Royal Troon, this week’s host course for the Open Championship, has some famous holes. Writer and architect Mike Clayton runs the rule over it, and assesses the Australian chances.

One of the many great things about the country where golf originated is the ‘Right to Roam’.

So long as you stay off the greens, anyone in Scotland can walk across a golf course and, in the case of so many including Royal Troon, it allows for easy access to the local beach.

There are no fences nor locked gates and most links are an integral part of the towns they are almost invariably named after. (Royal Rose Bay, Seaton or Black Rock, anyone?)

Troon is a course broken up into three parts. The opening six, the ones before you get into the noticeably more interesting ground around the turn, are almost nondescript in comparison.

The opening trio are short par-4s especially when the usual wind is blowing from behind and woe anyone who gets to the fourth tee over par. In the 1989 Open playoff, the one Australians need no reminding of, Greg Norman opened with two birdies, Mark Calcavecchia a par and a birdie and Wayne Grady’s pedestrian pars all but cruelled his chance.

The most memorable holes play through and over the big dunes at the far end of the course only 600 metres from Prestwick, the host of the first dozen Opens on their original 12-hole course.

I once suggested an 18-hole course on a small site be broken up into a six-hole par-3 course and a full sized 12-hole course, only to be asked if there was any precedent for 12-hole golf. “The first dozen British Opens,” probably was not a reply they were expecting!

All but one hole from the turn at Troon, the par-4 12th, plays back into the prevailing wind and coming into and off the left is not a whole lot of fun, not if you are off your game anyway.

Going out, the one hole into the same wind is maybe the most famous par-3 in the world, outside of the two holes we see annually at Augusta and at the Players Championship.

The front of the green at the Postage Stamp is barely 100 metres from the tee but as Tiger Woods noted in the press: “Just hit the ball on the green. That’s it. Green good, miss green bad. It doesn’t get any more simple than that.”

It’s one of the holes everyone should at least see, and hopefully play, at least once in their lives and it shows a short hole, without resorting to the defence of water, can still be both demanding and scary.

Ben Crenshaw perhaps best summed up the place of the under 135-metre one-shotter when he said: “I do not mean to imply that short par-3s do not exist anymore, though its type is not frequently attempted by many architects today. But quite selfishly, I would enjoy seeing more of them, for it’s one of the many ways to check unbridled power, and occasionally, make those long hitters’ knees tremble.”

Before the end of the week there are sure to be a few of Crenshaw’s trembling knees.

The other famous hole at Troon is the dangerous 11th a long par-4 bordered by gorse on the left and, on the right, an ancient stone wall and the railway line from Prestwick and beyond.

Formerly a par-5, it was always an easy hole to par – even if Jack Nicklaus did make a 10 there in his first Open – but with the stroke of a pen it goes from being one of the ‘easy’ holes to the hardest.

Nothing changed – save except perhaps adding a back tee as part of the arms-race to keep up with modern equipment – but mentally it’s more onerous because a five is somehow seen as dropping a shot. If the conditions get smelly, a five at the 11th, might he half a shot dropped but nothing more.

We have six players only this week, likely the fewest number since the age of Thomson and Nagle when 1400 pounds was the winner’s prize. “Of course,” Thomson once told me, “You could buy a house for that in the 1950s!”

Until the mid-1980s the leading half dozen players on the Australian money list earned a start, but it was cut to three and eventually one. And the qualifying, where almost 300 players compete for 16 spots, is little more than a token gesture these days.

Cameron Smith is our most likely winner although it’s more difficult to gauge the state of his game now he’s on the LIV Tour. As always with him, if his driver is in check he plays well.

Adam Scott was terrific at the Scottish Open last week and his swing shows no signs of getting shorter, less fluid and less attractive. It’s a dozen years now since Lytham and those four bogeys but if ever a mid-40s swing is capable of winning, it’s the Queenslander’s.

And The Open gets it’s first Elvis. I’ve caddied a bit for Elvis Smylie these past few years and his game has always been terrifically promising.

He obviously needs somewhere outside of Australia to play regularly and qualifying here is another step on the way. He’s always naturally hit with a touch of draw so the back nine with a left to right wind is perhaps to the advantage of a leftie, if for no other reason than it’s the least favoured wind for the rest.

Finally, there is Rory McIlroy. This is the 40th major since he walked off the 72nd green, a champion at Valhalla in the PGA Championship of 2014.

If anyone had suggested he would go a full decade without winning one since, they would have been certified.

Yet here we are.

PHOTO: Royal Troon’s signature hole, the short par-3 sixth, known as the Postage Stamp. Image: R&A Media