​SOUTHPORT, England — If your landscaper saw the golf course that will serve as the center of the golf world for the next seven days, they might keel right over.What’s brown and yellow and hard as a rock? The golf course at Royal Birkdale. The fairways and “greens.” On Monday. At this 154th Open Championship. The color has drained already — and if you’re a fan of luscious Kentucky Bluegrass and hues of green, you’re not gonna want to see it come Sunday afternoon.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnd as strange as it sounds, that’s precisely why we’re excited.It requires a little bit of effort to get to Birkdale, a tiny British seaside town on the west coast of the country, roughly an hour outside of both Manchester and Liverpool. The roads are narrow and winding, and there is more countryside than commercial development by a particularly wide margin. And yet that’s what the R&A has done repeatedly over the decades, bringing more modern Opens to this golf course than all but the Old Course at St. Andrews. The reason is the golf course, which is a rippled and gnarled brute — a true “championship test” — on the worst of days.And on the best of days?Well, it looks the way it did on Monday afternoon, when scores of golf fans descended upon the property for the first time, including the GOLF.com team. Here’s what we learned on Monday at the Open Championship, starting with the course.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe reason we love links golf is because it inverts our perception of the sport as we know it. What’s bad is good here, and what’s green is brown. After a long, hot summer and a surprising bout without rain, that’s exactly where we’ve landed.I’ve been lucky to attend the last four Open Championships for GOLF, and have seen the championship contested under all kinds of conditions. I cannot ever recall seeing a course as brown as Royal Birkdale was on Monday. And it’s Monday. The forecast isn’t calling for any rain. There’s a chance what’s brown could become yellow.The reason why we love a strange-colored golf course is because, in the minds of ultra-refined pro golfers, bouncy, dead grass welcomes uncertainty. It requires creativity. It asks a different kind of question. New and different questions make for more interesting golf. And, well, who doesn’t love that?AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Open Championship held a first-of-its-kind event for a major championship on Monday: A qualifier. As scores of players in the field got their bearings of the course for the first time, several high-level pros and amateurs battled it out for one final spot in the field. The idea behind the competition — called the Last Chance Qualifier — was to give the players who came painstakingly close to a spot at the Open another chance at earning their way into the field.On site at Royal Birkdale, the energy for the new event was surprisingly high. Galleries in the hundreds followed th