The Open Championship is always a stern test of any golfer, but Royal Birkdale is regarded as the fairest test on the Open course rota. Yes the Open’s 1998 and 2008 visits to Southport saw over par champions in Mark O’Meara and Padraig Harrington. But those Open Championships saw some of the worst weather of any renewals. Ian Baker-Finch won the title in 1991 with a -8/262 total, whereas Jordan Spieth in the latest 2017 renewal took the Claret Jug back to Dallas, Texas after a -12/268 score. That 2017 championship was famous for Branden Grace becoming the first man to shoot 62 in a Major, achieving the feat on the Saturday on a soft golf course with minimal wind.
Birkdale links sets its stall out from the start with perhaps the most demanding Open rota 1st hole, but difficultly is a total marriage with the local weather conditions. As champion Harrington summarised in 2008, “This is a really pleasant golf course for everybody. I can understand why a lot of players would rate it very highly. It’s not tricky, there’s nothing funky about it. Everything is there in front of you. This is much, much more straightforward than that. The fairways are flatter; the greens are not severe and if there’s some slopes off them, there’s not too many.”
In terms of Royal Birkdale in 2026, the course has received a Mackenzie & Ebert renovation which took place over 2023 and 2025. It’s been extended out to a circa 7,220 yard, Par 70, up 70-odd yards from 2017. In reality it’s a medium length test which features a 34-36 split, where the players’ first look at a par-5 is the 14th hole.
The new design unveiled in 2026 sees a brand new risk and reward par-4 5th hole, a redesigned 7th hole with an elevated green, and changes to the closing stretch which include the remodelled par-5 14th, which was previously the 15th. The 15th is now a new 200 yard, par-3, whilst there have also been adjustments to the par-4 16th and 18th holes.
Other changes for the 2026 Open see the bunker count reduced to approximately 110. The renovation removed a number of smaller revetted pot bunkers and reshaped the remaining hazards to create larger, more strategic bunker complexes. It still makes Birkdale one of the more heavily bunkered Open venues. So if you’re comparing the 2017 Open course to 2026 then it’s not just a lengthening project, the routing and strategic character of several holes have been materially changed for the first time in decades.
Royal Birkdale is made unique by the way it is framed by the topography of the sand dunes. As Tom Watson put it, “There is more elevation involved in the tee shots and green complexes like the 6th green which rides up out of the dunes. The western side of the golf course is just lovely, playing along the dune structure down there which is just gorgeous.”
In all you get the feeling that Birkdale is a more than scoreable test if conditions allow. From a driving perspective, the course sets up well with no blind tee shots and the statistics from 2008 and 2017 both suggest that missing fairways by a small margin – or a wide margin in Jordan Spieth’s case – offers little penalty. Fairways are flat and the real penalty off the tee is hitting well positioned fairway bunkers, which in the main are penal. Green complexes remain pretty flat and top-notch approach shots get rewarded with makeable putts. However if the wind blows…
Royal Birkdale home of the 2026 Open Championship.
Below are some revealing player comments about the course from previous Birkdale Open Championships:
Jordan Spieth (2017): “I like the golf course, it’s very cool. It’s a very tough but fair test, one that’s demanding off the tee. And if you get that part done, into the greens and on the greens, you can play kind of to the centre of them and putt to the corners. The greens aren’t crazy. There’s only a couple that have any kind of ridges to them. So it’s about controlling your ball off the tee in these crosswinds to give yourself the opportunity to hit the centre of the green.
I think part of this being such a fair test is the graduating rough or trouble off the tee. They’ve done just a phenomenal job here in areas where with the winds that we’re going to have, if it’s very difficult to hold a fairway, if you hit a really good shot and it creeps into the rough, there’s very little rough, you’re still fine. You get rewarded for a really good shot. And then it’s graduated rough. The further off line you hit it, for the most part out here, the more trouble you’re going to be in. And that’s tough to do in a major because you’ve got so many people coming out that trample down areas that are far off the fairways. But they’ve somehow done it here it seems, that off the tee the closer you are to the fairway, the better chance you have of hitting the green in regulation, and I think that’s fair.
A lot of crosswinds, which makes it really tough to hit fairways, but a good shot is still going to reward you. Really well-placed bunkers, ones where on some holes if you want to fly the short ones, instead of hitting iron off the tee, it’s going to be very difficult for you to fly them but leave them short of the next set of bunkers. A lot of risk/reward options off the tee out here, and if you choose for the risky, and you still hit a good shot, it really will reward you.”
Matt Kuchar (2017): It seems so playable, so fair, well designed with the different staggering of bunkers, the fairways. You feel like if you hit it down the fairway, it’s going to stay in the fairway, you’re not going to get a funny kick. You feel like quality shots are rewarded as quality shots. If you get in some trouble, they give you some room to run a ball up on the green, proper links style. A handful of greens are pitched out but they tend to be shorter holes where you’re hitting shorter irons, and fair enough to have to fly the ball on the green and stop it on those. But for the most part it seems to be a very, very fair test of golf.
Brendan Grace (2017): “I would have thought I had the bad side of the draw coming in this morning. We obviously had -strong winds there the first day, and then yesterday I know I didn’t get a lot of rain, but we had five holes of proper rain out there. So it was tough.
Yesterday wasn’t going to be an easy day at all. And I think the scores shows it. Today was one of those days where we had the conditions, like you said. And just trying to shoot a number to try to get myself back in there, and have a decent finish for the week. Obviously now the mindset changed a bit. Obviously I don’t know what the guys are going to do this afternoon, but there is a lot of birdies out there. It is still very gettable out there, with some of the pins the way the winds are blowing the greens are soft, and I’m sure the guys are going to shoot also some good scores this afternoon.
