The Old Course is getting 132 yards longer for The Open. How much further can we go?

The house clearance is almost complete, the removal van is full to the brim, and all that is left is the precious antique on the mantelpiece. Not even your most prized possession can resist change.

The Old Course at St Andrews is golf’s most beloved relic, but now it’s in the box with Birkdale, Portrush, Troon, and Hoylake, the most recent venues of The Open, stretched to their limits ahead of hosting golf’s oldest major to cope with how far players hit the ball.

It hits home when it’s the Old Course. It is the venue at the very centre of golf’s distance debate, and with the yardage edging nearer the 7500 mark ahead of the 2027 Open, one of the sport’s most exciting terrains is being made more and more redundant. How can this carry on? Does it need to carry on?

The debate has even been taken as far as to say that The Open should have no rota and copy the Masters. Use a purpose-built golf course, and leave links havens alone. Let Rory and Bryson smash their way around an A.I. arena, while the Old Course can be the Old Course. Is that the worst idea?

“I’ve had a few arguments about this at The Open at St Andrews Old. You could get someone like Bryson DeChambeau drive nine greens. It can make it look stupid,” 1991 Masters champion Ian Woosnam once pondered to the Top 100 Golf Courses.

“Why don’t you keep St Andrews Old as a souvenir, as history, and build another golf course on the side of it – on the old and the new – and make a golf course specifically for The Open and play it there every year like The Masters?”

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What are the course changes at St Andrews?

Tom Mackenzie and Martin Ebert are in charge of the changes that will see 132 yards added to the course’s official length for the 2027 Open. Players will notice the biggest change on the par-5 5th hole, which will be over 600 yards, and the 10th hole will stretch to 415 from 386 yards.

Hole 11, a par 3, will be 195, over 20 yards longer than at the 2022 Open. As well as length, players might be startled by how this appears in real life.

The new tee box on 5 is proposed to be some way back down the 4th hole, which will make for compelling viewing, given the current course routing makes for long, arduous rounds and often discontent among the competitors. The proposed new 10th tee box has been shifted nearer the New Course at St Andrews.

The R&A are looking to ‘refine the strategic challenge for elite players in a small number of areas for future championships while restoring traditional features that have evolved over time to improve the everyday playing experience for local and visiting golfers’.

Frankly, roll back cannot come soon enough. The underlying motivation to shape another historic venue around the needs of the few doesn’t feel right.

The proposal of a blanket roll back in the game has been put on ice now, with bifurcation back on the table. The chopping and changing by the R&A and the USGA doesn’t bode well for those of us who want a ceiling put over the heads of the players who won’t accept hitting the ball shorter.

In general, it feels impossible that the governing bodies can ever get players, tours and manufacturers in a room, singing from the same hymn sheet on this matter.

Golf courses and championship venues could be made more compelling and challenging by hazard and terrain manipulation which, to be fair, is part of Mackenzie and Ebert’s plans too.

A new left-hand fairway bunker is being added to the 6th hole, the bunkers on hole 9 are being widened, and there’ll be a new left-hand fairway bunker on hole 10.

But the headline of this press release is not what it does for social golfers, nor marginally more difficult hazards, but the distance increase. The game’s governing bodies evidently still see this as the most effective defence against the attack of 300-plus yard drives.

St Andrews Old Course length difference

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If the Old Course can change, why can’t other venues change?

The alterations will also ring alarm bells for the cynics who have a greater concern for the general nature of the Open rota, and its adaptation to the money-making corporate machine that the tournament has become.

New R&A chief exec Mark Darbon said that Muirfield needed to tackle practice ground and infrastructural issues before hosting its first Open since 2013, and there have been forms of golfing feng shui performed at Royal Lytham recently to finally be awarded the 2028 Open.

Although President Trump’s presence in the highest US office has been a significant factor in Turnberry’s absence from the rota since 2009, infrastructural and logistical issues also stand in the way.

At Royal Birkdale, last year’s Open host, Mackenzie and Ebert redesigned the 5th and 7th holes, removed the pre-existing 14th, and altered the par-5 15th to become the new 14th, and there is now a new par-3 15th hole. No doubt, improving the golf course was at the top of this famous architectural duo’s priority list, but The Open parade and everything that comes with it will have been at the forefront, too.

Everything just becomes bigger in the end. Par 5s, attendances, Mastercard tents. In the case of the Old Course, please no more.

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