Mike Clayton | |
Mike Clayton turned pro in 1981 after winning the Australian Amateur and
played the European and Australian tours for 15 years. He won the Timex
Open in Europe and the Korean Open as well as six tournaments in Australia.
He has written for the Melbourne Age and Golf Australia Magazine since 1991 and in 1995 began a golf design partnership with fellow Melburnians, John Sloan and Bruce Grant.
This week Clayton is a player in the Senior British Open and will be giving us his take on playing Muirfield.
Playing in the British Senior Open
July 28, 2007
Part 4 - Saturday's round and a look at Muirfield
Photo: © Getty Images |
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The links of the Open Championship rotation each have a character of their own
St Andrews, is probably the most played course in the world and whilst no architect would be game to build it in this age it has four or five of the greatest holes in the world and playing away from and back to the old town is a golf experience everyone should experience once in a lifetime.
St Georges is the most quirky with its blind shots and odd bounces off hogsbacked fairways; Lytham seems small and confined, bounded by the railway line on the right and with the red roofs of the town so close. Birkdale has the towering dunes down the sides yet manages to sport the flattest group of holes on any of the links, Carnoustie, for so long out of favour, is just brutally efficient at exposing weakness and never was that better illustrated than last week. Charming, however is not a word that comes to mind when one thinks of Carnoustie.
Troon has the hardest back nine simply because its plays all the way back into the wind so nines of 32 followed by 42 (42 followed by 52 even) are not uncommon. Turnberry famed for 1977 and Nicklaus and Watson, unlike Troon, has a routing that tacks the wind form all directions and it has the most spectacular views over the water making it a favourite of the traveling golfers and then there is Muirfied the course of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.
Photo: © David Cannon /Allsport |
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14th hole at Muirfield. |
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At first glance it's not particularly impressive. The opening hole is about as flat as one can imagine turning slightly right around a corner guarded not by sand but a wheat field of rough that makes the first shot of the day one of the most difficult in golf. There is none of the opening hole principle championed best at St Andrews and Royal Melbourne of giving the player a free hit off the first hole to a fairway as wide as a football field. The Old Course and MacKenzie's Melbourne masterpiece have plenty of time after the opening hole to examine a player's skill with the driver and so does Muirfield.
Today into the wind there were no birdies, fourteen pars and the rest were fives and "others" and the field played it in a collective ninety over par. As Gary Player said "I wonder why they set this course up harder than they did last week at Carnoustie."
Photo: © David Cannon /Allsport |
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The 10th hole at Muirfield. |
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Ironically the second most missed fairway on the course has been the 10th and that would still be the second most difficult hole on the course with a fairway that was twenty yards wider
The bunkers and the rough are the primary hazards of this course and the sand hazards are the most penal in the world.
There are many with riveted faces that are almost vertical and players finding themselves too close to the wall need to resist the temptation of playing toward the hole.
Nick Job, the first round leader, hit it into the right hand bunker at the short 13th, with the 15th at Melbourne's Kingston Heath, one of the best two uphill par threes in the world, and managed to rack up a nine on his way to 81. Hugh Baiocchi played three under for 15 holes on Saturday but took a seven at the 13th, another victim of over-reaching in the bunkers.
Photo: © David Cannon /Allsport |
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The 13th hole at Muirfield. |
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The par fives, at the 5th, 9th and 17th holes are essays in strategic bunker placement and no matter if the wind is into or against one has to plot with the greatest of care.
In an age when architects like Bill Coore and his partner, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak and Gil Hanse are building some of the most beautiful bunkers since the nineteen twenties and thirties, Muirfield has some of the least impressive looking bunkers of any great golf course. Some like the bunker short and left of the 10th green would not be out of place on the most basic of public courses yet every single bunker is perfectly placed to influence both shots and decisions.
The greens are one of the best sets to be found and they are brilliantly tied into the surrounding ground and without being overly severe they demand that you putt from the right side of the hole and approach from the correct side of the fairway.
The holes are routed unusually with the opening nine going clockwise all the way around the outside of the inward nine but unlike Troon it's difficult to determine which half is the more difficult which is a comment on how well the course is balanced so that it favours no particular type of player.
Photo: © Phil Inglis/Getty Images |
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Denis Durnian will remember his ace and winning 213 bottles of wine. |
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Length is of no great advantage, rather placement and the ability to make the right decision are rewarded at Muirfield and whilst it may not appear so special at first glance it is one of the purest golf courses one can find and its promise is that it will ask fascinating but different questions every day and one never grows tired of the rare and special courses that do that for us.
