"Nobody is quite sure, however, how any of the holes were really intended to be played."

Most of the reports detailing the R&A's Road hole announcement worked right off of the press release, except two skeptical accounts from Lawrence Donegan and Bob Harig.

Donegan noted the Friday afternoon timing of the release:

Not that we are cynical here, but Josh and Toby and CJ Cregg, stalwarts of Aaron Sorkin's fictional White House, would immediately identify this as a "Friday dump" - whereby the Bartlet administration "dumped" any news it found awkward or embarrassing at the time when the media was either on its way out the door for the weekend or thinking of heading out the door for the weekend. The hope is that no-one will notice and those who do won't linger too long on the subject.

He also explored the Henry Cotton remarks that I noted were made in reference to a par-5.

It may have needed "lengthening" 45 years ago, but only if it remained as a par five. As it turned out, Cotton's suggestion was ignored. Instead, the hole was played as a par four at the 1964 Open, as it has been the case ever since. To dredge up Cotton's words now and use them in such a disingenuous way is not half as clever as it might have seemed when the press release was being worded.

And Harig questioned Peter Dawson's suggestion that the lengthening the Road hole returned to the course to the architect's original intentions:

Nobody is quite sure, however, how any of the holes were really intended to be played. The Old Course dates to the 1500s and for a time it had 12 holes, 10 of which were played both out and in, making for a total of 22 holes.