"It doesn't add a huge amount to the second shot. It adds a lot to the tee shot."****

Because there are 17 other holes of great interest I hate to belabor the Road hole debate any more than is necessary, but I thought Padraig Harrington's comments about the second shot were of interest considering that the R&A's Peter Dawson has stated that the intent in lengthening the hole was to bring the road more into play ("Crucially, the difficulty of the second shot will be re-established.")

Harrington seems to be saying that's not happening.

Now you've got to hit driver. It's slightly -- you're certainly not reaching the bottleneck of the fairway at the end, and you're left with a 5-iron. I hit 7-iron, 6-iron and 5-iron onto the green yesterday all from the same spot. It was obviously a little bit downwind.

It's not that it's a big second shot. The second shot has always been intimidating whether you're hitting, as I said, an 8-iron or a 5-iron, and with a longer club at least it's going to run up there. It's the tee shot that may hurt, not anything else. It really is a tough tee shot, as in, I hit a couple of drives off it yesterday, and they weren't too dissimilar, and one of them was like a long way down the right half of the fairway and the other was out of bounds, and it wasn't like -- I was kind of expecting to find -- I wouldn't have been surprised if the two of them were within five yards of each other. So it's an intimidating tee shot. It's what you're used to seeing on TV years ago. It's exactly what they need.

It doesn't add a huge amount to the second shot. It adds a lot to the tee shot.