ESPN.com - Golf Online - British Open 2000 - Brutal bunkers defend St. Andrews

ESPN Golf Online news services
Wednesday, July 19

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland -- Mark O'Meara was deep inside the greenside bunker on No. 11, flailing away like a hacker. Eight swings later, he picked up the ball and threw it out.


	Michael Campbell plays out of a bunker on No. 16, one of the largest on the course.

"Mark that down in the book," he told his caddie. "Don't go there."

That's good advice this week in the British Open, where 112 bunkers litter the Old Course, waiting to catch balls skittering across the slick fairways. Golfers who end up in them will hit a shot out in just about any direction to escape further trouble.

The bunkers have names like Hell, the Coffins, Cartgate, Beardies and Principal's Nose.

"There are so many of them I can't remember where they are, let alone their names," Hal Sutton said.

The Old Course averages more than six bunkers a hole, but quantity is not really the issue. There are hidden bunkers, pot bunkers with barely enough room to turn around in, and bunkers with sodded sides and fronts that leave only one way out -- backward.

They come in all sizes and shapes. Some are round and large, others small and deep. The biggest is Hell Bunker, a hole 10 feet deep cut out of the middle of the 14th fairway with stacked sod towering over any golfer who enters.

Get in there, as Jack Nicklaus did in 1995, and bring a shovel instead of a sand wedge. The greatest golfer of his era ended up with a 10 on the hole

A little bit of relief

Sunshine made the Old Course even faster Wednesday, but officials brought relief for the players preparing for the British Open when they acted to reduce the toughness of the bunkers.

Royal & Ancient officials said they had exactly the course they had asked for two years ago.

"We have a hard, fast running golf course playing like a links for the first time in an Open for a long time," said Hugh Campbell, chairman of the championship committee. "We are anticipating a possible record crowd this week, we have a very strong field and I am very happy with the set-up."

Campbell dismissed widespread criticism of the bunkers, which have been revamped this year, saying they were the "teeth of the course."

But Peter Dawson, secretary of the R&A, the sport's governing body, said that they had listened to the players' views and acted accordingly.

"The bunkers have been raked and sculpted to create more of a slope, to take the ball back toward the middle of the bunker," he said. "They are still hazards, but hopefully there are no places where they are totally unplayable."

It is a move that will be welcomed by the players who have criticized changes.

Darren Clarke said they were "a bit silly."

"You should always be able to at least get out but there are some here where if you get under the lips you cannot get a shot," he said.

Hal Sutton described them as "the ultimate hazard." Jack Nicklaus said they were the toughest bunkers he had ever seen while Masters champion Vijay Singh said the only way to play them was to keep out of them.

"They're very, very, very difficult," said Nicklaus, who won two Opens at St. Andrews. "Toughest I've ever seen."

Though the Old Course is defended by sand much as it was hundreds of years ago, the modern bunkers with vertical stacked sod fronts are far removed from the slight depressions formed when sheep burrowed in the fairways to avoid the wind.

When a player hits it into the greenside Road Bunker on No. 17, he might as well turn away from the green for the next shot.

Not that the Royal & Ancient is apologizing.

"They're meant to be real hazards," said Hugh Campbell, chairman of the R&A championship committee. "If you don't have the fear of putting the ball in a bunker at St. Andrews it would take a lot of teeth out of the course."

That's what some of the townspeople of St. Andrews thought in 1869 when a bunker on No. 15 was filled. A townsman named Sutherland came out three nights later and dug it up again, and the bunker was named in his honor.

That bunker and most others on the course have been redone over the last two years, and players say the fronts are steeper and the sand deeper.

Making things even more treacherous are the shaved and uneven fairways, which will allow balls to kick into bunkers with funny bounces. Some balls will run faster through the fairways and, instead of trickling into a bunker, will be going fast enough to run up against a lip.

"If the ball rolls in under the lip, there's no shot whatsoever," Darren Clarke said. "You can't get a swing at it. You can't do anything."

The bunkers are so tough that Nicklaus and Gary Player asked an official about the rules for taking an unplayable lie in one and whether hitting the back of a bunker in the backswing is a penalty. Both drove their shots into a bunker on No. 5.

Nicklaus ended up hitting out backward, while Player went out sideways.

"It is very secret," Nicklaus said. "We have played golf for 50 years and we wanted to know what the rules were."

Even the best player in the world found bunkers this week. Tiger Woods, though, seemed to have a feel for them, as he showed Tuesday during practice when he hit a sand wedge out of a fairway bunker the size of a kiddie pool to within 15 feet of the hole on No. 15.

Still, Woods was wary, and spent some time practicing hitting 5-irons at the front walls of bunkers, trying to get a kick off of them to safety. Unfortunately, he was also risking hitting himself with a ricocheting ball.

"There are going to be a couple of shots where you're going to see guys have to play out sideways just because of the fact you can't get a club on it going forward," Woods said. "You come out sideways, even then it is not an easy shot."

Or you can do as Seve Ballesteros did on No. 11 in a practice round Tuesday. Phil Mickelson, his playing partner, told him he didn't have a shot out of the deep crevice.

"Watch this," Ballesteros said. "Listen for the crowd."

The three-time British Open champion hunched down in the bunker, grabbed a handful of sand and threw it and his ball out at the same time. He then lifted his club skyward as if just finishing a shot.

The cheering fans never knew any better.