But obviously yesterday was terrible. But today I think obviously The Open staff, they couldn’t get the golf course very much as they wanted – firm, fast, running. It’s in immaculate condition. It’s the best that I’ve seen any links golf in, in all the time I’ve been pro, honestly. But you know what it is, the greens are softer, still gettable. They’ve done a couple of things today that I’ve not actually seen at the Opens. Moving the tee up I think 30 yards on the 5th. Trying to give the guys a chance to go for it. Things on the 7th, they’ve moved the tee up 30 yards. So it’s giving guys an opportunity to be aggressive. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I think that’s why there are low scores out there today.”
Henrik Stenson (2017): “The 6th hole hasn’t got any easier. I guess for the members it’s a par-5, and we play it as a par-4. You’ve got a tee shot where you have got two options off the tee, basically, you can either layup on this big bunker there straight down the fairway off the tee, and that’s going to put you even further back and a bit of a blind shot for your second. And I would guess it’s probably 3-wood, 3-iron, something like that, if you go that way. Or you can go left and challenge that bunker and potentially another fairway bunker down the left-hand side and hit it a bit further off the tee, and that might leave you maybe a 4- or 5-iron second shot. So it’s just a long hole and you’ve got to hit two good shots to get it in position.”
Padraig Harrington (2008): “As regards to the weather, we started out Thursday morning and the weather was – that rain was as brutal as you’ve ever seen from tee to green. It wasn’t as tough on the greens because the greens had some moisture in them and the wind wasn’t that strong even though it was affecting the play because of the coolness and the dampness. It was affecting the ball travelling. The ball went better through the wind on the last two days because of the fact that it was a little bit warmer.
But I’ve never experienced the difficulty on the greens of the last two days. I found the greens quick. Even though they said they were trying to slow them up, I really found them quick, and it was difficult to get the ball to settle close enough to the hole that you had a tap-in. Every hole you seemed to have four-footers, five-footers, always trying to figure out the line. And many times changing what line you want to hit the ball on nearly as you go. So as tough as I’ve ever seen on the greens.”
Mark O’Meara (2008): “Everyone talks about the major changes but I think the course has only been lengthened by 150, 155 yards. Probably the biggest changes that I saw out there were some of the mounding, narrowing up the golf course a little bit, some of the new bunkering and pushing the bunkers out a little bit farther to combat some of the length that the younger players have. The lengthening of 16, I know the green configuration of 17. But other than that, it seemed very similar to the way it was in ’98. So much depends here at Birkdale on the weather, as we know from past Open Championships. In ’98 the weather was pretty severe, pretty windy, of course out of the southwest, and of course played quite demanding you might say, and the scoring reflected that.
I think this week a lot depends on what the wind does and how severe it blows. If it doesn’t blow that hard, even though the rough is a little bit deeper this year because it’s been a little wetter of a spring, I imagine these players, as good as they are, will shoot some pretty low scores. If the wind blows, even par will be a good score come Sunday afternoon.”
Phil Mickelson (2008): “I think it’s a very fair test where good shots get rewarded, primarily the 30 or 40 yards short of the green. You get much more consistent bounces, so the well-struck shots are rewarded and typically end up about where you would anticipate. I think that’s the biggest thing. There’s also a good mixture of holes that move both ways. The bunkers are perfectly placed for strategy, and it just seems to use every club in your bag. Very few blind shots, a lot of straightforward golf, even though it’s very difficult. “
Geoff Ogilvy (2008): “Yeah, I mean, you wait all day for a par-5 and you hit 15 straight into a 15-, 20-mile-an-hour wind, whatever it is. It’s borderline reachable. I guess most guys could get there yesterday. Today the wind strengthened, and I don’t think many will get there, I’m sure, a couple of the longer guys, but most of the field will be laying it up. You wait all day for that par-5 and it’s a tough layup too, because you have to lay up with a really long club, and it’s gorse on the right and long grass on the left. 15 and 17 are the obvious birdie holes so you’ve got chances to make birdies.
16 is a brutal hole. You can’t see any of the fairway from the tee. It’s quite narrow. I hit driver, 3-iron today and hit them both good. That’s a pretty long – we don’t have that many par-4s where we hit driver, 3-iron, and it could play longer. It’s a windy day today, but I’m sure it can get windier here. It was windier in ’98, at least for periods.”
Graeme McDowell (2008): “I have to say, this is up there probably in my top 5 favourite links courses around. I’ve been really, really impressed by it. It kind of reminds me a lot of some of the really good Irish links like a Waterville or kind of Ennis Anis Grove or even a Portrush, so it’s got the real rolling dunes, the real classic links feel to it. It’s not tricked up, it’s just a solid, tough test, fair. You hit good shots, you get rewarded. The place is not tricked up in any way, shape or form.
The 17th is a bit tricked up, that 17th green. It’s actually just a very difficult tricky little green. Obviously it’s a nothing tee shot. It’s a pretty straightaway tee shot, it’s a short par-5. There’s going to be bad shots that end up stone dead and there’s going to be great shots that end up in three-putt territory. It’s a funky little hole. It’s a funky little green obviously. Maybe a little bit out of character with the rest of the golf course perhaps in that the rest of the greens maybe aren’t that difficult, and all of a sudden you walk on the 17th, and you go, “Who designed who this?” It’s going to offer up some drama, no doubt about it. Like I said, there’s going to be bad shots you get away with, rolling off slopes and end up stone dead. It’s going to be interesting.”
