Tiger Woods of the United States watches a shot during the second practice round prior to the start of the 141st Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes on July 17, 2012 in Lytham St Annes, England.
(July 16, 2012 – Source: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images Europe)

(PhatzRadio / USA Today) — LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England – Nestled between two bustling seaside resorts on the western coast of England, Royal Lytham & St. Annes will be anything but a pleasure cruise for the players in this week’s British Open.

The course, 11 times the site of the British Open, has not always been a gracious host. With an assortment of hazards — some at the course’s choosing, others at Mother Nature’s — the links are full of menace and peril.

Pick your poison. There are 205 pot bunkers that defending champion Darren Clarke said unleash a nightmare. Tiger Woods said areas of knee-high rough — thanks to the United Kingdom’s torrential rains this summer — that feature a variety of grasses and bushes are “almost unplayable.” Wicked winds blowing off the Irish Sea a half-mile west cause havoc. And rain is expected every day of the tournament.

PHOTOS: The best images from the British Open

Even in the calmest of weather and with unruffled course conditions, Lytham remains a stern test because of its skeleton fairways. Playing to a par of 70 this year, the course has been stretched to 7,086 yards. Most of the 181 yards added since David Duval won here in 2001 can be found on holes 2, 3 and 10, all par-4 brutes, and the par-5 11th.

And there’s quirkiness to the setting that adds a unique feel, said Tony Jacklin, who won the Open here in 1969. For starters, there’s a 206-yard, par-3 first hole. Add a railway that runs right past the golf course and red brick houses dotting the outskirts. All told, it adds up to a tremendous test of golf, and it more than certainly tests every club in the bag and every part of your game. That’s evident in the roster of winners, as the celebrated champions at Lytham Opens are Bobby Jones (1926), Bobby Locke (1952), Peter Thomson (1958), Bob Charles (1963), Jacklin, Gary Player (1974), Seve Ballesteros (1979 and 1988), Tom Lehman and Duval.

“Mentally, there is no layup. It’s just a relentless battle with your mental game out there,” Jacklin said. “And you have to get off to a good start, because while you can’t win the golf tournament on the first day, you can certainly lose it. And you’ve got to keep the ball in play.

“If you don’t drive the ball straight here, you’ve got no chance.”

The course was already a talking point before official practice rounds began Monday. Woods, who has won the Open three times and is trying to win his 15th major and first since the 2008 U.S. Open, caused a firestorm when he innocently remarked Sunday that the rough in some places was almost unplayable. The British press left off the important qualifier “almost” in headlines and implied Woods was condemning the course. In truth, Woods said the rough creates an immense challenge on a course he counts among his favorites.

“Oh my god,” Woods said when asked about the rough. “It’s just that you can’t get out of it. The bottom 6 inches is so lush. The wispy stuff, we’ve always faced that at every British Open. But that bottom 6 inches, in some places it’s almost unplayable.

“It’s never been this high,” added Woods, who tied for 22nd as the low amateur in the 1996 Open at Lytham and tied for 25th in 2001. “I mean, what are you going to do if you get into that stuff?”

Clarke was thinking the same thing — about the rough and the bunkers.

“The course is going to play really tough this week. It’s quite narrow. And the rough is very, very penal, and we’re forecasted some rough weather,” Clarke said. “But that’s the Open Championship. If conditions are tough, that doesn’t particularly bother me. That’s fine.”

As for the bunkers, that’s a different story.

“It’s just a nightmare, because there are 205 of them,” Clarke said. “They’re very penal, they’re very tough, those bunkers. There’s going to be occasions here this week where I think you’re going to have to see guys taking penalty drops out of them, because they won’t be able to move their ball anywhere.

“They are a huge part of this golf course. It’s very heavily bunkered in the landing areas where we really need to hit the ball. Accuracy is going to be the key this week. The (bunkers) are very, very strategically placed, so you’ve got to be careful with them. And they’ve had a lot of rain here in recent times, and the bunkers are quite damp. When they get damp it’s very tough to spin the ball out of the bunkers, especially the green side ones.

