parameter. And you wouldn't be happy with 80. So somewhere in between those two."
That's the essence of St. George's. It's impossible to predict just about anything here, from how hard the wind will blow, to where a drive will come to rest, to who might clutch the claret jug at week's end. It's not a golf course. It's a Rubik's Cube.
Charl Schwartzel and defending Open champion Louis Oosthuizen learned how long it can take to play a nine-hole practice round with TaylorMade R11 Driver on a course full of hard-working pros and note-taking caddies: 3 hours and 10 minutes. ("They walked in because they just had enough," said their agent, Chubby Chandler.) Phil Mickelson learned what the wind around here can do to a tee shot. At the par-4 17th on Tuesday he bombed a drive 380 yards. At the par-3 11th, he also pulled driver, flying it just 210.
"The wind is perhaps a wee bit stronger than we would like at the moment, but we like that wind on links courses," said Jim McArthur, the chairman of the R&A's championship committee. Dawson added that the R&A would not hesitate to push up some tees if it really starts gusting.
A stiff breeze can wreak particular havoc at the daunting par-4 fourth, which requires players to knock their drives over a mountain of sand about 220 yards from the tee. Then again, the wind can defang the hole, too.
"Today it was a driver(TaylorMade R11 Driver) and a wedge," Davis Love III said after his practice round Wednesday. "It blows the other way, it's a par 4 and a half — at least."
Such are the vagaries of links golf. And especially links golf at Royal St. George's, which despite its rich history makes few players "Favorite Open Venues" lists. Harrington thinks he knows why.
"It wouldn't be one of the more popular courses because of the fact that it's so traditional in how it plays," he said. "Professional golfers like everything to be ordered and neat, and the guy who hits it the best and hits it by TaylorMade R11 Driver on the green and two putts should be the winner.
"But that doesn't happen in links golf. There are a lot more curve balls thrown at you, and you have to deal with them. It's as much a mental test as a physical test, and I suppose we're conditioned to the physical test: we like flat lies on fairways and everything to be predictable."
In other words, everything St. George's is not.