North Berwick’s Redan Hole
You’ll most likely never play the 7th hole (“Redan”) at Shinnecock Hills — the par 3 that bedeviled the pros during the 2004 U.S. Open — but you can play the original. When (not if) you go to Scotland be sure to play North Berwick (West Links), which is just down the road from Muirfield and across the Firth of Forth from St Andrews.
Widely regarded as one of the best in Scotland, this links course has an antiquated charm all its own with walls, burns, yawning bunkers and in No. 15 “Redan,” probably the most frequently copied short hole in the world. You may have heard the term before, but just what exactly is a Redan? C.B. McDonald (who rebuilt and upgraded Shinnecock Hills in 1916 adding the Redan 7th) and H.J. Whigham (1896 and ’97 U.S. Amateur champion) wrote in an article for Golf Illustrated in May 1914:
Take a narrow tableland, tilt it a little from right to left, dig a deep bunker on the front side, approach it diagonally, and you have the Redan. At North Berwick, of course, all these things were done in the beginning by nature. The only original thing that the greenkeeper did was to place the tee so that the shot had to be played cornerwise, so to speak, instead of directly down the tableland.
The word “Redan” has its roots much farther in the past than even North Berwick, and was inspired by a particular fortress used in the Crimean War, which Great Britain and France waged against Russia from 1854-56. David Normoyle of the USGA has written an excellent article, “What Is A Redan Hole, And Why Does It Matter?”, which I would encourage you to read.
In his 1910 classic, The Golf Courses of the British Isles, the famous British golf writer Bernard Darwin wrote of North Berwick:
It is quite a short drive–not with a club–from Muirfield to North Berwick… No golf course could look lovelier than North Berwick on a bright summer’s day, when the Bass rock, the home of many gannets, is shining brilliantly white in the sunshine and only holiday-making man is entirely vile…the ‘Redan’ is a beautiful one-shot hole on the top of a plateau, with a bunker short of the green to the left and another further on to the right, and we must vary our mode of attack according to the wind, playing a shot to come in from the right or making a direct frontal attack.
Now, back to the 2004 U.S. Open. The players clearly had trouble with the 7th at Shinnecock Hills, averaging 3.413 strokes and just 33.4% of them hitting the green in regulation. Yes, the greens were firm (that’s probably an understatement!), but according to Ron Witten in an article written for GolfDigest.com, they just did not know how to play that hole! Now, armed with the knowledge you’ve gained in this blog entry you’ll be ready to skillfully negotiate the real thing on your next golf trip to Scotland.
Further details on North Berwick, contact information, visitor policies, and directions are in the Scotland Golf Adventure Guide.
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Rob Babcock
Author/Golfer/The Golf Guide Guy
GolfAdventureGuides.com
Posted in Scotland