A few weeks ago, John Hopkins noted in his Spike Bar column that the R&A may well have been floating the notion of lengthening the world famous Road Hole at St. Andrew's just in time for the 2010 Open.  Yesterday, it became official.  The R&A is lengthening the Road Hole to 490 yards for the Open next year.

After a century of being played at the same distance, the R&A has expanded the hole by 35 yards.  First, the R&A took the liberty of adding some kind of obscene rough about 310 yards off of the tee.  Now, they're adding a new tee box just nine months away from the Open. 

You may be wondering where in the world Peter Dawson got this idea to bastardize the most famous hole in the world.  He got it from Henry Cotton and the as-yet-to-be-discovered persor, dead for several hundred years, that architected the gold standard in our sport.

The R&A attributed a quote to cotton from the days leading into the '64 Open at the Home of Golf, saying, "I would make a tee just beyond the railway line on the other course [he was referring to the Eden Course which is now the practice range]. It would restore this drive to its former value."

In the R&A statement, Dawson went on to say that this was what the never identified course designer would have wanted.

"This change will ensure that the hole plays as it was originally intended."

While it is agreed that the Road Hole bunker has lost some luster provided that many players hit approaches to the hole with short irons, the new tee ground will be on the other side of the rail tracks in what is now the practice range.  So, not only will players have the opportunity to hit the Road Hole Hotel, they can also get hit a train, or get hit by a locomotive and range balls.  Brilliant.

This is an outrage.  This is an outrage on an even greater level than what the folks at Augusta National have decided to do to deface the back nine of its reputation as the most fun nine hole stretch in championship golf.  The Road Hole is the most famous hole in golf.  Now, it will be different in response to technology.  The groove change - not impacting the driver or any club above a five iron loft - will not be able to stop the bomb & gouge style on a links layout with little penalty for errant drives.  In links style golf, grooves are not relevant where there is no rough.  Hence, the sneaky ball rollback that the USGA is intending to create with the grooves changes will not really apply so well on Open Rota courses.

That's the trick in the groove change.  On courses where rough is already short or nonexistent, the grooves change will not encourage an individual player to scale back his ball to a softer model.  There is no incentive because the impact of the new grooves will be minimized as the grass gets shorter.  In some sense, then, the answer for the grooves changes may well not be more fun layouts with shorter rough like everyone envisioned.  This move by the R&A may well be a signal that not only is the mass lengthening of our internationl golf treasures not over, but that the introduction of more penal rough may too be coming to classical tracks that want to preserve par and take advantage of the impact new grooves will have on spin.

The impact of this psyche would most likely be abroad, outside of the US, where the professional tours setup courses with shorter rough.  The net impact in the United States can be an effective ball rollback because the rough is already too high for clubs with U grooves.  The PGA Tour will have no recourse but to trim the rough in accordance with the spin loss that the players will experience. 

But, maybe a course like Augusta National could actually increase the length of the "first cut."  After all, it would do a better job of protecting par with even an extra half-inch added to that pseudo-rough installed under Hootie Johnson's guidance.  That, though, may fly in the notion that Billy Payne put forth at this year's tournament to suggest that he would like the tournament to function somewhere in between the birdie fest of Augusta lore and the muted woods of the Zach Johnson victory.

Still, the focus should be on the real abomination in front of us.  The Road Hole is now the Rail Hole.