One unusual thing happened on Saturday as Denis Durnian had the high round of the day, an 84 but it could have been even worst if it wasn't for the way he played the fourth hole. With a six-iron he aced the hole and with that he gets a bottle of wine for each yard the hole is and since the 4th in the longest par 3 at Muirfield he will get several crates of wine with 213 bottles.
Playing in the British Senior Open
July 27, 2007
Part 3 - Friday's second round
There is no surprise that close the top after the weekday play are Nick Faldo, Tom Watson and Eduardo Romero. Probably they are three of the most obvious five or six picks to win but that is hardly news.
They were all however somewhat aggravated at their finishes on the difficult two-shotter back toward the clubhouse. Watson finished his day with a miserable three-putt from not far away after two fabulous long shots, Faldo drove short and right into a deep pot and from them five is an almost certainty and Romero took a bogey after a perfect drive a long way down the final fairway.
Leading is Des Smyth at 140 which was terrific scoring given that he played his round through the heaviest of the morning wind and his three birdie finish must have sent him to the lunch tent more than happy. Early on it was windy enough for Sam Torrance to hit his two best woods into the long four opener and still have fifty yards left and while it may have died a little toward the end this was a difficult day to play golf.
Smyth's 70 matched the best score of the day with Australian Stewart Ginn who is a shot behind at 141.
Photo: © Phil Inglis/Getty Images |
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Stewart Ginn has always enjoyed wearing flashy clothes. |
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Ginny is closer to sixty than fifty, fifty eight I think, and as a kid growing up in Melbourne he was something of an idol of mine. He wore the flashiest of clothes and one would expect to look back at the golfing fashion tragedies of the seventies and see him at the top of the list. Instead he was about the only one who somehow managed to pull off the big checked pants and the outrageous collared shirts and he was also the one who convinced Payne Stewart to copy him and wear the plus-fours that made him so recognizable.
Ginn was from the generation of Bob Shearer, Ian Stanley and Jack Newton and they, like many others, were greatly influenced by Peter Thomson. Ginny was a particular favourite of the five-time Open champion and Thomson was one who had no love of the predictability of the America tour courses. He thought the unpredictability of the bounce of the ball was an important part of golf and he advised the younger man to stay away from the United States and concentrate instead, as he had done so successfully, on golf in Australia, Japan and Europe. Thomson was also talking about a world tour long before anybody else thought of the idea and in essence that is what today's European tour has become.
He never went to America as a young man and it is to his eternal regret. "I ran Trevino a close second at The Lakes in Sydney in 1973 and I was playing great golf and that is when I should have gone to the tour school but I didn't."
Photo: © Matthew Harris / TGPL |
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It's probably best the Mike Clayton missed the cut, because it looks like his caddie, writer John Huggan doesn't have another 36 holes left in him. |
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He spent time as a club pro in his late thirties before heading back to Japan where he spent the decade before he tried the Champions Tour in America. There he won the Ford Senior Players Championship but he fell out of the exempt category a couple of years ago and he is now back playing the Senior Tour in Europe. He enjoys it and is still one of the best players but one assumes he would rather be back in America where the money is significantly better.
Playing on the television in the player's tent was the main European event in Hamburg and the contrast in the golf was somewhat depressing. Here we were playing one of the great links with the wind blowing and with all sorts of shot options including the low runner that lands fifty yards short of the green and still finds its way to the hole
In Germany the course was a verdant green, there looked to be no wind and every shot that landed on a green stopped within a yard. It's the way of much of modern professional golf and it's a commercial reality that they play where the money is but it's still a pity that is the way it has to be most of the time.
Photo: © Getty Images |
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Playing in the British Senior Open
July 26, 2007
Part 2 - Thursday's first round
I always watched Nick Faldo play and assumed he would play great golf as long as he wanted. Instead, he beat Greg Norman at Augusta in the last Masters before Tiger took his crown and disappeared from the peak of the game. His life off the course was curiously tumultuous given how stoic he was when he was at work and despite that swing that looked like it would repeat no matter the pressure the word was that he had gotten too short to compete with kids with bags full of technological wizardry.
Like many others the game passed him by and perhaps he enjoys talking about the game although that could never be as much fun as his other job of designing courses.
He missed the cut by some way last week but amongst peers, most of whom I assume he assumes he can beat around a links he knows better than anyone else here this week, he played a terrific opening 68.
It tied him with Gordon J. Brand who was second at Norman's 1986 Open at Turnberry, Nick Job and the remarkable Dave Stockton who is of another generation altogether. He won the 1970 PGA Championship a couple of years before Faldo even began playing but this is a course that can be played by anyone who drives straight, thinks clearly and knows how to put together a score. There is no particular advantage for one who drives a long way and crookedness is severely punished by the thick long and increasingly wet rough.
