ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — There are those who believe the Old Course at St. Andrews has been rendered obsolete in the men’s game. It is a choir that seems to grow louder each time the Open Championship returns to the home of golf.
In 2005, Tiger Woods commented that it had become “pretty easy” for big hitters to target the shorter par 4s by driving to the fringe of the green. Five years later, after Rory McIlroy shot the joint-lowest opening round score in Open history with a 63, Tom Watson declared that the “old lady had no clothes on today.”
Stripped of its defences in benign conditions, Jordan Spieth suggested two years ago that it had become a glorified wedge competition. Cameron Smith did little to quell the noise by that week setting a new lowest aggregate course record with a score of 20-under-par to claim the Claret Jug.
The Old Course, albeit as up-and-back as it gets and little more than 7,000 yards in total, can still bite back. McIlroy’s second-round 80 in 2010 was a reminder of the havoc it can wreak when the North Sea starts to open its lungs, while in 2015 conditions were so treacherous that play was suspended on two separate days and completed on Monday instead.
The Women’s Open visits St. Andrews this week for only the third time — the first since…
