A Statistical Case Against Tinkering With The Old Course's 4th

I'm not even going to bother with the spiritual case against defacing the Old Course by men with nary a trace of architectural soul, as that ship has sailed in the case of St. Andrews Changes vs. Common Sense.

So as the vandals descend on round two molesting golf's greatest and most important course, reader Mark takes the emotion of out of the case against tinkering with the fourth hole, a target of the R&A's "Phase 2" effort to do anything except regulate the equipment which might have rendered the hole obsolete.

Mark puts together some numbers concerning the supposedly defenseless fourth hole that architect Martin Hawtree and R&A Chief Inspector Architect Peter Dawson will confront like a poodle discovering a fire hydrant.

In the 2010 Open here is how the field played the hole:

31 birdies
304 pars
116 bogeys
15 double bogeys
Average: 4.25

The scoring average in the 2010 Open of 4.25 made the 4th hole the 4th hardest in relation to par.

How about the golfers who had the best week? For the 2010 Open the #s for the top 10 on the final leaderboard were:

3 birdies
33 pars
4 bogeys
Average: 4.03

Note: no player in the top 10 recorded more than one birdie on the hole, including the champion Louis Oosthuizen, who recorded scores of 3-4-4-4. Speaking of the champion, another way to look at the hole's difficulty is how the top 10 fared aggregate of their four rounds on the hole:

-1 = 2 golfers
par = 5 golfers
+1 = 3 golfers

For the 2005 Open I couldn't find full-field stats but the #s for the top 10 on the final leaderboard were:
3 birdies
33 pars
4 bogeys
Average: 4.03

Note: no player in the top 10 recorded more than one birdie on the hole, including the champion Tiger Woods, who recorded scores of 4-3-4-4. Here's how the top 10 fared in aggregate:
-1 = 2 golfers
par = 6 golfers
+1 = 1 golfer
+2 = 1 golfer

SO: in both opens it appears the hole played nearly identically in terms of difficulty — and going by the numbers appeared to be one of the more challenging if not one of the most challenging holes in the tournament. Finally, in Dawson-speak we could say the averages seem to indicate the hole played to its true value as a par 4.

What makes the Phase 2 work all that much more despicable: even the chief inspector expressed his doubts about going forward with it. The Old Course deserves much better than this.