As we head into a Sunday where PGA’s finest will be competing at Royal Liverpool Golf Club for the lucrative prize that comes with winning one of the season’s majors in The Open Championship, it’s likely that you’ll start to ponder about how you might fare on the same course. Fortunately, EA Sports PGA Tour anticipated this urge and made sure to add the course to the game just in advance of the tournament’s field teeing off on Thursday. As you might expect, the course doesn’t feel quite as challenging in the game as it would in real life, especially because this one doesn’t punish you as severely as you would expect on shots from the thick growth of the abundant heavy rough.
Despite this advantage, there are still some holes at Royal Liverpool that are bound to drive you a little bonkers in your pursuit for birdies (or even eagles). Let’s go over the three hardest holes (a par-3, a par-4, and a par-5) of the course, what makes them especially tricky to play, and what might be your best strategy for scoring under par on the hole.
EA Sports PGA Tour 2023 – The 3 Hardest Holes At Royal Liverpool
Hole 10
With Royal Liverpool showcasing no shortage of tough par-4s, there’s probably none more difficult for my money than the maddening 10th. The snaking fairway forces you to make a crucial decision off the tee of whether you want to lay up and face a longer approach shot or let it fly and hope you are precise enough to avoid the rough one way or another. A second shot from further back wouldn’t be quite so bad if not for the scary pot bunker lurking in front of the green. Even if you make it over the bunker and hit that green, it slopes in such a way that the ball will still be in danger of sliding back into it should you not get it quite far enough towards the rear.
Hole 17
The newest hole at Royal Liverpool, this par 3 isn’t the longest on the course or anything but navigating the green in a way that will have you leaving the hole with a birdie will be a tall order for all but the most seasoned of golfers. First off, there’s the matter of the craggy bunkers that protect the green in all directions, requiring you to be awfully precise with your tee shot in order to have the ball stick on the relatively small amount of safe space housing the pin. Depending on where the hole happens to be situated, you’ll have to worry about the ball sliding around and perhaps off the green completely because of its various slopes. Putts from wherever you end up on the green are no walk in the park either and escaping with a par can have you breathing a sigh of relief.
Hole 18
Royal Liverpool wanted a dramatic ending to the course for The Open Championship and they certainly achieved that with this beast of a par 5 that’s already frustrated some of the pros early in the tournament (just ask poor Justin Thomas). The fairway is narrow but not nearly as hard to navigate as in real life, where a boundary line along the right side of the fairway that could spell doom for anyone who makes the mistake of sending the ball too far in that direction appears to be absent in the game. The green is barricaded by a whopping five bunkers (three on one side, two on the other) that are fortunately not quite as intimidating in EA Sports PGA Tour as they are in real life, especially if you possess the pick axe shot type in your arsenal. Should you play it conservatively and resist the temptation to try to slide onto the green in two, you’re liable to end up with some easy birdie opportunities providing you can chip or pitch it close enough to avoid some of the worst bumps and inclines of the green.
