CLAYTON: The big meeting point

Karrie Webb, a triple Women & # 39; s British Open champion, recognizes herself with the woody Woburn format.

Although many regret the weekend of the men's weekend rather than usual, the best women in the world are in Woburn this week for their British Open.

The three-course golf on the Duke of Bedford estate is spacious and an ideal location for professional golf. The major English highways that run to the north and south are close by, it is not far from the north of London to make the journey unreasonable for large numbers and there is all the space needed to arrange a substantial championship .

Unlike The Open, the women do not always play the coastal bands and it is a shame because they are the best tests of the championship and although the course is good, it is not even the best of the three courses. It is reminiscent of the often quoted line by John Huggan that the Ryder Cup in Gleneagles was held "on the fourth best course in Auchterarder".

It was of course a little bit sucking, but from an architectural point of view the courts of the king and queen in Gleneagles are infinitely more charming and interesting than the Ryder Cup course across the street. Just as many cities have a "good" and "bad" side of a river, so the narrow road at Gleneagles is a bit of a gap between the new and the old, and traditionalists usually come down to the old.

The original course in Woburn – The Dukes – was built in the 1970s and the country is ideal for golf. The pine provides a nice fairway border, the soil is sandy enough to ensure both a good construction and a bouncy castle (assuming it doesn't have too much water) and the undulations – dramatic in parts and subtle in others – provide sporty golf.

England is the best country to find amazing, wildly varied, accessible and affordable golf, and for the architecture era, The Dukes was the best course built in the country in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It led to more and the country went crazy building expensive, well-sold – usually by attracting a European Tour event or even a Ryder Cup – courses. It was the heyday of the famous professional golfer who became an architect, but the architectural irony is not one of the new courses that match the quality of the great old inland courses that can be found everywhere in England, such as Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Swinley Forest , Woking, Alwoodley, Ganton, Woodhall Spa or Notts.

Professional golf is of course much more about the "location" than the course and there is no hope that the Women & # 39; s British Open will ever work in Swinley Forest of Woking because they are both too small and not interested in the accompanying circus.

So Woburn, a great location and a good course, is the test this week and it would hardly be a shock to suggest that one of the best Koreans will be the winner.

Jin Young Ko won the Evian last week (a schedule conspiring to hold major championships in consecutive weeks) and also the ANA in April. Her countrywoman Jeongeun Lee6 won the US Open and left only the amazing Hannah Green to break the Korean domination of the big championships of the season.

Six Korean players are in the top dozen in the world, making next year's Olympic selection problematic as it eliminates at least two of the game's best players. In contrast, the United States, as long as the dominant nation in women's golf, has only Lexi Thompson and Women & # 39; s Australian Open winner Nelly Korda in the top dozen.

The fascination of the Koreans is how they continue to send such great golfers to the LPGA Tour when golf was a game that was hardly known to the general population just 30 years ago.

Se Ri Pak who won the US Open in 1998 was the rocket and two decades later we see what comes down to an almost dominance at the top of the game. It seems that the best female athletes in the country are attracted to golf before any other sport. Australia, on the other hand, must have at least 20 sports that a young woman is likely to try for a competition she thinks is "boring, boring and only played by old people".

They can't be wrong anymore, but it's the image of golf here among those who don't know better.

Karrie Webb, an even better player than Pak, did not have the same effect because Australia would never become Korea's crazy country.

The game was not new and exciting and children had more options. Nor would we likely find girls willing to play balls obsessively eight hours a day, year after year, on a driving range – often before they ever played a golf course with grass on it.

Webb, a former champion and something of a semi-retired touring golfer, will play Green, Su Oh, Katherine Kirk, Sarah Kemp and Whitney Hillier this week, just like Minjee Lee (number 4 in the world). before Monday.

As Green showed on Hazletine, anything is possible with a lot of play and the power to control the stress of the last 30 minutes.

If they can beat the best Koreans, they have a big chance. But it is something much easier said than done.