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If Tiger Woods thinks some of the Royal Lytham rough is "practically unplayable," he should take a trip across town to Fairhaven Golf Club where 123 boy and girl golfers - all Under-16 years - from around the world today fought, in the main, a losing battle against the rain, the rough and a tough course with punishing bunkers.
The clubhouse was awash with disaster stories - you can tell by the tone, even if it is a foreign languard! - as scores soared into the 100s. Until a remarkable improvement in the standard of scoring in the last hour of play, between 7.30 and 8.30pm, when conditions were flat calm and a Japanese girl returned an astonishing eight-under-par 66, only two players had matched the par of 74 on a day that started with rain which was very heavy between 11am and 1pm, went off for a spell and then returned in the late afternoon to make the thick rough even wetter.
Gabriella Cowley, 16-year-old from West Essex, showed the class that has won her the English Under-15s and the Scottish Under-16s open titles with a round that included five birdies - the long first, the long third, the par-4 seventh, the par-5 11th, the par-4 12th and the short 17th in halves of 38 (two over par) and 36 (two under).
What made Gabriella's score so praiseworthy is that she came through a mid-round crisis with the calm temperament of a much more experienced player.
She dropped four shots over the last two holes before the turn - a bogey at the eighth and a triple bogey 7 at the ninth.
She didn't quite play to her plus two handicap on paper but in terms of mastering the testing conditions for players so young, it was a brilliant effort.
As Fairhaven Golf Club secretary Bob Thompson summed up: "Weeks of rain have made the rough grow to the longest any of us can remember. There's not much run on the wet fairways and if they miss them, then it's at least one shot dropped. Fairhaven is a tough course, make no mistake about that, and we must take into consideration, when we look at the scores, how young the competitors are, and the fact that most of them come from countries where they would have little or no experience of playing golf in conditions like we have at the moment."
One veteran club member told me: "The Fairhaven course is all about course management. You have to know when to leave the driver in the bag, where it is better to be short of a bunker rather than try to fly it and what are the best lines to the green.
"These kids don't know the course and they are too young to have the know-how to work it out as they play."
The other 74, which was jointly the best with Gabriella's effort until the mad last hour, came from Japanese boy Fumiaki Saito, bidding to follow in the footsteps of his compatriot Kenta Konishi who won this biennial competition at Lundin Golf Club in Fife two years ago.
All these words about the rough, the awfully wet conditions are made to look silly by the sudden rush of very good scores late in the day.
From about 7.30pm to the finish of play an hour later - rounds were taking nearer SIX hours than five - all the theories about the course being too tough, etc went out the window.
Asuka Kashiwabara, a 16-year-old one-handicapper, returned a mind-boggling, bogey-free eight-under-par 66 which included an eagle 3 at the third and six birdies - at the second, seventh, 10th, 12th, 15th and 16th in halves of 32 (four under par) and 34 (four under par)
There is no separate category for girls but in the girls' scores, Asuka was eight shots better than the next girls, Gabriella Cowley, Laura Sojo (Colombia) and the American Andrea Lee, the last two among the late finishers. Andrea is ranked as one of the top female prospects at the age of 13 in the States.
She bears a striking resemblance to the New Zealand whizz kids that were Nos 1 and 2 in the world until a month or two ago - Lydia Ko and Cecile Cho. The latter is now a professional.
On the boys side, the best score, also returned very late in a topsy-turvy day was a two-under-par 72 by Anderson Nunes (Brazil).
Chasing him home was Ireland's Marc Boucher with a 73.
England's Stefan Gnyla was disqualified for using a
distance-measuring device, not permitted under the rules of the competition.
Junior Vagliano Trophy player Clara Young (North Berwick) worked hard for an 83, most of her round being played in the rain, while the other Scottish representative, Colin Edgar (Cochrane Castle) had an 87.
Ireland's girl nomination, Julie McCarthy, had the same score, an 83, as Clara Young.
Wales' Jack Davidson had an 81 and Danielle Jones an 89.
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