The old course of St. Andrews is ready for change: Here’s what’s coming

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and championship golf courses are getting longer. Yes, this is also true of the old course at St. Andrews – especially ahead of the 2027 Open Championship.

The world’s most revered links will undergo numerous changes that will lengthen it by 132 yards before the world’s best players compete there in 20 months. It will be the most significant extension of the championships since the early 2000s. Here’s everything you need to know about the changes.

Four new cargo boxes

The 5th, 6th, 7th and 10th holes will have new fairways for Open 2027. This is a par-5 and three par-4s that all run in the same northerly direction on the eastern edge of Fife.

The par-5 5th will see the biggest increase, adding 35 yards, which at least makes some sense for championship purposes. The fifth played an average of 4.598 during the 2022 Open, the third-easiest hole, par.

The 6th and 7th would go up 17 and 22 yards, respectively, but neither was an easy hole for birdies in the 150th Open. The 7th, however – at 371 yards – succumbed to players hitting balls high in the air into the wind, carrying the massive Shell bunker (324 yards cover) and finding a putt for eagle.

“It was very strong and very fast (in 2022) and that created a challenge,” said R&A Head of Governance Grant Moir, “but there had certainly been an increase in the number of par-4s that were reachable and both par-5s were reachable (in two) most days.”

With 29 yards added on the 10th and 21 on the 11th, the total yardage for the par-72 setup will now stretch to 7,445, extending an obvious trend you can see in the chart below.

Where will the cargo boxes go?

Great question! It is unclear. The design firm responsible for the adjustments is Mackenzie and Ebert, which has helped the R&A make Open Championship adjustments for years, including adding new holes to ancient properties. Remember their renovation to the final stretch at Royal Liverpool for the 2023 Open, creating a new, undersized par-3 17th that had everyone talking that week. (And not necessarily shiny.) Or look ahead to next year’s site, Royal Birkdale, which will use a young par-3 15th.

As for St. Andrews, there is still room to twist the ground behind where the current boxes are placed, but not much! The renovations will no doubt require the removal of various shrubs and creep across the various walking paths that wind through the property. But given the back-and-forth nature of the course, each step back from the tee begins to encroach on either the previous hole or a hole on the new course next door. See the picture below to understand what currently lies beyond the 6th and 7th box.

Bunker movement

Two of the extended holes – 6 and 10 – will also find new bunkers added closer to the green, or, rather, closer to “elite-level drive length,” as the R&A has put it. Now, the bunkers on the right side of the 6th are a 260 yard cover. Sure, the fairway to the green narrows some, but bunkers closer to the green will hurt a player’s scorecard more than playing from any rough length. With the extra 17 yards from the new set, players will be tempted to hit driver but very concerned if it starts to drift off line.

The bunker addition that has particularly jazzed the R&A is along the left side of the 16th, where in previous years the bunker was cut close to the famous Principal’s Nose bunkers. In 2027, players will find two additional bunkers on the left side, with some of them cut at fairway level to allow aggressive plays to either cut through the sand or fall victim to it.

“We felt that in recent times players have aimed to hit the ball there, to avoid the strategic challenge that the hole traditionally offered,” Moir said. “So it may sound counterintuitive to some, but widening the fairway by putting two new bunkers there actually increases the strategic challenge and the challenge across the board on that hole.”

There is truth there. During a practice round of the 2022 Open, I watched Scottie Scheffler drop balls to the left side of the 16th fairway and play his way onto the green with a wedge. It felt funny to see a player intentionally hit several shots from different spots, especially when one of his cars ended up on the fairway. Scheffler told me he deliberately aimed for the rough left, perfectly content to play from there, too, if his drive didn’t land in the short grass. Below is a screenshot from the final round of the 2022 Open, showing how often players attacked the left side of the hole, and were still often rewarded for it.

the pace of the game; bits and bobs

One main reason for all this? The pace of the game during the championship. During the 2022 Open, which saw record crowds and exceptional weather, the opening rounds were extended beyond six hours. Without much in the way of wind, it became clear that players were hitting a large number of par-4s in one, and both par-5s in two. Normally, if it’s windy, only one par-5 can be reached in two, which helps pros play their second shots without waiting for the green to pass in front of them.

Below are some other tweaks to the dock.

What does it all mean?

The Old Course will never be the same. In many ways THERE it has never been the same. It is a living, breathing organism that adapts over time. Gorse grows well in some years and not so well in others. Bunkers were added to the course ahead of the 2022 Open, but no one seemed to notice. There wasn’t much to the weather during that dry summer, but there was so much wind and rain in 2015 that basically the entire Saturday of golf was cancelled.

This means that the old course continues to be pushed and manipulated for championship purposes, the likes of which will only matter more during Championship week, or during major competitions such as the Dunhill Links or top-level amateur compounds. The Old Course since you play will be largely unchanged, with the black tips stretching to 6,721 yards. The folks in charge at Links Trust haven’t been making these changes without discussion for years.

“We’re very sensitive to the history of the course with these changes,” Moir said, “but we feel it’s appropriate to make these changes at this time to accommodate the way the modern game is played.”

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