Photo: © Matthew Harris / TGPL |
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Mike Clayton gets the driver from his caddie for the week, John Huggan. |
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This is a summer (at least that's what the calendar says it is) like no other and if you drive it in the rough the guarantee is you will find three or four of the member's balls before you find your own.
You don't want to hear about my miserable 80 and it certainly it's not worth talking about other than to say my only excuse was one John Huggan on the bag.
I played with John Mahaffey who almost won the first US Open (1976) to be televised in Australia (as well as losing a playoff in 1975) and D.J Russell an Englishman better known is these parts for designing the Archerfield links just around the corner from Muirfield. We were reminiscing about experiences in the real Open and D.J played his first as a nineteen year old at Troon in 1973, the year of Weiskopf and the Sarazen hole in one at the Postage Stamp.
Sarazen became at 73, the oldest man to hole in one in a major but forty-five minutes earlier D.J made a one at the same hole and is still the youngest man ever to make an ace in a major.
Everyone remembers the old mans shot with good reason but it's an extraordinary coincidence that the records were set on the same hole within an hour.
Playing in the British Senior Open
July 25, 2007
Part 1 - The Course and other stories
One might expect the course for the Senior British Open to be a little more gently organized for the old boys that the one last week in Carnoustie but one high block off the first tee at Muirfield on a Monday afternoon practice round confirmed the rumors that the fairways of this great old course are lined with hay a deal thicker than the rough at Carnoustie last week.
Doug Sanders quipped during the 1966 Open here that he would pass up the prizemoney for the hay concession and that would again be a pretty good deal. One wonders where the tee markers will end up but all the practice rounds were off the back and the 4th and 13th holes are now significantly longer one-shotters than they were when I last played here in the 1992 Open. They are both great holes and at close to a couple of hundred yards they are also two of the more difficult short holes to be found in championship golf.
Photo: © David Cannon /Allsport |
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The bunkers at Muirfield, like this one at the first hole, making the course tough. |
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Nor do I remember the bunkers being quite so fearsome. They are mostly deep pots in the traditional fashion of the links but they are small, the faces are in many cases are almost vertical and anything close to a deep lip demands you go backwards or sideways.
The amazing New Zealander, Bob Charles found himself up against the lip in the left greenside bunker at the 13th and after four attempts at going at the pin he gave up and blasted it back toward the tee. "Throw one into a decent place" he instructed his caddy and from the middle of the bunker he managed to get out on his third attempt.
"Don't want to go in there" was his typically succinct comment. More fun were his recollections on the next hole of playing with Byron Nelson at Colonial when Nelson was in his fifties.
"I was feeling sorry this old man until he ripped a driver thirty yards past me on the first hole and flew a four wood right into the middle of the green."
There are a many terrific players here this week - Faldo, Crenshaw, Haas, Torrance, Stadler, Kite, Pate, Aoki - but those who bemoan the lack of real characters in golf miss men like Tony Johnstone, the Zimbabwean who grew up playing junior golf with Denis Watson, Nick Price, Mark McNulty and David Leadbetter who finished up teaching them all except Johnstone. He was a good enough player to win the biggest regular tour event in Europe, the British PGA at Wentworth, and he was just a level below the really famous players or his era.
The beloved country of those wonderful players is now something even more than a catastrophe and this week Johnstone has eschewed the standard pro golfers hat advertising an equipment manufacturer for one with a political message.
Photo: ©
Phil Inglis/Getty Images |
Tony Johnston wearing one of his hats that is making him famouse points out something to Sam Torrance. |
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"Iraq Intervention."
"Zimbabwe Indifference."
"Oi'l tell you why."
A couple of weeks ago he wore another asking "What if Zimbabwe had Oil?"
Johnstone is one of the most loved players on the European tour and for years he and his great friend John Bland tormented each other with a long series of practical jokes. They would do fun things like filling hotel room baths with goldfish or the old one of putting condoms on driver heads but it came to an end one day in Johannesburg. Bland was playing a pro-am with his friend, the President F.W de Klerk and as they were leaving the half-way house they crossed Johnstone and his group as they finished the 9th hole.
"Mr President" said Bland "I don't think you have met Tony Johnstone."
Quick as a flash Johnstone came back with, "Mr. President, its nice to meet you and I would just like to say that none of the other southern African players in Europe agree with what John has been saying over there about you selling the country down the drain to the blacks."
It is almost impossible to upset Bland but that night his wife rang Johnstone and said "Enough. I have never seen John so upset."
The winner this week will have to play great golf on a very difficult golf course that demands you stay out of the rough and more especially those bunkers. There will be some cursing in them before the week is over.
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