Pádraig defends change to Road Hole

YESTERDAY, ON this Old Course at St Andrews, there were some murmurings of discontent.

If you were to listen, you’d think the old golfing greats were turning in their graves as word sifted through the sandy soil of how modern players – who, lest it be forgotten, are generally fit, lean and with the advantage of modern technology – would be required to play a much-changed 17th Hole, aka the famous Road Hole, in this 150th British Open.

No less a figure than Colin Montgomerie was among those to voice disapproval of the elongated 17th, which has been stretched to a Par 4 of 495 yards, with a new tee box on ground which was previously out-of-bounds, while a group of eminent golf course designers took to writing to a British broadsheet to outline their displeasure at the change, the general gist of which was “tut-tut” or, perhaps, “how dare you?”

It might be reassuring for the R&A to know that not everyone is against the changes. Pádraig Harrington, for one, rubbed his hand into a stubbly cheek and raised an eyebrow here yesterday when it was put to him that altering the 17th hole’s integrity was akin to putting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

It prompted Harrington to gently remind us the Old Course has always been an evolving force of nature. “You do realise they used to play this course from the greens to the tees, so they’ve changed that many times,” prompted Harrington as an opening gambit.

He continued: “I know the 17th is very high profile, but this is the modern game. It has to change at some stage, and that’s part of golf. All golf courses, and this one particularly, has evolved over the course of time. I’m sure if you went back through the history of this course, not only when we were playing the reverse way around, I’m sure there have been plenty of bunkers added, (and) taken away.

“It’s a new tee on the same line. It doesn’t change anything except adding length. But it’s no problem with (that) length and it’s the same angle (over the sheds), so that it is just playing as a big hole, as it should be at the end of championship golf.

“Nobody ever wants to see someone win a major championship without being pushed to the limit right at the end.”

Still and all, Harrington – who’d taken a peek at the new tee box when he was here for the Dunhill Championship last October – admitted to a sense of anticipation when he first got to the new tee in practice. “It’s superb, exactly as I would have envisaged the hole. It’s a tough test off the tee, you can’t afford to leak it to the right. It’s like a 290 (yards) carry, so you’ve got to stand up there and hit your drive and hit it well. It’s a long hole, now one you’re going to think about for 16 holes to actually get through it.”

Just like RA secretary Peter Dawson and his championship committee planned it, really.

Dawson has pointed out that the yardage in 2005 – when the British Open was last played here – had been unchanged for more than a century. “Over the years, we have seen the threat from the road behind the green and to a lesser extent the Road Bunker (in front of the green) diminished as players have been hitting shorter irons for their approach shots,” said Dawson.

In fact, it has taken the R&A some time to get around to implementing the changes, which were first suggested in the mid-1960s by Henry Cotton, who remarked, “the terrors of the Road Hole have gone.” So, how has it changed? Well, take Harrington as a case study. When he played in the Dunhill Links in October – admittedly when the fairways were not as firm as they are now – the Dubliner hit a three-wood off the tee and had an eight-iron approach to the green.

In practice here in recent days, Harrington has hit driver off the tee (which doesn’t reach the bottleneck of the dogleg) and has been left with anything between a five and seven iron for the approach.

Harrington – winner of the Claret Jug in 2007 and 2008 – has been drawn with Tom Watson, who at 60 is the oldest player in the championship, and Japanese teenager Ryo Ishikawa, who at 18 is the youngest player in the field, for the opening two rounds.

Harrington felt he would, in a way, be the odd man out in the three-ball despite the generation gap from old to young. He described Ishikawa as “a phenomenal talent” and as reminding him of “a young Tom Watson, he just seems to go after a lot (of shots), play without fear. He really rips it and plays from there, which is a tremendous attitude normally reserved for the young, but Tom Watson has it as well.

“I certainly don’t fit into that category whatsoever, but it will be a lovely threeball. I’ve got two ends of the spectrum to look at, a lot to learn from Tom Watson and a lot to watch with Ryo Ishikawa.”