3 things to know about Royal Liverpool Golf Club

The third major of the golf calendar takes place this weekend, as the 143rd British Open lands in Hoylake, England.

All eyes will be on Tiger Woods, playing his first major since missing three months following microdiscectomy back surgery, and is doing so as the defending winner the last time the British Open was played at Hoylake. 

The Royal Liverpool Golf Club is one of the most challenging and historic courses in all of golf, and here are three things to know about the course that will help crown the newest British Open winner. 

Rougher than rough

Links style courses are renowned for their deep and challenging rough, where marshals can lose track of wayward shots that land in the thick of it despite being near their feet. 

The U.S. Open is famous for having rough that is heavy, but nothing compares to the size of the rough at Royal Liverpool. Grown out to about a foot high in most places, there are spots - most notably the third, 14th, 16th, and 17th holes - where it doesn't take much to find rough that is about five feet high. 

To give an idea of how devastatingly long the rough is, 6-foot-2 writer Luke Kerr-Dineen of Golf Digest proves there's enough long stuff to hide a human completely. 

[Courtesy: Golf Digest]

Iron it out

In 2006, the last time the British Open came to Hoylake, Woods won the Claret Jug by playing driver just once over the course of the weekend. 

The course will play 7,312 yards - 54 yards longer than in 2006 - and will once again be re-arranged to make for a more dramatic ending. The tournament's first hole is the members' 17th, meaning rounds will conclude on the 551-yard par 5 16th. The hole is reachable in two, making closing hole eagles a possibility, but is fraught with danger as out-of-bounds looms tight to the right. 

Closing with a par 5 is a rare and dramatic stylistic choice. In the last 20 years just five majors have ended with a par 5 - Liverpool, Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines, Valhalla, and Baltusrol - and Woods won four of them. 

"It's a true golfers' course," says club historian Joe Pinnington. "It's exceptionally hard to score, and the name of the game is course management." The ocean-side location also makes weather a regular factor, as noted by poet Patric Dickinson in 1951: "Hoylake shares with bicycling the strange fact that whichever way you turn, the wind is plumb against, or at any rate unhelpful."

History, History, History

Royal Liverpool is the second-oldest seaside links course in England, and plays a large part in the history of golf firsts. 

Hoylake hosted the inaugural men's amateur championship in 1885, and was the host of the first ever international match between Scotland and England in 1902. 

It played a part in Bobby Jones' Grand Slam in 1930 and is hosting the British Open for the 12th time. Previous Open's happened here in 1897, 1902, 1907, 1913, 1924, 1930, 1936, 1947, 1956, 1967, and 2006.