HOYLAKE, England — Anyone watching the first round of the British Open on Thursday saw a lot of carnage in the Royal Liverpool bunkers.
There are 82 of them on the golf course and, before the 151st Open, the R&A, which oversees the tournament, had the bunker sand surfaces flattened out.
That caused balls, in many cases, to come to rest at the base of the revered bunker walls and made it nearly impossible for even the best players in the world to splash out of them.
After an inordinate amount of players drew terrible lies near the steep faces of bunker walls in the opening round, the tournament officials ordered that the sand be pushed up against the walls to make for more uphill lies to allow players a better chance to get out of them.
It was a curious move to make after the first round instead of after the second round following the 36-hole cut, but it was done Friday morning as golf course workers furiously worked on the bunkers before the second round began.
“We would like to advise you of an adjustment we have made to the way the bunkers are raked overnight,” a message from the R&A read Friday. “Yesterday afternoon the bunkers dried out more than we have seen in recent weeks and that led to more balls running straight up against the face than we would normally expect. We have therefore raked all of the bunkers slightly differently to take the sand up one revet on the face of the bunkers.”
The biggest first-round casualty was Taichi Kho on the 18th hole.
He left his third shot in the bunker, then his fourth, before he turned backwards to hit his fifth.
It went into the fescue rough and from there he hit back into the same bunker. His seventh shot went back into the fescue, but from there he found the green and two-putted for a 10.
Rory McIlroy left his third shot in the greenside bunker on the 18th Thursday after trying to play it sideways, but somehow made par.
Phil Mickelson took a triple-bogey eight after hitting into a greenside bunker on 18 and leaving his first try in the sand.
A short time earlier, Justin Thomas hit from bunker to bunker on 18 and made a nine.
“I wouldn’t say there’s one person in the field that wouldn’t welcome that change,’’ McIlroy said Friday. “I hit a 4-iron into the 4th hole today and it pitched on top of the bunker and came back in, and I didn’t know at this point that they’d made that little gradual rise up into the face. When I got up there, I was pleasantly surprised that I had a shot.’’
The greens staff worked to return the concave floors to the traps by building up the bunker edges, allowing the balls to roll back to the center of the hazards.
Many players said that the flat-bottomed bunkers were not normal.
Matthew Jordan, the 27-year-old Brit who grew up playing at Royal Liverpool, said: “I haven’t seen the bunkers like this at all. I don’t know who’s annoyed the greenkeeper, but they’re just so flat and they’re so penal. You just can’t hit it in any bunkers whatsoever.”
