The spectator village at Royal Birkdale, located in what was the club’s previous practice facility. The other structures are corporate hospitality on holes 15, 17 and 18.
teresting is it's so obvious as to which holes had been redone. They look like they're not even on the same course. You look at 14, 15, 16, those green com- plexes and the amount of slope that they have off them are pretty severe and quite challenging. The fifth hole is kind of like that, seventh hole as well. It was pretty obvious like, oh, these are the holes that got redone because they look like they're on a different course." RECORD ATTENDANCE If you're wondering why a links trac- ing its roots to the 19th century made changes this drastic, it wasn't entirely for shot-making. It wasn't for tour- nament toughness, either. It was for crowds, crowd flow and the bottom line. In 2017, the Open drew a then- record 230 000 at Birkdale. This year, that number jumped 33 percent to a new record of 306 000 on the grounds. The maths is simple: more tickets, more merchandise, more money. In his annual address to the media, R&A chief Mark Darbon pushed back against the idea that Birkdale had bent to spectator demand. "Given the strength of partnership that we have with our host venues, of course we're part of some of those discussions, and
Bolt three or four new holes on to that organism, built to modern spec, with modern equipment and modern crowd-flow maths in mind, and you don't get a stronger version of the same course. You get a graft that never quite takes. Scottie Scheffler, perhaps acciden- tally, delivered a dagger on the eve of the Open, stating "I think it's pretty obvious … the one thing I found in-
plants a line in the opening pages and cashes it in Chapter 20. That rhythm isn't decorative, as old Scottish and English architects walked the ground until it told them where the holes al- ready were, and then they got out of the way. It's the entire architectural philosophy separating links golf from the parkland style America perfected, where nothing is imposed and every- thing is discovered.
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 17
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
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