Lauri Rosendahl
matt cooper, global golf post
LYTHAM ST ANNES, ENGLAND | In the streets around Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club there are all manner of rest homes, residential homes and care homes, as well as guest houses, bed-and-breakfasts and hotels that mostly cater for an older clientele.
In that sense, at least, the town’s St Annes-on-the-Sea area has quite an elderly dynamic.
But since 1965 – with the exception of 2020 and 2021 – the golf club’s annual Lytham Trophy has done its best to drop the district’s average age during the first weekend in May.
Of course, when the field competed in the inaugural tournament – created because the club felt the northwest of England deserved an elite amateur championship – the scene was rather different to today.
Back in 1965, and in contrast to today’s almost exclusively aspirational performers, career amateurs were common.
Appropriately, Michael Bonallack shared the first victory and claimed a solo win in 1972. The other great British amateur of the modern era, Peter McEvoy, was triumphant in 1979.
… this trip represents a valuable education in the art of hitting under the wind and executing a chip-and-run with a 7-iron, it is also about learning social lessons that might prove vital in a golfer’s quest to survive the Open rota in years to come.
Since the start of the 21st century, however, the fields have become ever more cosmopolitan and youthful.
European nations, especially, relish the opportunity to blood their hopefuls on the linksland. Moreover, since Fairhaven Golf Club introduced its own boys and girls competitions in 2006, national federations have been able to introduce entire squads of youngsters to the curiosity of competing in foreign lands.
As a consequence, the streets of St Annes offer up many a delicious vignette.
Like the sight of teenage Spaniards being urged on to the beach, and then told to run to the sea and back. Only to discover that, in the northwest of England, that apparently simple task might equate to a half marathon.
Or groups of floppy-haired Swedes walking across a zebra crossing in single file like the Beatles on Abbey Road, except carrying golf bags instead of a growing sense of disillusionment with fame and each other.
Or French boys wondering why their bed-and-breakfast has a shared bathroom – and why it has carpet on the floor.
Or youthful South Africans returning from Blackpool with a haunted look that suggests significant trauma.
Yes, as much as this trip represents a valuable education in the art of hitting under the wind and executing a chip-and-run with a 7-iron, it is also about learning social lessons that might prove vital in a golfer’s quest to survive the Open rota in years to come.
In last week’s 60th edition of the Lytham Trophy it was 20-year-old Lauri Rosendahl of Finland who passed both examinations.
At the start of the week his name would have provoked no interest to many looking for a likely champion. He was ranked 1,495th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, had achieved little in his previous visits to the British seaside, and his only victory of any kind of note had come in his national stroke-play championship last summer.
But, after he opened the championship with rounds of 69-65 to open up a two-shot lead at halfway on 6-under, the manager of the Finnish team and one-time DP World Tour player, Pasi Purhonen, said he was reminded of the phrase: “It takes years to become an overnight sensation.”
Purhonen, who finished T13 in the 2007 World Cup alongside Mikko Ilonen, qualified his words by explaining that Rosendahl’s performance was fuelled by a winter of hard work.
The Finnish team’s technical head coach, Daniel Da Silva had identified that the youngster’s grip was limiting his potential and delivering a trajectory higher than ideal at any time, never mind on the links. Extensive work through the dark months of the northern winter had created better numbers on Trackman, a lower ball flight and greater distance through the air.
Rosendahl felt emboldened on his return to the championship after his missed cut on debut 12 months ago: allied to his fine short game, he now had a long game he trusted.
Two rounds of 71 on Sunday confirmed a two-shot victory over Sweden’s Erik Tjarnberg on 4-under 276. The pair were the only golfers to end the week under par. England’s Ben Bolton and Scotland’s George Cannon shared third on 1-over.
But the raw numbers do little justice to Rosendahl’s performance.
The final seven holes at Royal Lytham, all of them par-4s, were christened “Murder Mile” when it hosted the 1977 Ryder Cup and the stretch has wrecked many a card down the years. Rosendahl played those holes in 1-under on both occasions on the final day and it proved critical.
During the final round, his drive at the short par-4 13th finished inches short of a pot bunker. Had it trickled into the sand there is every chance he’d have been against the lip and in trouble. As it was, the ball was hovering over the edge and on a downslope, but he held his nerve and knocked the 60-yard pitch stone dead.
When he dropped a shot at 14, and Tjarnberg made back-to-back birdies at 15 and 16, the Finn was first caught and then passed.
His response was superb despite a wild drive into Seve Ballesteros’ car park territory off the 16th tee. With his feet above the ball, he committed fully to a thrash through long and tangly fescue grass to reach the putting surface where he completed a two-putt par.
The Swede had dropped shots at 17 and 18, but Rosendahl didn’t know it when he unleashed “the best 3-wood of my life” straight down the middle at 17. His approach found the green but the birdie putt stayed up.
No matter. He chose to find rough rather than sand from the intimidating 18th tee and then yet again peppered the pin.
He didn’t know he could have afforded to two-putt it. He thought he needed the birdie and he completed it to become the second Finn to lift the trophy after Albert Eckhardt in 2013.
“It’s nice to get some results after all the hard work,” he said afterwards. “It’s quite a big deal and has given me confidence. Last year I mostly played 2-iron from the tee here. This year I was more aggressive, using driver and 3-wood.”
Praised for having a good head on his shoulders by Da Silva, Rosendahl said of a bogey-6 at the seventh in the final round: “It was a good 6. My drive was my first bad shot of the week. I just thought, it happens. Take a drop. Hit it on the fairway. Find the green. I actually didn’t do either of those things, but I did make the 6.”
He was not aware that he had been in deep Ballesteros country off the 16th tee, but he is looking forward to the summer ahead.
He is playing in the Brabazon Trophy at the end of this month and is hoping to extend his British seaside holiday at the St Andrews Links Trophy and Amateur Championship.
But in the immediate aftermath of his breakthrough at elite level he was ready to celebrate quietly in a very British way.
“I’m going to sit in front of the television,” he said. “I’ve been watching the World Snooker Championship all week and it’s the final tonight.”
On and off the course, Rosendahl passed his British test with flying colours.
RESULTS
Matt Cooper
