Muirfield, the home of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, is entrenched among the elite of world golfing venues, and boasts one of the finest links courses to be found anywhere in the world. With the Open Championship creeping ever closer we thought we’d ask Your Golf Travel Ambassador, Darren Clarke, what he thought of this year’s host course.
Darren of course won the Open two years ago. Then it was held at the fearsome Royal St George’s and Darren, having grown up on the links of Royal Portrush, mastered the extremely challenging conditions to claim his first major championship.
The inherent challenge of the Open Championship layout at Muirfield is that “It’s very long” said Clarke.
Your Golf Travel Ambassador, Darren Clarke, shares his thoughts on this year’s Open Championship venue.
“The rough; it’s very penal, very severe” he continued. While you might expect that of a championship links course that is about to welcome the world’s best golfers, Darren went on to explain what he, and many other top golfers, love about Muirfield.
“In saying that, the golf course is extremely fair. It doesn’t have as undulating fairways as the likes of St George’s would have. So consequently if you hit a good shot up the middle, it’s not that likely to get a funky sort of bounce.”
With long, penal rough flanking fairways that stretch far into the distance you might assume that only one of the very top dogs in the golfing world will have a realistic chance of getting their hands on the Claret Jug come Sunday the 27th and you could well be right.
“You know; if you look at the list of champions, major champions at Muirfield, it’s a very impressive list.”
Whatever happens in East Lothian in a couple of week’s time, we at Your Golf Travel will be rooting for Darren to add to his famous 2011 success and claim his second Claret Jug!