There are 197 of them each one a potential dream-catcher

There are 197 of them, each one a potential dream-catcher. They come in clusters or solo, in varied shapes and sizes, and if none are marked by the folklore of the Road Hole and Hellfire at St Andrews, they are no less deadly for their anonymity. “The number of them, the positioning, the depth,” laughs Mark O’Meara, the former Open champion. “Apart from that, there’s no problem.”

There are 197 of them, each one a potential dream-catcher. They come in clusters or solo, in varied shapes and sizes, and if none are marked by the folklore of the Road Hole and Hellfire at St Andrews, they are no less deadly for their anonymity. “The number of them, the positioning, the depth,” laughs Mark O’Meara, the former Open champion. “Apart from that, there’s no problem.”
Mention the bunkers at Royal Lytham and St Annes to Fred Couples and it would be wise to do what the American so conspicuously failed to in his opening round and take swift avoiding action.

Couples plugged his ball into the trap to the left of the 14th green. Four shots later, including one attempt left-handed, his hopes for the Championship lay scattered with the sand across the greenside. By the end of the second round, 1,104 different trips had been made into Lytham’s seaside sandpits, 28 more than 1996, the last time The Open was held at this venue, and a 36-hole record for the Championship. The purists, those who regard links golf as the most significant challenge of body and mind, are purring at the thought that, for once in an age of mighty hitters, the forgotten art of course management has been resurrected. Eddie Birchenough, the resident professional at Lytham and a battle-hardened 15-year veteran of trench warfare round the course, recalls: “Not very long ago, I went into the bunker at the sixth, front left, and, I tell you, I played a good shot just to get the ball out into the middle of the sand.

But the bunkers I hate most are round the first green, because you go in there and think, ‘Am I setting the tone for the round here?’ “The Irishman Darren Clarke, one of the home favourites, who opened his account with a sand-induced double-bogey, took a day and a half to recover from the disaster. Lytham is the most bunkered course on the Open roster, but O’Meara is right It is not just the number. The network is Lytham’s Maginot Line, an impregnable defence system which, in the absence of a strong links-like wind over the past three days, has proved to be the main test of technique and mentality for the world’s best golfers and which, this afternoon, could decide the destiny of the 130th Open Championship. “Any guy who stays out of the bunkers will score well round here,” adds Birchenough. “It’s as simple as that.” If only.Lytham’s bunkers are not just an occupational hazard, they create doubt, shape thinking and promote caution.

“Distance?” said Tiger Woods when asked about his second to the 14th on Friday. “I had 111 yards to carry the bunker, that’s the only number I was concerned about.” This week, Woods has shown another side to his mastery, one not called upon a year ago at St Andrews, where he spent all four days above ground. Though bunkered short and right of the seventh green in his second round, the defending Open champion splashed out impeccably to record his first birdie of the round.But his adventures were minor compared to those of Thomas Levet, his playing partner for the opening two days. Among the Frenchman’s trick shots was a backhanded flick sideways from an impossible lie beneath the front lip ofthe fairway bunker on the sixth, which owed more to his schooldays as ahockey player than those hours on the practice ground.”Sometimes, you look up and it seems like there is just a wall of bunkers, a complete barrier,” he says “There is no way through. But the main difference from other courses is that the bunkers are pretty small, so often you’re up against the face or right at the back and you can’t get a shot Mostly, you have to go out sideways. You can’t be too ambitious or you’ll just lose more strokes.”Five extra bunkers have been added to the course for the Championship, the most prominent of them patrolling the left and right sides of the 15th hole at a distance of 300 yards.