After the redo at Turnberry evidently the 17th hole has been stretched and new bunkers installed....scores at the recent qualifier ballooned to 9 over on average and Peter Dawson said...
Asked about the severity of the 17th, Dawson, who has been under fire in recent years for allowing distances the ball is hit to increase, quipped: "The players will just have to learn to hit the ball further."
UPDATED with more "context"
The 17th hole particularly, where Nick Price had an eagle 3 on his way to Open triumph in 1994, was considered too soft for a modern championship, but having lengthened the hole and added three new bunkers there were lost balls galore in the qualifying rounds.
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Scores in excess of 10 were recorded as players, into winds in excess of 30mph, failed to make the 230-yard carry to the fairway and so tough was the course altogether that the competition scratch score on day two was up at a mind-boggling nine-over-par 79.
"We have been lucky this week to see the course play in a number of wind directions and we are very pleased," said Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A. "The bunkers seem to be in the right places and the holes have been playing tough into the wind and tricky downwind.
"I think it will be a good test next year. We didn't use as tough pin positions as we probably would at the Open but they were tough enough."
Asked about the severity of the 17th, Dawson, who has been under fire in recent years for allowing distances the ball is hit to increase, quipped: "The players will just have to learn to hit the ball further."
However, he did concede that the carnage there had caused concern. "One of the great things about this week is that it has made me think about that," he said. "When we were laying out the tee markers on Monday morning it didn't occur to me that the wind would get to that point."