Comparing, Contrasting Upcoming Open Championship Venues

Last week, I had the chance to play both Royal Birkdale and Royal Lytham & St. Annes, hosts of the upcoming Open Championship and AIG Women’s Open, respectively. Separated by about 10 miles as the crow flies, each course boasts a rich history and an illustrious list of champions. But beyond being historic Open venues on England’s northwest coast, their similarities largely end there.

Ahead of this summer’s championships, here are a couple of the biggest similarities and differences I observed between two of England’s most storied courses.

Similarities

1. The greens are not where the courses defend themselves. “Subtle” seems to be the preferred way to describe particular sets of greens, though I have often found it to be a polite euphemism for greens that simply do not break very much. At either course, I’m not sure that I started a putt much more than a cup outside the hole. Royal Lytham & St. Annes’s greens offer slightly more variety and complexity than those at Royal Birkdale, but neither course presents an especially difficult challenge once you’ve made it onto the putting surface.

2. Change. Another common denominator between the venues. In advance of this year’s Open Championship, Royal Birkdale completed an extensive renovation effort by the firm Mackenzie & Ebert, with changes to every single hole — some dramatic, some minor. Among the most notable changes, the fifth hole was completely redesigned; the former par-3 14th has been repurposed as a short-game facility; the old 15th was lengthened, tweaked, and converted to the new 14th, a 600-yard par 5; and a newly created 240-yard par 3 now serves as the 15th hole.

The stated goals for the project were to improve playability for members, create more variety among the par 3s, enhance drainage, and upgrade the practice facilities. We’ll have more on the changes leading into and throughout next week’s championship.

Royal Lytham & St. Annes, meanwhile, prides itself on preserving a Harry Colt layout that has remained largely intact since Colt redesigned it, though it too has undergone renovation work, also at the hands of Mackenzie & Ebert. Since the last time the course hosted the Open in 2012, a densely wooded area separating the seventh and 11th holes has been cleared, making space to shift the 11th fairway closer to the seventh. Previously a dogleg, the 11th is now a straightaway, 583-yard par 5. The reason for the change was to construct a new driving range, as the previous facility had been outgrown by the modern game.

Don’t let anyone tell you that the game has a distance problem, though!

Differences

1. The size and scale of each course. Royal Birkdale is a big golf course, with many holes situated between towering dunes. If Open venues are to be evaluated on the design of the golf courses themselves and separately on their capabilities as championship hosts, I’d assign Royal Birkdale a higher grade as a host than as a golf course. That is not to suggest that it isn’t a good golf course. I enjoy the shots it demands and its variety in both the design and orientation of its holes, particularly across the opening 12. But what it may lack in architectural ingenuity compared to other Open venues, it compensates for in its ability to host a modern Open. The golf course has ample room to accommodate tournament infrastructure and large galleries, massive dunes that provide vantage points for spectators, and enough space for offline misses to find true penalties instead of trampled-down spectator areas or hospitality tents.

Whereas Royal Birkdale is grand and imposing, Royal Lytham & St. Annes has a more quaint and charming personality. It begins with a par 3, the only course in the major championship rotation to do so. The property is tight and compact, with holes often running close to one another and limited room to stretch the golf course beyond its current 7,100 yards.

I have some skepticism about how well Royal Lytham & St. Annes will hold up against the modern men’s game when it hosts the Open Championship in 2028, but it should fare much better at the scale of the AIG Women’s Open in just a couple of weeks.

2. How each course defends itself. The most important factor at each course — and a reliable one, given their proximity to the sea — is the wind. But, notwithstanding the wind, each course takes a different tack in defending itself from tee to green.

Royal Lytham & St. Annes relies on its heavy bunkering. The bunkers are plentiful, steep, and punishing. Finding one off the tee often means playing out sideways or advancing the ball only a short distance down the fairway.

Royal Birkdale’s bunkers, by comparison, are less severe. Greenside up-and-downs are relatively straightforward, and the fairway bunkers rarely require playing out sideways. Instead, Birkdale’s primary defense — again, excluding the wind — is the dense vegetation flanking many of the fairways. In mild conditions, Birkdale isn’t overly treacherous to navigate. But when the wind begins to blow, particularly across the holes exposed to a prevailing heavy crosswind, it becomes a very demanding test off the tee, where misstruck shots are treated harshly.

Given their contrasting profiles, it is fitting that the defining images from the most recent men’s Opens at each course illustrate their respective identities so aptly.

At Royal Lytham & St. Annes, it was Adam Scott playing sideways out of a fairway bunker on the 72nd hole as his late-Sunday collapse unfolded in dramatic fashion. At Royal Birkdale, it was Jordan Spieth taking an unplayable after driving it into the dunes well right on the par-4 13th hole before ultimately taking a drop on the driving range and scrambling to a crafty bogey.

In reflecting on the two championship venues, I struggle to think of many moments that better capture the DNA of a golf course than those two scenes. Together, they provide an appropriate table-setter for the challenges that lie ahead at this year’s Open Championship and AIG Women’s Open.