British Open Tee Off Tomorrow

Will the Royal Lytham fade away into history conquered by advanced golf equipments? The 130th British Open, the oldest golf tournament among four majors, is held from tomorrow for four days at the Royal Lytham & St. Annes in Lancaster, England.

The biggest interest from the fans is the winning score. If the course allows higher than 10 under-par this year again, since Tom Lehman (U.S.A.) won the 1996 championship with a score of 13 under-par 271, the Royal Lytham is likely to be replaced by a different course.

The host of the tournament, the Royal and Acient Golf Club of St. Andrews (R&A), has chosen 14 links courses (seaside course) for the British Open. Among them, 26 tournaments were held at the St. Andrews Old Club, a holy-land of golf, and the Prestwick course hosted 24 tournaments. 14 tournaments were held at the Muir Field, and the Royal St. George hosted 12 of them.

Although the Royal Lytham (RL) is a renowned course hosting 10 British Opens since 1926, the course is in a risk of withdrawal since the course has a short total length of 6,905 yards, and the location of bunkers on the fairways are not a threat to the players at all.

In fact, the first winning candidate Tiger Wood (U.S.A.) can make two-ons in most of par-4 halls even without grabbing a driver. At Wood`s last visit to RL, he, an amateur player then, snatched 8 birdies in the first 11 halls during the second round.

On the other hand, another reason why players look down upon this course is that the bunkers on the fairways were designed considering the flight distance hit by a persimmon-tree driver.

Nowadays, players, armed with technologically advanced drivers, easily hit longer than 300 yards shots, an enough distance to hit over the bunkers.

Nick Price said, ``Although there are 196 bunkers in the RL, that is not enough. To regain the glory of the old days, the RL, a course impossible to extend the course length, has to create more bunkers.``

The head-pro of the RL said, ``the distance is not everything. There are ruffs that can be called a `jungle` and the unpredictable wind from the ocean in the RL. The scores of 1996 tournament were good since it was windless. The course will not surrender too easily.``

It will be interesting to see whether long-hitters including Woods, Ernie Els (South Africa), Sergio Garcia (Spain), Phil Mickelson, David Love III (U.S.A.) will easily conquer the RL or will they have a hard time due to the perverse gust of wind.

Ahn Young-Sik ysahn@donga.com