BRITISH OPEN : They May Need One for Road : Golf: The 17th hole at St. Andrews provides a challenge as the first round gets under way today.

There is a warning painted in black on a white, wooden sign hanging on a chain stretching across the asphalt road just behind the 17th green at St. Andrews.

It says: “Danger. Golf In Progress.”

At least, they put it in the right place.

What we’ve got here is 461 yards of sheer terror, even on a good day, which probably will occur about the same time Old Tom Morris stages a comeback.

It’s the 17th hole at St. Andrews, the infamous Road Hole. It may wind up being part of the story again when the British Open begins today on the Old Course.

U.S. Open champion Corey Pavin said the best way to play the 17th is to pray for par and then run to the 18th tee as fast as you can.

“The British Open has been won at and lost at that hole,” he said. “Mostly, it has been lost.”

The tilted green is lodged between that bumpy road next to the stone wall on one side and a bunker deeper than the North Sea on the other.

“No question it is the hardest hole in championship golf,” said Seve Ballesteros, who ought to know.

He won the 1984 British Open here soon after Tom Watson’s second shot on the 17th ran up against the wall. All Watson could do was make a bogey on the hole, about the same time Ballesteros finished with a birdie on the 18th.

“I feel very lucky about that,” Ballesteros said.

Players may be reminded this week that the only thing more difficult than the second shot at No. 17 is finding a sweater in the pro shop for less than $200.

“It is the finest par four in the world,” Ballesteros said. “With the second shot, there is not much room to put the ball, and, if you miss, it is easy to make double bogey. It is just so difficult a hole.”

But on the last day of the 1984 Open, Ballesteros made it look easy. He was 210 yards from the hole for his second shot, hit a six-iron to 25 feet from the stick, then two-putted for par.

It was the only time Ballesteros parred the 17th in the tournament.

“It’s pot luck,” Nick Price said of the 17th. “If you hit it over the back of the green, there’s not a shot in golf you can play. Anyone going over and getting it up and down, they can kiss the ground. They won’t do it twice in a row.”

Of course, the 17th is also where in 1978 Tommy Nakajima wound up in the bunker, needed four shots to get out and finished with a nine.

There is a new twist to the 17th this time, which actually may be helpful. The grass on the downslope of the green toward the road has been allowed to grow shaggy instead of being cut as short as the surface of the green.

As a result, the longer grass may hold balls from rolling off. But at the same time, it could prevent players from putting from the road back onto the green, as they have in the past.

Price, who knows a bogey when he sees one, doesn’t think it makes any difference.

“There is no shot there now, and there wasn’t one before,” he said.

It can all be fairly entertaining for the gallery, if not for the players, who may be forced to come up with some extemporaneous shots.

“If you’re on the road, you don’t know what to do with that kind of shot,” Jose Maria Olazabal said. “We don’t practice those kind of shots.”

Ballesteros said he putted twice from the road in practice and reached the green both times, so he didn’t consider the grass issue a major one.

“It is a very small change,” he said.

There has been no alteration to the drive on the 17th. The best line requires a blind tee shot over the grounds of the Old Course Hotel.

Even if it is the best tee shot, it isn’t the most relaxing. The reason is simple.

“A blind tee shot doesn’t give you much confidence,” Olazabal said.

Tiger Woods is playing in his first British Open and is becoming acquainted with the 17th in a hurry.

“It’s a weird hole because you never see the fairway off the tee,” he said. “The further you hit the ball, the worse the hole becomes.”

For good measure, a television camera has been placed in the face of the Road bunker to catch the suffering up close.

Woods said he thinks there’s something else different about the Road bunker, even though he never saw it before this week.

“It’s not as deep as people say,” said Woods, who said he has been told it had been raised a couple of feet.

Woods is correct, said a spokesman for the Royal and Ancient. This means the next time someone stands in there, the top of his head might be visible, as long as it’s not 5-foot-4 Ian Woosnam.

Everything is relative, even bunkers.

“It’s not as deep as when Tommy Nakajima had his adventure in there,” Woods said.

Ballesteros may not be playing well enough to be counted among the favorites to win the 124th British Open. He has missed the cut in his last two events and failed to break 80 last week in the Scottish Open at Carnoustie.

“I am going through a difficult time,” he said. “I am going through one of those downs right now--life is full of ups and downs.”

So is a trip to the 17th hole.