The DP World Tour spoke to a collection of players after their opening round and asked them how a scratch golfer would get on around Royal Troon under the same Open conditions that they faced on Thursday?
So that would mean playing off the back tees that are around 7,200 yards, with thousands of fans on the property and playing with two Tour pros (or leading amateurs). The general consensus is that the best would be somewhere around the low 80s with former US Open champion Gary Woodland suggesting they would be round in 95 shots.
The most revealing answer came from Victor Perez.
“The course kind of wears on you and it’s really difficult to kind of just keep on. It’s not like you have a stretch of four or five difficult holes and then you get a breather. It’s quite difficult for five and a half hours,” explained the Frenchman.
Most of us struggle if we’re on the course for more than three and a half hours, now imagine being out there grinding away for nearly six hours. Players were complaining about waits on the 11th tee before having to hit a driver, after doing nothing for 20 minutes, over a wall of gorse to a fairway that’s over 200 yards away.
The distance of the course is a hard one to get across quite what a difference it is to what most of us face at our home courses – particularly when we routinely see players reduce 500-yard par 4s to a drive and a short iron. A 500-yard hole (of any par) takes most of us to hit our two very best shots and still face some sort of wedge.
Interestingly, for all the talk of modern drivers and balls, golfers with a handicap between 13-20 average 200 yards off the tee. The par 4s on the back nine, which normally play into the wind, measure 450, 498, 451, 473, 502 and 458. Then you have two par 3s at 200 and 242 and a par 5 (the easiest hole on the back nine) at 572 yards.
The front nine is the more scoreable of the two, with par 4s that should be within reach, but these all come in the opening holes when our nerves will still be shredded and we won’t have warmed up properly so these will likely be wasted on us.
Maybe the easiest way to understand the length of an Open course is to add 50 yards to every hole on your home course as that would quickly stick another 900 yards on to what many of us generally face. So your straightforward 160-yard par 3 suddenly requires a hybrid and the toughest par 4s, around the 420-yard mark, are suddenly out of range.
Then throw in the run-offs, pot bunkers, smallish greens and putting when there’s a 30mph wind – and all of these come into play when you’ve hit a good shot.
We’ve already seen the world’s best not be able to get a proper stance in the bunkers and then having to play out sideways and backwards. If the ball does roll into the middle of the sand then you might be facing a 10-foot rise from heavy, wet sand. In truth, you might never be coming out.
READ MORE: Royal Troon might just have the hardest hole on the Major rota – and you can play it
One unfortunate aspect of being a high handicapper is that your dispersion bears no resemblance to what the tour pros do. When you watch them on the range you’ll notice a shrug of the shoulders when they finish five yards left or right of the 200-yard hoarding. They might well spray one with the driver but that’s about it – lost balls are a rarity which sadly isn’t the case for many of us.
Here you would have some horrifically thick rough where, if you do find it, you won’t have the strength to advance it anywhere or even get it back to the fairway. One of their real strengths is literally that and the ability to pull out a wedge and somehow muscle one somewhere towards the green. The thickness of the rough means that you and I can’t get anywhere close to that.
“We played with Ernie (Els) today, Ernie’s probably a plus six, so I’d say 95. It’s tough out there, you miss one shot and you’re gonna have a big number so, especially if you throw in the crowds out there, maybe 100,” explained Woodland.
Els, who has been in terrific form this season, would withdraw after an opening 11-over 82.
The average Slope Rating (difficulty) for courses in Great Britain and Ireland is 125 and these can range from 55 to 155. The rating for Royal Troon off the blue tees (7,208 yards) is 145 with a par of 74. For some sort of comparison the Old Course at St Andrews is 132 off the back tees, while Carnoustie is 143, so here we have a particularly tough test.
It is relentless, the back nine is a beast there are a collection of holes that feature blankets of gorse that put the fear of god into even the very best players. From here there’s no coming back and you’re generally dropping a ball and adding two shots to your card.
Similarly, the Open card has a par of 71 with the 11th, 13th and 15th all par 4s for this week so you are immediately losing three shots here.
These types of questions provide a collection of finger-in-the-air type answers but you’d very comfortably say that an 18-handicapper wouldn’t get anywhere near to breaking 100 and you might be looking at 20 shots more.
You’d like to say that it would be fun trying; the truth is that it probably wouldn’t.
READ NEXT: How you can play at Royal Troon – with a hole Phil Mickelson says challenges the best in the world
