Bob MacIntyre finished T25 at last week's Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland.
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Professional golfers, for all their athletic prowess, are often made into thought leaders. They tell us which machines deliver the best results and it only takes three seconds of iPhone video to help us remove a piece.
They just know better, right?
It is possible.
But when it comes to the beauty of a competitive golf course, their interests almost always boil down to self-interest. That's why their brains are fried on a hot afternoon at the US Open. Or if the sand in the Open Championship pot bunkers is poured too flat. Professional golfers, for all their sporting genius, believe that there must always be a way forward for them, and in which they can please the audience, put a shot closer to the hole. That alone is not the point of golf, or pro golf. The point is to work your way from the 1st tee to the 18th green in as few shots as possible and see how that stacks up in your game, your Friday morning comp, or your Dunhill Links Championship. Some holes are easier than others. Some are more manageable than others. Some prefer the left over the right, and vice versa. But they won't feel exposed all the time. Even, and mostly, in the .01 percent.
Bob MacIntyre, world No 16, is the latest champion to fall into this trap, disparaging the most intelligent and intelligent test of golf's ability when he told Martin Dempster The Scotsman that the 17th on the Old Course at St. Andrews – popularly known as 'The Hole in the Road' – is due for a major overhaul. “It blew up,” MacIntyre said, among other things, an amazing quote from the Scotsman himself. But there is none that we need to pay much attention to. Mainly because they will never blow it up. But also because of the surrounding context.
MacIntyre was devastated after graduation. He made a double bogey on Saturday's 17th, then added a bogey on Sunday. Both times he found the fairway off the tee and both times he left his way to the left of the skinny, angled green, on the wrong side of the house that seemed to take a bite out of the side of the putt. It's one of the few holes in the area where, if you hit a bad shot, the next one can be just as difficult.
Isn't that … part of golf?
MacIntyre's experience with that hole may be unusual. Being left-handed, it's in his best interest to play the draw off the tee and fade to the green, where most of us might choose to fade off the tee and drive to the green. But therein lies its other brilliance. It's not uncommon for a two-shot hole to require a single shot shape from the tee and its obvious intersection with the green. Usually that can be accomplished by putting a pin, putting a hole in the back of a certain green house. But Road Hole makes up for it with a hotel restaurant, rough, paved terrain and a green angle. Those ingredients make it 1 in 1, and in order to sing the specific needle it presents, you have to know how to move the ball in each direction, and do it comfortably. And on Sunday, doing it on air, an extra layer of complexity is missing from MacIntyre's comments.
Isn't that … part of golf?
We may have heard those thoughts from MacIntyre because the Road Hole is located so late in the Old Course. If it was the second hole in the area, he would have been forgotten long before the microphone was placed in front of him. Instead, the second to last hole, is almost all logic. But it was the sixth straight hole he played on Sunday, the last in a stretch of great difficulty. He had to lose his strength at that point. But that stretch of difficult holes also followed the front 9 where every single hole played under par. MacIntyre made nine birdies on the front nine on the weekend, but ran into a big problem on the back.
Isn't that … part of golf?
For an even tighter approach, like many of the smaller corners of courses visited by professional golfers, the 17th should almost always be in contact with its eponymous successor, the 18th. Tom Morrisabout the man who built this course, who specialized in directing and playing angles, and has been admired worldwide for his design ever since.
18 is like an icon, and it is undoubtedly simple. It's a short par-4 with a fairway going up on the right (out of bounds) and a fairway falling into it. Compared to the tricky 17, the 18 is a level playing field. Move around wherever you want. And for that reason, it played to a 3.73 rating on Sunday, which is a perfect improvement on 17's 4.70 rating. Put them together and the two parts will fit you perfectly. A reminder that golf is about taking the easy with the difficult and tricky straight. You don't get one without the other, and you wouldn't want that.
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