Review of the Month - August 2023

The purpose of the Review of The Month feature is twofold. Top100GolfCourses has always aimed to salute and encourage those who are putting admirable effort into reviewing the world’s great golf courses. Moving forward, we are also looking to learn from these experts! We’ll be chatting with the month’s star authors and discussing topics such as golf in their area, what they like to see in a strong course review, and of course dig a little deeper into their own winning review.

August 2023’s Review of The Month comes from Bill “BB” Branch, whose signature, offhand irreverence can’t hide his pleasure at dodging Royal Lytham & St Annes revetted bunkers, reminiscing on his wild youth whilst providing keen analysis of this World Top 100 course.

You can read all of Bill’s winning review below, and find other takes on Royal Lytham & St. Annes here.

Royal Lytham is a links set back from the sea. Depending on your point of reference, it may lack stunning vistas & impressive dunes. Also dependent on mood, it is an oasis from, or a prisoner to, the urban environment. It actually reminded me a little of Royal Worlington & Newmarket (without the absurd greens and characters torn from a page of a PG Wodehouse novel). Perhaps not a true links then, but nevertheless something unique on the sliding scale of fantastic variety offered up by English Golf.

The Sacred Nine disguises their average land with eccentric greens. Lytham decided that Bunkering would be their memorable feature. Mission accomplished, for their are rumored to be 2,167 of them here on the front nine alone. They are plentiful, ominous, cavernous, & beautiful. The tactic of the day is to carefully choose where you place your tee shot as you plot your way around the land mines. Any false step is likely to invite disaster, so you tread carefully and don’t get too far ahead of yourself.

The demand is more for accuracy than imagination, so it’s not particularly strategic golf. But it isn’t penal golf either and I found avoiding the Sandy traps an enjoyable challenge akin to teenage memories of evading capture whilst sneaking into the house and tip-toeing unsteadily up the stairs after a night on the cider. Adam Scott might have won an Open if only his youth was a little more misspent.

In addition to the bunkering, the green complexes help elevate the course far above the quality of the land itself. They are “Open Championship quality”, compensating for the variety in options occasionally absent on the tee-green journey. The putting surfaces themselves themselves are reasonably flat and devoid of significant undulation, with fairly subtle breaks.

You may have heard of half-par holes, but at Royal Lytham you also get half-width holes. One or two on the outward stretch feel like a fairway was sliced in half running tee to green, with trees then planted along the incision. At times the turf didn’t feel so sandy in these areas. You become very aware that there is less room on the right side, so I found myself aiming left like I was playing the Old Course.

The routing improves significantly after the early holes & the way the intensity & quality builds is exceptional, with finishing holes becoming more difficult & interesting than those that have preceded them. At the turn the land does get interesting with 8-10 a strong stretch, and despite a lull on the 11th - no doubt exacerbated as they’d sold out of the signature culinary delight at the halfway house - the course has a famously rousing finish.

I don’t need stunning vistas & dune-scapes to enjoy my golf, but I would prefer a bit more room on the early holes & increased internal contouring on greens. Royal Lytham is therefore a solid 5-baller for me due to its unique engaging challenge & quality holes. I suspect it may sneak another half-ball when I go back and unearth more of the course’s architectural subtleties. That and a sausage roll.