Monday
Sep282009
Road Hole Still Unsafe For Passage
Trevor Immelman posted a photo on Twitter from his Old Course Hotel room. Besides showing us the awesome view, it's quite apparent that even with new groove rules that are going to make players throttle back and use softer balls, this delivering a backdoor ball rollback, the R&A still refuses to open up the Road hole fairway. Instead they've retained the dreadful path-width corridor we saw at the last Open and apparently will see again. It's just so tacky.
Monday, September 28, 2009 at 10:15 AM
Reader Comments (12)
On the other hand, I did manage to find the fairway on my next tee shot.
Hey Geoff, do you have an opinion as to which course is better - the Old Course or Royal Dornoch? After playing each course only once, I liked Royal Dornoch better. Maybe I'll have to go back and play each course a couple more times before I can really make up my mind.
As my Scottish wife ( who plays off 10) says fondly..."you play the Old for the history....the Jubilee... is the course in St. Andrews if you're playing golf!" The local caddies ALL say the Jub is the stiffest test of the gray auld town's links. She's from Dornoch and I've played both about a dozen times. Dornoch is a MUCH tougher test overall, though I have a real fondness for the best holes on the Old. Of one thing there is NO dispute...Royal Dornoch IS the finest rural golf course on the planet!!!!
I think the photo is misleading though.The strip of fairway it shows is only the last 140yds or so and the landing area for the tee shot is still fairly generous.Its always been really difficult to hit the fairway on a rt to left wind-hard to start your shot far enough to the right.
The course set up will be largely down to the Links Trust who manage the course-not the R and A.
Anyway-I'm off to St Andrews in about 2 hours for the Dunhill.I'll post back later if what I've just written looks like a load of nonsense when I get there!
When I got to my ball I was surprised to see that rough had been allowed to grow in on either side. It did seem out of character with the very open swathes of turf around the rest of the course.
I spoke to a course marshall who also said that the Jubilee is a harder course. Whatever. Does the Jubilee provide fifteen minutes of fame?
However, I'm going to give this a pass; there is no rough to speak of on the entire course, bar the carry (to the LEFT, not the alley down the right) on four; the bank on thirteen; and (sometimes) the hillock right of Sutherland on 15, and (oddly) left of the Principal's Nose/Deacon Syme bunker complex on 16 -- which takes the bomb left towards three tee option out. Then there's rough/heather in some out of play areas, too (like left of 10, or short of 8) ...
The intent here, on seventeen, after acres of the most spacious playing surfaces on the planet, is clearly to force people to lay back off the tee, and face a fuller shot in. Novelty, and the historic pedigree of the hole, where (to my mind) the tee shot's the gimmick, the second shot the glory, make it OK. After all, as Chico has also noted, there's plenty of room back, before the narrowing, to land a blind tee-shot.
There's been much R&A trickery on this hole over the years, including when they tried to prevent people from hitting second shot left of Road Hole Bunker, onto putting-surface-extension 18 medal tee, or when they grew thick rough on the bank above the path and before the road, to prevent putting-up, forcing a finicky chip.
And, off the tee, though it gets narrow, the challenge is still picking a line and a distance, given flag position, even if not with driver, which is always usable (c.f. Daly), if not necessarily sensible, elsewhere on the links. I'd say, if EVERY hole had such obvious anti-bomb measures, that would be one thing, but preserving the longish second into seventeen seems not to be a terrible foul. And, still, it's only five, six, seven iron in, on a still day, even for us mortals.
And there's always been a forest of rough there, on 17 -- I played the course throughout the month of June 1995 till they shut it for the Championship, and it was, increasingly, each day, a jungle. (Amusingly, saw more than a few hapless souls top/pull it into the depths of the 'seventeen jungle' off two tee. Might have done that once myself, too.)
J-Mack
"The strip of fairway it shows is only the last 140yds or so and the landing area for the tee shot is still fairly generous"
-- But part of the charm of the Road hole is that it always gave you an option for your second shot. Now, with that ridiculous fairway width, there's no incentive to hit the perfect lay-up shot for a straightforward pitch rather than taking on the Road bunker, which (correct me if I'm wrong Geoff?) is the way Bobby Jones preferred to play the hole.
I am all for demanding golf shots but this is an example where the options are a big part of what makes it such a great hole.
If you look carefully at the photo though you will see it opens up some 30/40 yards short of the green so a running shot, or a lay up, is still on if you want-my opinion will always be that a low 'chaser' just right of centre is best.Having played the Old Course and reffed on it many times recently I think the hole can still be played in the traditional manner but think the rough is not needed.Its a plenty good enough hole without it.