"So crude as to be ridiculous"

That's one architect off the record in Lewine Mair's look at the new Road hole tee and the reactions of, among others, Christy O'Connor Jr. who says:

"I don't know what they were thinking of here…The 17th doesn't need any extra length to bring a man to his knees, especially when the wind blows."

And architect Ronan Branigan shares this from a recent round:

Branican hit rather farther left than he intended. His ball finished in the rough but, as he and his companions stressed, the width of the fairway for someone taking a supposedly safe line was no more than 20 yards.

"Everything tells you to hit left--yet hit left and you are penalized," he said. "It's not the philosophy of the Old Course to catch a man in rough; it's not what it's all about."