‘Have we seen this?!’ First tee shot at Royal St. George’s an absolute terror

Most golf-course designers like to ease you into a round.

Not Laidlaw Purves, a Scottish-born aural and ophthalmic surgeon who in 1887 conjured the design for what would later become Royal St. George’s. Some of Purves’ routing has evolved, but not the shin-kicking tee shot on the 442-yard par-4 1st, which all these years later — including at the Open Championship this week — still gives players fits.     

On Friday, the field found the rumpled ribbon of a fairway — which works left-to-right and pitches left-to-right, often into a left-to-right wind — only 35% of the time. Thus far on Saturday, that number is hovering closer to 30%. For context, the field this week has been hitting about 60% of the fairways overall. Contributing to the difficulty of the shot at 1 is the fact that players can’t see much of the fairway from the tee. You have to trust your target, and really trust your swing.

Tee ball after tee ball has either caught the right side of the fairway and bounded into the rough, or flown directly into the tangly stuff. When playing partners Jon Rahm and Cameron Tringale both managed to find the fairway, Golf Channel broadcasters Terry Gannon and Justin Leonard could hardly believe it.   

‘Have we seen this?!’ Gannon said.

“Two balls in the fairway at 1?” Leonard said. “No.”

The hole has a notorious history in the Open. Tiger Woods lost his tee shot here in 2003 — it was believed to be the first time Woods lost a ball in competition — and made a 7. A decade earlier, Jerry Kelly carded a cool septuple-bogey 11. Here’s how Dave Anderson of the New York Times described that episode:

His adventure evolved after his tee shot hooked into the left rough. With a lob wedge, he moved the ball about 15 feet, then he wedged across the fairway into the right rough. After four hacks moved the ball only a few feet each time, he took an unplayable lie.

”I made a mistake off the tee and we hadn’t felt that wet grass this week,” Kelly said. ”I’ve hit shots out of that grass all week and they’ve come out fine. I just hit six of ’em that didn’t come out.”

On Saturday, all those missed fairways have been taking a toll on the field. The 1st is playing a quarter stroke over par, making it the third-toughest hole of the day.

Alan Bastable

Golf.com Editor

As GOLF.com’s executive editor, Bastable is responsible for the editorial direction and voice of one of the game’s most respected and highly trafficked news and service sites. He wears many hats — editing, writing, ideating, developing, daydreaming of one day breaking 80 — and feels privileged to work with such an insanely talented and hardworking group of writers, editors and producers. Before grabbing the reins at GOLF.com, he was the features editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and foursome of kids.