Taking Aim

And the last place anyone should ever touch ...

And the last place they should touch! I think the thing that really affected most people that got emotional about it was the way they went about it. Making a sneaky little announcement the same weekend everyone was talking about the long putter ban. The bulldozers were out the next day. Surely the Old Course deserves a round table of the smartest people in golf with the best intentions and to discuss it for two years before you do anything?

I’m sure they’ll do it seamlessly and do a nice job. I’ve played St Andrews 25 times and the Road Hole bunker has been different every time I’ve been there, so it’s not like changes aren’t being made there all the time, changes that a lot of people don’t even know about. But, they’re doing a lot of fundamental changes ... it’s amazing.

They've done plenty of bunker work for maintenance reasons over time but changing contours that have evolved and adding to the 11th green to provide extra pin placements are pretty fundamental changes ...

It’s been fine for 400 years, in the form it’s in it’s been fine for a hundred years. It’s fine!

I mean, if they get crazy wind and you can’t put a pin up the back left on 11 then, oh well. Or, you just have that green running two feet slower than the others. We're the best golfers in the world, surely we can work out that the green is slower. We’re not that precious.

Peter Thomson told me changing the Old Course was "preposterous" and that he had no knowledge of the plan until it was announced. This was despite being a town resident, course architect and a pre-eminent figure in the game, especially when it comes to links golf.

It felt like they’d [the R&A] been sneaking around. They knew there would be a backlash so they made sure they had the bulldozers out there ready before anyone could stop it. That’s what it felt like and I think that’s what annoyed everyone the most.

I think if the process was right and if the right people in the game sat down and went, ‘You know what? Those bunkers on the second could move five yards’, or whatever it is, maybe it would sit better with people. The way it happened was pretty frustrating.

They could have done that at any point in the next year but they chose to announce it at the same time as the long putter thing, when the whole world was focused on that. They snuck it in, out come the bulldozers and it’s like, ‘What are they doing?’

Surely they know they’re doing something wrong if they have to sneak it in under a bigger announcement? You’re not that confident about what you’re doing are you, surely? It was the process rather than the reality. The reality is not very nice but the process was horrible.