Matt Cooper goes through the keyhole, up and down the sand dunes, along the coast and into the grandstands in Friday’s Open diary.<\/p>\n
Footballers’ houses<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pretty well known that Southport \u2013 and particularly Birkdale \u2013 is home to many professional and ex-professional footballers.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure it is possible to enter this neck of the woods and not have someone point out Alan Hansen\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
As is the way with such insider information, it\u2019s remarkable how often you can be told the exact location then, 10 minutes later, someone points at another house with equal certainty. Tremendously daft fun.<\/p>\n
This week many folk are not only hoping to identify footballers’ houses but are actually staying in them (or suspect as much).<\/p>\n
I\u2019d better not be specific, but two different media teams believe that the evidence before them each evening suggests \u2013 in the manner of Loyd Grossman in Through the Keyhole \u2013 that the answer to the question \u201cWho lives in a house like this?\u201d is an ex-footballer.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve adored hearing about the souvenirs and photos on the walls, the signed shirts in the downstairs toilet, the ancient boots by the back door.<\/p>\n
One equipment manufacturer had a bit of a do in what was rumoured to have once been the home of Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson.<\/p>\n
And apparently Lucas Herbert is staying in an ex-footballer\u2019s home \u2013 it even has a small football pitch in the back garden.<\/p>\n
Herbert, by the way, has been playing a lot of links golf this last week at Royal Lytham & St Anne\u2019s and Hillside as well as Royal Birkdale (at Royal Lytham he has had to use mats because it\u2019s the AIG Women\u2019s Open there at the end of the month).<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also a fan of the board game Catan (a new one on me). If you\u2019re wondering about his ruthless streak, consider that he\u2019s apparently \u201cbeating his father-in-law into the ground\u201d.<\/p>\n
A final football story \u2013 Liverpool FC had a dinner in the R&A Pavilion on Monday night and Kenny Dalglish asked (in \u201cdelightfully lovely fashion\u201d according to the staff) for his steak to be returned and cooked \u201cvery well done\u201d.<\/p>\n
Out on the course<\/p>\n
Is there any sport that places more physical demands on its fans than golf?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a question myself and friends were asking this afternoon as we slogged our way up dunes and through the deep sand that surrounds many holes at Royal Birkdale.<\/p>\n
We weren\u2019t moaning, but we saw tired spectators, limping spectators and spectators actually on the ground receiving treatment from medics. In the heat of this week it can be a real trial to make your way around the course.<\/p>\n
And for what? To find a spot that allows you to see a fellow swing at a ball but maybe not see the ball at all, and just hope you get a vague idea of where it ends up.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a wonderfully bonkers exercise in community really. <\/p>\n
And nothing ever entertains me quite so much as seeing groups of Open spectators clinging to the top of dunes, peering into the middle distance, gasping as they take swings of water bottles, all the while looking like the survivors of some natural disaster.<\/p>\n
Another potty scene.<\/p>\n
Another Place<\/p>\n
Talking of folk peering into the middle distance, the artist Antony Gormley\u2019s Another Place sculpture is down the road from Birkdale in Crosby.<\/p>\n
It features 100 cast iron figures staring out to sea.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not impossible to look at them and imagine them as a gallery on the back nine late on a Friday, watching a fellow try to find a late birdie to make the cut.<\/p>\n
Late Friday, for what it\u2019s worth, has my favourite sound of an Open.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s when the last putt drops in the second round and everyone in the grandstands on 18 \u2013 usually not many of them \u2013 stand together.<\/p>\n
The seats snap up. Feet shuffle. And up above the flags snap in what remains of the wind.<\/p>\n
Second favourite sound? The final round when a shot by someone in a late group demands quiet from the galleries and all you can hear is a light aircraft high above. <\/p>\n
A lot of people on site<\/p>\n
Here are some numbers for you.<\/p>\n
On Thursday and Friday there have been 52,500 spectators on site, a number that will drop to 50,000 at the weekend.<\/p>\n
There are also 10,500 on-site who are working (in whatever capacity).<\/p>\n
They are astonishing numbers and it fascinates me that there are areas of the course that exist in a micro-climate no-one else knows about.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like you lift a stone and thousands of little insects are underneath \u2013 it could be the content hub, the media centre, the TV compound, the hi-vis employees, the kitchens, the many hospitality units, the parking, the police.<\/p>\n
The Open is really like a little town.<\/p>\n
The Dean wedding update<\/p>\n
The bad news for Joe Dean? He won\u2019t be playing in the Open this weekend.<\/p>\n
The good news for his wife-to-be and caddie Emily? They\u2019ve got two extra days to organise next Tuesday\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n
I say \u201cthey\u201d but Joe admits it is really her. <\/p>\n
\u201cEmily has been panicking over some stuff she\u2019s ordered and that\u2019s trying to be delivered and not been delivered,\u201d said Dean after his second round. \u201cShe\u2019s more worried than me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He does have come concerns, however. \u201cI\u2019m just worried about the speech situation, but I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll get through it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve written one, but the problem with my head is it gets ahead of itself when reading things, so I always end up making a mess of things. If I could do an audio book version, that would be ideal. I\u2019m sure at the end of the day close friends and family there, so I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll let me off if I don\u2019t read it very well. We\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Royal Birkdale love<\/p>\n
Finally, let\u2019s hear it for this week\u2019s host.<\/p>\n
\u201cLinks courses are funny because as pros we see pristine, genetically modified grass with fertiliser, and this isn\u2019t that. So what they have to do is keep a range of grasses in great condition,\u201d said Laurie Canter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve done an unbelievable number on the greens. The greens are so pure, and they\u2019re a great speed and they\u2019re slopey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my seventh Open and my second here, and of all the venues I\u2019ve played, I honestly think it\u2019s the best. I think it\u2019s got one of the best par-threes we play on the 12th hole. It\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can make birdies, but there\u2019s disasters waiting everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd from a fan perspective it\u2019s a good viewing experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoyal Birkdale nails it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Cooper goes through the keyhole, up and down the sand dunes, along the coast and into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-698152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}