"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."