Editor's Picks: My favourite Open venues

Hello fellow golf nerd enthusiast – I knew you wouldn't be able to resist clicking on a list of my favourite Open venues. And I was right. We all love a list at the best of times, don’t we?Right now is anything but - so I thought it would be reassuring to fall back on the kind of thing that used to fill our joyously mundane lives: namely arguing the toss over hypothetical sporting comparisons. https://soundcloud.com/national-club-golfer/the-ncg-podcast-this-ones-about-open-venues I’ve some great topics lined up, from the trivial to the vaguely serious but please let me know if you’ve got a good idea. I’m going to kick this new series off with my favourite Open venues. Please don’t think this is an NCG Top 100-style list and confuse it with what I think are the best Open courses. [post_list title="NCG Top 100s: England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales" posts=174292,186016,174324,178731] This is a list of where I have enjoyed watching the Open the most and is based on a whole series of individual, emotional, and illogical factors. Let’s get cracking. My favourite Open venues: No 10 – Royal Liverpool Horribly unfair because the 2006 Open was a classic in just about every regard, my abiding memory being the incredible heat that week. There were very few spectators out on the holes around the turn because they simply couldn’t get that far before having to turn around for home. The two winners since Hoylake’s return to the Open rota – Tiger and Rory – have been more than acceptable too. I also loved watching the Walker Cup here last year and am an increasing fan of the course. In the debit column, the messing around of the tee times due to the weather forecast did not and still does not sit well with me. We also had an absolute dog of a house during the 2014 Open – think damp, smelly, poorly equipped, over-populated and in the wrong place. Finally, from my home in Leeds, it’s hard work to get to, even though it’s only 100 miles. I told you this list was subjective. My favourite Open venues: No 9 – Royal Birkdale I love everything about Birkdale but it just doesn’t feel quite far away enough from home to be a vintage Open venue for me. That said, the scenes on Open Saturday in 2017 as the sun shone and the crowds poured across the links were something else. I don’t think I’ve ever been at the Open and seen bigger crowds, no matter what the official figures say. My favourite Open venues: No 8 – Royal Lytham My favourite of the North West venues. It just feels proper. I think the atmosphere is especially good here just because of the smaller acreage and hemmed-in nature of the venue. It’s a bit like a traditional football ground that’s gradually been built around and is encircled by its suburbs. It shouldn’t work but it does and it oozes character. My favourite Open venues: No 7 – Royal St George’s As you’ll be gathering, it doesn’t feel like an Open to me until I’ve done some travelling and the Kent coast is more exotic to a Yorkshireman than England’s North West. As it happens, I love the course as well but more than that I love this part of the world. Local produce is a speciality and the thatched roofs are particularly quaint. My favourite Open venues: No 6 – Royal Portrush I’m not sure what category to put Portrush in. The 2019 Open was different to any I have attended previously. Never mind the town of Portrush, if felt like the whole of Northern Ireland was involved in the championship. It was brilliant. I could easily have put it at No 1 but at all the other venues I have multiple Opens to consider whereas Portrush is just based on 2019. My favourite Open venues: No 5 – Trump Turnberry We all know about the logistical issues with Turnberry and it is a fact that the 2009 Open felt like the most sparsely attended when I think back to what it was like out on the course watching the golf. That’s such a shame because it’s a great venue in just about every other respect – and it oozes atmosphere. I also love this part of South Ayrshire, having first visited Turnberry as a star-struck, golf-mad teenager in the late 1980s. My favourite Open venues: No 4 – St Andrews The Old Course: The best and the worst place to watch the Open simultaneously. As is well documented, it is really not a good viewing curse at all, with no spectators allowed in the middle of the course. It’s also, by a million miles, the most atmospheric Open venue. And when the Open is at St Andrews it just feels like everyone who is anyone in golf is in town. It’s amazing who you bump into. I think it would be even higher if we didn’t go back just a little too often. My favourite Open venues: No 3 – Royal Troon The out-and-back nature of the first six and last six holes at Troon are just perfect for creating that Open atmosphere. You can see the galleries pouring out on the links and then back towards the clubhouse again later in the day. I also love the twin-host small towns of Prestwick and Troon and the railway connecting the whole coast. It’s absolutely the essence of the Open and I just feel like a Troon Open works really well logistically. As a fan, I’ve spent many happy hours at the far end of the course where you tend to be able to get really close to the players. I love watching them tackle the par-4 11 th – one of the hardest holes in major golf. My favourite Open venues: No 2 – Carnoustie It brings a tear to my eye when the Open is in town. Carnoustie (and Angus on a wider basis) is a region that is largely working-class and lacks the charm of, say, St Andrews and Gullane so it doesn't often get given the attention it deserves. Remote, distant Carnoustie, the northernmost Open venue, may not be the prettiest of towns but it is just as golf-mad as St Andrews.The galleries are, by my estimation, the most knowledgeable you find at the Open – they are steeped in the game and incredibly appreciative of the chance to watch the world’s best playing a course they all seem to know like the back of their hand. As for the links itself – well it's right up there in every respect apart from the absence of views. My favourite Open venues: No 1 – Muirfield My first working Open as a journalist was Muirfield in 2002. I arrived on the Saturday before – this in the days when final qualifying took place on Sunday and Monday at four nearby courses. In this case, North Berwick, Dunbar, Luffness and Gullane No 1 were the venues and I tore around them all watching the likes of Sam Torrance, Andrew Coltart and – why do I remember this? – Esteban Toledo trying to qualify for Muirfield. I left 10 days later having done several laps of Muirfield and absorbed every last detail from the championship. Truly nobody can have obsessed over an Open like I did that one. Conclusion You may have spotted a theme – an Open is only really an Open to me when it takes place in Scotland. The birthplace of the game just feels like it adds an extra layer to the championship. Right now, that seems a little greedy – I'd take any venue, and I know you would too. Just as long as it was near the sea of course. Do you agree with my choices? Let me know in the comments below or you can tweet me . And come back soon to enjoy another list... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSxtrhrR5STWdkqqMafropqSlQFQNMXJH [post_list category=39894 title=""]