Continuing To Lengthen Golf Courses Makes Zero Sense

In honor of an epic World Series being played this week, I’ll start this story off with a baseball analogy.

Imagine if, over time, baseball players were hitting more home runs. Let’s say too many home runs, according to some.

So to fix the issue, ballparks started moving seats and pushing their fences back to solve the problem. Maybe they change the configuration of the new fence so that the vulnerable porch in right field isn’t so vulnerable anymore. Maybe the entire stadium needs to get bigger to accommodate the changes. Maybe millions of dollars are spent just to find some equilibrium.

They wouldn’t do this, right? It would be ridiculous, right?

Hold my beer, says golf.

In golf, we have become addicted to lengthening golf courses to account for distance gains. And not just lengthening holes but coordinating that added length with moving hazards to fit the new landing areas.

Famously, Augusta National buys property and moves boundary walls just to push a tee farther back. But many courses without their limitless budget are constantly searching for ways to add length to their holes so the top players will be fully challenged and, over the past couple of decades, courses are being built with that added length already a part of the equation.

The latest course to be altered? The oldest one there is.

St Andrews is getting revamped

Prior to the 2027 Open Championship, the Old Course at St Andrews is getting lengthened by 132 yards.

Six holes will be lengthened (Nos. 5, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 16), while several bunkers will be relocated or extended.

The changes follow an extensive review process following the 2022 Open when Cameron Smith finished at 20-under 268—a record score for the Old Course and the lowest score to par in any major until Xander Schauffele shot 21-under at the 2024 PGA Championship.

“Every generation has played a part in shaping the Old Course, and this latest program continues that long tradition,” said Neil Coulson, Chief Executive of the St Andrews Links Trust. “The work will restore features that have changed subtly over time and refine others to preserve the course’s unique character.”

The 16^th hole will have the biggest adjustment with two bunkers being added down the left to create more risk. There will also be new bunkers on Nos. 2, 6, 9 and 10.

These bunkers are specifically meant to be hazards for better golfers who had been easily carrying previous bunkers, some of which are being replaced with grass.

Notably, golf’s rollback is scheduled to start in January 2028 after this Open Championship takes place—although the changes are being made with future years in mind.

Call me crazy but this is a ridiculous trend

We all know golf courses are living, breathing creatures. Obviously a course isn’t going to stay exactly the same over the years—and that includes renovations or other forms of upkeep.

I’m not suggesting St Andrews shouldn’t evolve as a golf course. And perhaps these changes will make the course more interesting for the pros.

What I’m saying is that having so many courses making these type of changes just to challenge the <1 percent of golfers in the world is kind of insane.

When you have an iconic venue like St Andrews lengthening the Old Course by 132 yards, that is symbolic of championship courses all over the world wanting to follow suit.

It’s like having a course be a certain yardage is now mandatory.

To that end, I would ask a few questions:

• Why is length such a primary question for challenging pros? If you gave them an 8,000-yard course with soft conditions and no wind, they are going to tear it up. Valhalla was over 7,600 yards in that 2024 PGA and it was basically a pitch and putt. And then you have places that are 7,200 yards or less that challenge pros in interesting ways with tricky greens. The longer you make a course, the more you are emphasizing distance as a more critical skill set. At some majors, it has become a prerequisite to contend.

• Is adding length really the best use of resources? For every renovated or newly built course that “needs to be” long enough for the pros, those facilities are having to maintain all of that turf for the 99 percent of the time when it’s just regular golfers playing there. And those golfers are not benefitting at all from the added length. Even though they could move up a tee box, research shows they rarely do—so most people are playing this game from a yardage they can’t handle. That only slows down the game and makes it harder for the average recreational player.

• And finally, is having a pro shoot 20-under during an event the end of the world? That doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t challenged. In the case of St Andrews, there are a lot of “half-par” holes naturally baked into the layout. They aren’t bad holes from a design standpoint—they are just susceptible to birdies. Par is merely a social construct. We could change some of these short par-4s to par-3s and the winner would be 10-under.

Lengthening courses is not the answer

There is a whole can of worms we can open here with the rollback and why courses feel the need to add length in the first place. That’s not what I’m arguing about here (it’s an article for another day).

What I really want to focus on is how these golf courses will always belong to the golfing public (or a club’s membership) before the pros—so they shouldn’t be bending over backwards just to make sure a bunker is in a certain place for Rory McIlroy.

The other 51 weeks of the year, mid-handicappers like myself will be playing. And believe me, the course does not need to be longer to provide more of a challenge.

I feel that stretching out golf courses dumbs them down for everyone and has negative consequences for recreational golfers.

It really does not make sense that we would push the home-run fence back until we hit an acceptable ratio of home runs.

What do you think? Am I wrong? Let me know below in the comments.