“If you start spraying the ball around this course this week, you might as well go home.”

That’s got reigning Masters champion Bubba Watson thinking about how to get around the course. While he can hit every type of fade and draw, every type of low and high shot, there’s nothing anyone can really do if you wind up in the worst places in the rough or the pot bunkers.

“I’ve got to play smart off the tees, hit a lot of irons, a lot of things just to get in the fairway, but it’s going to come down to the short game with all these bunkers and hazards around the greens,” said Watson, who missed the cut in the U.S. Open but tied for second in The Travelers Championship three weeks ago in his last start. “When the weather gets that bad, you’ve just got to make pars, and sometimes bogeys are good.

“You know, it’s whoever can control their mind and not get frustrated about the weather and the situation. No matter where they’re from, everybody has got to deal with this weather. It’s just about calming your mind and knowing it’s going to be difficult.”

Tiger Woods of the United States speaks with the media after his second practice round prior to the start of the 141st Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes on July 17, 2012 in Lytham St Annes, England.
(July 16, 2012 – Source: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images Europe)

Fourth Open win could put Woods back on top of the world

(Reuters) – Tiger Woods is not surprised he can return to the top of the world rankings by winning the British Open and is not feeling impatient because he has not lifted a major for four years, the American said on Tuesday.

The 14-times major champion, who has not won one of the big four tournaments since the 2008 U.S. Open, has battled his way back to form and fitness in recent months following personal problems and injuries.

“I just try and put myself there,” he told a news conference. “I think that if I continue putting myself there enough times then I’ll win major championships.”

Woods, 36, said he was happy to be fully fit again.

“First of all I had to go through that whole process of just getting healthy again,” he said. “Being banged up and missing major championships because of it in a couple year stretch there wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

“I missed four majors just because I was injured. I figure if I’m healthy, then I can prepare properly for major championships and I can get myself there.”

Woods, world number four, is relishing the prospect of playing the challenging Lytham links course in what are expected to be difficult wet and windy conditions.

“I think that shot-making creativity is paramount when you play a links golf course,” he said. “And I think that’s something that is taken away in the modern course design.

“Here you have so many different options and a five?degree wind change changes an entire golf course and changes your entire game plan. It’s just everything is magnified.”

DRAW OR FADE?

Woods said the decision to hit a draw rather than a fade could make the ball travel up to 50 yards further.

“This is all something you’re trying to figure out,” he said. “Meanwhile, what trajectory are you going to hit the golf ball at? That’s something I’ve always enjoyed.”

Woods has happy memories of Lytham having won the silver medal for being the leading amateur at the 1996 British Open.

“I remember I got hot in that second round,” he said. “I think I made seven birdies on an 11?hole stretch or 12?hole stretch there. I think I posted 66 that day and I thought that was a pretty great accomplishment.

“The Open championship that year basically pushed me towards turning pro versus going back to college,” he said. “I was still kind of iffy about whether I should turn pro or not.

“But that gave me so much confidence that I could do it at a high level and I could play against the top players in the world on a very difficult track.”

Woods said it was paramount to avoid Lytham’s 200-plus treacherous bunkers.

“At any links golf course you’ve got to stay out of the bunkers because you can’t get to the green. That’s just a fact,” he said.

“If you hit the ball in there, it’s going to go up against the face, because it goes in there with some steam and you’re pitching it out sideways or sometimes even backwards.”

Woods is the bookmakers’ favorite to claim his fourth British Open but he believes it is harder to win majors these days, with 15 different winners of the last 15 big four tournaments.

“I think the fields are deeper, there’s no doubt,” he said.

“We’re having to shoot some pretty low scores in general. You need to have a hot week at the right time. That’s what it comes down to. There are more guys now have a chance to win major championships than ever before.”

(Editing by Tony Jimenez)