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San Francisco, California The last time Royal Liverpool Golf Club hosted British Open, 39 years ago, the talk of the town was its Fab Four and their recently released album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This month golf's Big Five – Messrs. Woods, Mickelson, Els, Singh, and Goosen – look to make beautiful music with their mod instruments when they play the biggest golf gig of them all. The Big Five is by no means the most exclusive club in golf. That honor belongs to a club that boasts just nine members, some of which go decades without getting to play. It is the British Open Rota, the rotation of nine courses on which golf's oldest (and best, in my humble opinion) major championship is contested. After sitting out for 39 years, this month the Royal Liverpool Golf Club once again gets the nod. Royal Liverpool is one of four Open venues in England, along with Royal Birkdale (2008), Royal St. Georges, and Royal Lytham & St. Annes, with the other five hosts located in Scotland: Muirfield, Royal Troon, Carnoustie (2007), the Ailsa Course at Turnberry (2009), and the Old Course in St. Andrews (2010).  British Open 2005 victor Tiger Woods. The venerable Old Course casts such a long shadow that often overlooked are St. Andrews's five other fine and fun municipal courses – the New, the Jubilee, the Eden, the executive Strathtyrum, and the nine-hole Balgove. For the sum of about $215 U.S. dollars, or roughly half the cost of one round on Pebble Beach, St. Andrews residents are entitled to purchase a yearly ticket that grants them unlimited play on all six courses. The biggest bargain on the golfing planet will get even better this time next year with the scheduled debut of Course No. 7, the first championship course the town has built in nearly 100 years. The chances of No. 7 (to be named later this year in an online vote) cracking the Open Rota anytime soon are slim. The course promises, however, to be bigger and better than anyone could have ever imagined. Except, that is, for course designer David McLay Kidd. The St. Andrews Links Trust, which operates the courses, envisioned an entertaining course to help ease capacity issues on the other Links tracks when they commissioned No. 7, but Kidd saw a much bigger picture in the opportunity to create something not only in the home of golf, but also in his homeland. A native Scot who grew up working the courses at the Gleneagles Resort, where his father spent a quarter century as Director of Golf Operations, Kidd, 38, made a name for himself with his acclaimed design at Bandon Dunes in Oregon. He first heard about the St. Andrews gig while building the ultra-private Nanea course on Hawaii for noted golf nut Charles Schwab. While commuting from the Big Island to Scotland for job interviews was a pain in the arse, it paid off when Kidd was awarded the coveted commission. I have followed the progress of No. 7 from the start for a book that will chronicle the creation of the course, and I can say with authority that the opportunity has not been without obstacles. Political opposition and colossal expectations aside, the site consisted of an uninspiring 250-acre flat-as-a-pancake potato field, smack in the middle of which sat St. Andrews' sparkling new sewage treatment plant. The neighboring farmer retained the right to drive his cattle across the golf course to graze on the grass between the course and the coast – and if obliging cows were not bad enough – Kidd was forced to commit an act of sacrilege and accommodate golf carts.
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