"It really has been a disastrous period for the game."

I'll admit it: I'm still in shock and disbelief over last week's report that the R&A not only has spent £10 million renovating Open rota courses, but that they actually premeditated the whole thing with a budget!

If MLB commissioner Bud Selig had spent that kind of money renovating major league ballparks because he knew players were juiced instead of making the players play without steroids, would he be able to show his face in public?

Anyway, John Huggan offers some real life examples of how this destructive path of changing the courses instead of the equipment rules for pros is having a negative impact on architecture at classics and the everyday game. The most alarming example he cites pertains to what's going on at Muirfield, site of next year's Open Championship.

Specifically, a new tee at the ninth hole has been built in order to make, one assumes, this formerly often-reachable and always exciting par-5 – one of the best holes in golf – a boring three-shotter, especially when the prevailing wind is blowing strongly against.

Even worse, a great opportunity has been missed. Between the bunker that sits on the left side of the fairway and the wall running all the way up the left side of Muirfield’s ninth is maybe 15-20 yards of very heavy rough. One has to wonder why this is so. Were the long grass instead cut short, the enterprising and brave player would have the dangerous option of taking the most direct route from tee to green, into the gap between sand and dyke. But that imaginative thought has apparently gone unconsidered by a faceless committee no doubt filled by those for whom a score of 85 represents a whizz-bang round of golf. Instead, the golfer with the brain will be hitting the same shot – right of the bunker – as everyone else. How dull.