The Shame of Royal Liverpool’s Lost ‘Dowie Hole’

Royal Liverpool introduces its new short 17th hole this week with the goal of presenting a hit-it-or-else proposition down the stretch. According to Royal Liverpool consulting architect Martin Ebert, the club and the R&A came to him with the idea of creating this new short par 3. It’s expected to be a bit controversial and the hope is for the 17th to produce memorable moments down the stretch. The irony of the 17th and the club’s desire to have a controversial short hole is that some 30 years earlier, it decided to wipe away one of the most feared and divisive par 3s in the sport, “The Dowie Hole.”

The Dowie was the club’s original seventh hole and featured prominent themes of the course: “cops” and out of bounds. The par 3 measured 200 yards and the left side of its green pressed up against the artificial mounds or “cops,” which mark internal out of bounds at Hoylake. Any shot left of the green would required a re-tee. As you can imagine, this had a polarizing impact with many golfers who ride for the “fair police.”

Many members of the “fair police” also populate professional golf and the club sought to rejoin the Open rota after a few decades of not hosting. So the club did away with this controversial hole in the early 1990s. The R&A awarded the club the 2006 Open Championship, ending the drought of not hosting since 1967. You will hear mention of the “Dowie Hole” this week but know that it’s a completely different hole bearing no resemblance to the original.

The great Bernard Darwin wrote about the brilliance of this par 3 in his book, The Golf Courses of the British Isles.

“Next comes one of the finest short holes in the world, ‘The Dowie,’ which is not only very good, but really unique. There is a narrow triangular green, guarded on the right by some straggling rushes and on the left by an out-of-bounds field and a cop; there is likewise a pot bunker in front. To hit quite straight at this hole is the feat of a hero, for let the ball, be ever so slightly pulled, and we shall infallibly be left playing our second shot from the tee. Nearly everybody slices at the Dowie out of pure fright, and is left with a tricky little running up shot on to the green. The perfect shot starts out of the right just to show that it has no intention of going out of bounds, then swings round with a delicious hook, truffles through the little rushy hollow, and home on the green; it is a shot to dream of, but alas! Seldom to play.”

Along with Darwin, golf architect Tom Doak decided to write about “The Dowie” in Volume 1 of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses.

“It may be subversive of me to illustrate a golf hole that no longer exists, but The Dowie at Hoylake was one of the game’s great holes and I was saddened to see it sacrificed in the quest to return the course to the Open rota.”

Sketch via Tom Doak's The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses

As we are beginning to see, the firm of Mackenzie & Ebert, who work at most Open Championship courses, has more of a desire to create their own legacy than protecting the legacy of the courses where they might work. At Hoylake, we will see a new 17th that hopes to provide theatrics, drama, and intrigue, rather than the return of a hole proven to do just that.