Since it is poor form to speak ill of the dead, I will say only that golf course architects Old Tom Morris and James Braid weren’t always 20/20 visionaries. The two Scotsmen were guilty of trespassing someplace dark in the recesses of the mind in imagining the championship course at Carnoustie Golf Links: 18 holes of holy rolling hell, punctured by sandy amoebas and lined with covetous thickets, where a competitor’s best clubs are a shovel and a scythe. The only caddie qualified to carry a bag on this 7,400-yard odyssey is Virgil, but even he is short on guidance. Better to hand the golfer a bible when he asks for his yardage book and recommend prayer when he asks for advice.
Morris, who won three of the first five Open Championships (what we call the British Open), extended Carnoustie in 1867 to 18 holes from the original 10 designed by Allan Robertson a quarter-century earlier. In 1926, Braid, who also won multiple Opens, was hired to upgrade the course to what it approximates today, that being an unshapely crop circle. But Braid had an accomplice, Golf Digest reported in a story about the grounds’ history: James Wright, an amateur designer whom the contemporary press and the last GM of Carnoustie credited with reworking the famous finishing holes. Said the GM, Graeme Duncan: “Carnoustie would not be a championship course without James Wright.”
The changes Wright proposed were not just artistic, but specifically cubist: “The par-3 17th would be abandoned, replaced by a new par 3 to be played as the 13th. The 18th could then be extended back to the old par-3 tee box, creating a par 5 with two carries over the burn,” wrote Ron Whitten in Golf Digest, referring to the Barry Burn, a minor river running through the course. He continued: “The old 16th would become the 17th, played from a new back tee to a new green appropriated from Carnoustie’s other course (now called the Burnside Course), its fairway defined by the several bends of the Barry Burn. The old 15th would become the 16th, shortened from a pushover par 4 to a stern par 3.”
Whoever gets the acknowledgement—Morris, Braid, Wright, Picasso—they all must’ve been genius, since “The Beast” was awarded its first Open in 1931. Scottish-American Tommy Armour won the championship that year, posting a four-round total of +8 in 296 strokes. To put the tournament’s difficulty in perspective, it was the highest winning score to par until 1938, when the wind at Royal St. George’s in Sandwich, England, blew with such mustard that “it actually snapped some flag poles,” the AP reported. A decade later was the last time for more than 50 years that an Open victor needed 290 strokes to make it home—until 1999, when Scottish long shot Paul Lawrie won with +6 at, where else, Carnoustie. No wonder they call it Carnasty.
All bets are off this week when the Open returns there for the seventh time. Despite statistical and visual evidence to support the claim that the course is the toughest of the 10 venues in the championship’s rotation, Padraig Harrington won there in 2007 with -7. The young English star Tommy Fleetwood set a new course record of 63 just in October.
But Carnoustie seems to be in the mood for some numerical outliers. To take one, Tiger Woods said he hit a ball during a practice round on Monday 333 yards. Even at age 42, this distance is not unusual for him—plenty of driving holes run downhill, play downwind, or have fast fairways. Still, 333 yards usually takes a lot of club.
Not so in this case, Woods said.
“There’s not a lot of opportunities to hit the driver [here], because the ball’s going to be rolling 80 yards. It’s just hard to keep the ball in play, even hitting sometimes four and five irons that are running 50, 60 yards. … I hit a three iron on Monday down 18 that went 333.”
Three irons don’t go 333 yards. Three woods don’t go that far. At Carnoustie, with its frictionless short grass, they could, especially if the rain holds off and the sun and breeze keep the turf dry. These conditions can be great equalizers, neutralizing the length advantages of bombers like world No. 1 Dustin Johnson and turning the game into a contest of creativity and precision. They also can be unpredictable variables, leading to bizarre bounces, unfortunate rolls, and playing from where the Weed B Gon missed a spot.
These factors aren’t unique to Carnoustie among Open Championship sites. But it’s pushed them to their extreme. Remember 1999, when Lawrie won with a +6? That was the year Frenchman Jean Van De Velde had worked his way to a +3, three-shot lead through 71 holes, then rolled up his pants at the 72nd to consider playing a ball from a body of water. He carded a 7 on the hole, giving him a +6 to set up a playoff. That’s how he ended up losing.
But depending on your appetite for gut-wrenching drama, it’s how a viewer can end up a winner.
