That’s a Road Hole New Story

J.H. Taylor needed 13 shots to get out of it in 1921. Tommy Nakajima took five shots to get out of it in the 1978 British Open. David Duval needed four shots to get out in the 2000 Open, proving the Road Hole Bunker still had teeth.

Two months ago, at the Dunhill Links Championship, Ernie Els took an eight on the same hole, the infamous 17th on the Old Course at St. Andrews, the hole that boasts what is probably the biggest, baddest, deepest bunker in the history of golf.

What has happened since Els finally got the sand out of his shoes is a controversy worthy of Agatha Christie or P.D. James, involving the most famous hole, the most famous bunker and the most famous course in golf.

A past captain of the New Club in St. Andrews swore the bunker had been moved four feet away from the green. A minister of the Links Trust, which oversees all the courses in St. Andrews, swore it hadn’t.

The bunker is two feet shorter. No, it is only eight inches shorter.

The 461-yard par-four will play easier. No, it will play harder.

Changing the Road Hole bunker? What’s next? A full smile on the Mona Lisa? Paving the canals in Venice?

“You can’t leave something forever,” Colin Montgomerie said Thursday at Sherwood Country Club at the Target World Challenge. “Every course has been tweaked. Augusta has made changes.

“On the other hand, I’m sure you won’t see them doing anything with first and 18th ... or the clubhouse,” he said. “Whatever changes they’ve made, they’ll do a good job, I’m sure.”

Mark O’Meara, who won the 1998 British Open at Royal Birkdale, says the thing to do is to check it out in person.

“No one thought the bunker was so bad when it got deeper,” he said. “The hole is still really hard. Don’t make too big an issue out of it until we see it.”

The problem is, when you’re talking about the Road Hole, you’re talking about history and tradition and golf, sort of a holy trinity. Many considered the Road Hole sacrosanct.

“I’m surprised,” architect Rees Jones said. “I don’t know if ‘shocked’ is the right word.

“But with the ball going farther, it’s a strange time in our golfing evolution to be making the green easier.”

In Jones’ opinion, technology already has made the hole easier and cutting back on the steepness of the bunker will make it even simpler.

Caroline Nurse, communications manager of the Links Trust, pointed to Els’ plight, said the hole had become too difficult for the average golfer and pointed out that constructing an expanded gathering area had compensated for a shorter bunker. The theory is that putts will be more likely to roll off the green into the bunker.

“Like they don’t do that already,” Tiger Woods said.