British Open makes curious change to bunkers after first-round debacles

HOYLAKE, England — Should you watched the primary spherical of the British Open you noticed numerous carnage within the Royal Liverpool bunkers.

There are 82 of them on the golf course and, earlier than the 151st Open, the R&A, which oversees the Open, had the bunker sand surfaces flattened out.

This brought about, in lots of instances, balls to come back to relaxation on the base of the reveted bunker partitions and making it almost impossible for even the best players in the world to splash out of them.

After an inordinate quantity of gamers drawing horrible lies close to the steep faces of bunker partitions in Thursday’s opening spherical, the match officers order that the sand be pushed up towards the partitions to make for extra uphill lies to permit gamers a greater likelihood to get out of them.

It was a curious transfer to make after the primary spherical as a substitute of after the second spherical when the lower is made, however it was completed Friday morning as golf course employees furiously labored on the bunkers early Friday morning earlier than the second spherical started.

“We want to advise you of an adjustment we now have made to the best way the bunkers are raked in a single day,” a message from the R&A learn Friday. “Yesterday afternoon the bunkers dried out greater than we now have seen in current weeks and that led to extra balls working straight up towards the face than we might usually count on. Now we have subsequently raked all the bunkers barely otherwise to take the sand up one revet on the face of the bunkers.”

The largest casualty on Thursday was Taichi Kho on the 18th gap, the place he left his third within the bunker, after which his fourth and turned backwards to hit his fifth.

It went into the fescue tough and from there he hit again into the identical bunker.

Then his seventh went again into the fescue however from there he discovered the inexperienced and two-putted for a ten.

 Rory McIlroy left his third shot within the greenside bunker on the 18th Thursday after attempting to play it sideways however one way or the other made par.

Phil Mickelson took a triple-bogey eight after hitting right into a greenside bunker on 18 and leaving his first attempt within the sand.

A short while earlier, Justin Thomas hit from bunker to bunker on 18 and made a 9.

So, in a single day, the greens employees started work to return the concave flooring to the traps by build up the bunker edges, permitting the balls to roll again to the middle of the hazards. 

Many gamers mentioned that the flat-bottomed bunkers weren’t regular.

Matthew Jordan, the 27-year-old Brit who grew up taking part in at Royal Liverpool, mentioned, “I haven’t seen the bunkers like this in any respect. I don’t know who’s irritated the greenkeeper, however they’re simply so flat and so they’re so penal. You simply can’t hit it in any bunkers in any way.”