The Daily Mail's Derek Lawrenson anticipates a golf year to remember in which Hoylake in Wirral will play a leading role.

The announcement of Royal Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake as the venue for the 2014 Open Championship means it will be a summer when the imagination of the world's leading players will be tested more than usual. Not just an Open venue where the baked fairways - it will be another scorcher, I take it? - allow for a wide variety of strokes, but a United States Open stage in Pinehurst that is one of the most mentally demanding on the rota.

Over the years we've got used to U.S Open venues asking the same questions: hit the ball to point A and then to Point B and woe betide if you end up at any stage in Point C. Not so at Pinehurst. Like Hoylake, no great strength is required to conquer Donald Ross's masterpiece. Just a touch of sorcery around the bowl-shaped greens and qualities of shotmaking that recall an earlier age. Unlike Hoylake, Pinehurst has no great tradition of hosting majors. This will be just the third U.S Open to have been held there, and the first was not until 1999. Having come late to the party, however, it is almost as if the United States Golf Association is anxious to make up for lost time.

For not only will the men's U.S Open take place at Pinehurst in 2014 but the women's version will be staged the following week. It is asking an awful lot of a place to hold two such events back to back but then not for nothing is it often compared with St Andrews. You could stay at Pinehurst for a week's golfing holiday and still not play all of its eight courses. No fancy names for any of these courses, either, just a number from one to eight depending upon when they were built. Number two, though, is the number one in terms of greatness. A statue of the 1999 U.S Open winner Payne Stewart greets any visitor, a poignant reminder not only of his memorable victory over the parent-to-be Phil Mickelson that year, but also his desperately sad death in a plane crash. Who can forget Stewart embracing the left-hander and telling him at the end of a thrilling finish: 'You're going to be a father, and that's far greater than what happened here.' Hard to take that, just two years later, this father of two young children himself, who brought so much colour to the game not only with his mode of dress but also his personality, would no longer be with us.

In 2005, it was the popular Kiwi Michael Campbell who held off Tiger Woods. So excited were they back home that the New Zealand Parliament was suspended so members could watch the proceedings. Has any golfer ever had a more dramatic rollercoaster career than the man known as Cambo, to one and all? Only Ian Baker-Finch and David Duval perhaps come close. At the time of writing, almost five years on from that triumph, Cambo has just shot 83 and 77 in a Middle East event to finish no less than 27 shots behind one of his playing partners. No wonder he muses out loud whether there are two Michael Campbells.

Straddling the two Opens on either side of the Atlantic in 2014 will be major championship venues familiar to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of golf. In April it will be Augusta, of course, just three hours' drive from Pinehurst, hosting its familiar rite of Spring, the Masters. Then in the August the golfing circus will pitch its tent in horse racing
country, for the U.S PGA Championship at Valhalla. This Jack Nicklaus course couldn't be more of a contrast to the other three major venues, being purpose-built for the stadium course era.It hosted a wonderful U.S PGA in 2000 when Woods beat Bob May in a play-off for the third leg of what would prove to be an historic sequence of four major victories in a row. It hosted an even better Ryder Cup in 2008, where the unabashed enthusiasm of the fans recalled the atmosphere to be found here at Hoylake during the 2006 Open. American captain Paul Azinger orchestrated a thrilling triumph over Europe, thereby bringing to an end a run of three successive victories for the visitors.

It being an even-numbered year, Hoylake's big season back in the limelight will also feature a Ryder Cup, with the old trophy travelling north to Scotland for only the second time. Once more it will be a Nicklaus venue, as the Monarch's course at Gleneagles takes centre stage.

A pleasing mix of the old and new, therefore, will attract our attention in 2014. From England's most historic course to a place in Scotland built with the Ryder Cup in mind. From two of America's most storied venues to a modern course on a fast track to a reasonable history of its own.

Looks like another year to savour to me.

Derek Lawrenson is golf correspondent of the Daily Mail.

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