Open Championship diary: Matt Cooper's Friday update from Royal Birkdale

Footballers' houses

It’s pretty well known that Southport – and particularly Birkdale – is home to many professional and ex-professional footballers.

I’m not sure it is possible to enter this neck of the woods and not have someone point out Alan Hansen’s house.

As is the way with such insider information, it’s 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.

This week many folk are not only hoping to identify footballers' houses but are actually staying in them (or suspect as much).

I’d better not be specific, but two different media teams believe that the evidence before them each evening suggests – in the manner of Loyd Grossman in Through the Keyhole – that the answer to the question “Who lives in a house like this?” is an ex-footballer.

I’ve adored hearing about the souvenirs and photos on the walls, the signed shirts in the downstairs toilet, the ancient boots by the back door.

One equipment manufacturer had a bit of a do in what was rumoured to have once been the home of Liverpool defender Mark Lawrenson.

And apparently Lucas Herbert is staying in an ex-footballer’s home – it even has a small football pitch in the back garden.

Herbert, by the way, has been playing a lot of links golf this last week at Royal Lytham & St Anne’s and Hillside as well as Royal Birkdale (at Royal Lytham he has had to use mats because it’s the AIG Women’s Open there at the end of the month).

He’s also a fan of the board game Catan (a new one on me). If you’re wondering about his ruthless streak, consider that he’s apparently “beating his father-in-law into the ground”.

A final football story – Liverpool FC had a dinner in the R&A Pavilion on Monday night and Kenny Dalglish asked (in “delightfully lovely fashion” according to the staff) for his steak to be returned and cooked “very well done”.

Out on the course

Is there any sport that places more physical demands on its fans than golf?

It’s 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.

We weren’t 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.

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.

It’s a wonderfully bonkers exercise in community really.

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.

Another potty scene.

Another Place

Talking of folk peering into the middle distance, the artist Antony Gormley’s Another Place sculpture is down the road from Birkdale in Crosby.

It features 100 cast iron figures staring out to sea.

It’s 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.

Late Friday, for what it’s worth, has my favourite sound of an Open.

It’s when the last putt drops in the second round and everyone in the grandstands on 18 – usually not many of them – stand together.

The seats snap up. Feet shuffle. And up above the flags snap in what remains of the wind.

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.

A lot of people on site

Here are some numbers for you.

On Thursday and Friday there have been 52,500 spectators on site, a number that will drop to 50,000 at the weekend.

There are also 10,500 on-site who are working (in whatever capacity).

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.

It’s like you lift a stone and thousands of little insects are underneath – 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.

The Open is really like a little town.

The Dean wedding update

The bad news for Joe Dean? He won’t be playing in the Open this weekend.

The good news for his wife-to-be and caddie Emily? They’ve got two extra days to organise next Tuesday’s wedding.

I say “they” but Joe admits it is really her.

“Emily has been panicking over some stuff she’s ordered and that’s trying to be delivered and not been delivered,” said Dean after his second round. “She’s more worried than me.”

He does have come concerns, however. “I’m just worried about the speech situation, but I’m sure I’ll get through it,” he said.

“I’ve 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’m sure at the end of the day close friends and family there, so I’m sure they’ll let me off if I don’t read it very well. We’ll see.”

Royal Birkdale love

Finally, let’s hear it for this week’s host.

“Links courses are funny because as pros we see pristine, genetically modified grass with fertiliser, and this isn’t that. So what they have to do is keep a range of grasses in great condition,” said Laurie Canter.

“They’ve done an unbelievable number on the greens. The greens are so pure, and they’re a great speed and they’re slopey.

“This is my seventh Open and my second here, and of all the venues I’ve played, I honestly think it’s the best. I think it’s got one of the best par-threes we play on the 12th hole. It’s amazing.

“You can make birdies, but there’s disasters waiting everywhere.

“And from a fan perspective it’s a good viewing experience.

“Royal Birkdale nails it.”