Check out Ran's profile of the Royal Liverpool course at Hoylake to see how two great holes with OOB hard by each green were lost to "modernization." Ran's not very happy about it:
"As successful as the 2006 Open Championship was, two of Hoylake's most heralded holes were gone from the mix. In 1930, when Bob Jones won the Open Championship here, the course possessed two of the world’s most feared - and revered - golf holes, the one shot Dowie and the two shot Royal with its long green but a few feet from the boundary line of the property. One definition of a great hole is that it works on the golfer before he plays it and these two holes fit that definition as well as any holes ever have.
In 1910, Darwin, the keenest judge that the world has known regarding what makes for good golf, described The Dowie in The Golf Courses of the British Isles as follows:
Next comes one of the finest short holes in the world, ‘The Dowie’, which is not only very good, but very unique. There is a narrow triangular green, guarded on the right by some straggling rushes and on the left by an out-of-bounds field and cop; there is likewise a pot-bunker in front. To hit quite straight at this hole is the feat of a hero, for let the ball be ever so slightly pulled, and we shall infallibly be left playing our second shot from the tee. Nearly everybody slices at the Dowie out of pure fright, and is left with a tricky little running shot on to the green. The perfect shot starts out of the right, just to show that it has no intention of going out of bounds, and then swings round with a delicious hook, struggles through the little rush hollow, and so home on the green; it is a shot to dream of, but alas! seldom to play.
The Royal, with its green across the road from the Royal Hotel, drew equal praise. As the penultimate hole, and with the opportunity to putt out of bounds, the golfer’s frayed nerves were truly tested. Three bunkers guarded the outside of this dogleg to the left but the angle of the green flush against the out of bounds of the road meant that the golfer sought to be as close to the bunkers off the tee as possible.
Alas, both the holes are no more. As the world became a more litigious place around the turn of the twenty-first century, The Royal was lost as approach shots too readily left the property of the Club. Though sad, the Club had no practical choice in the matter and they turned to Donald Steel to bring the 17th green complex some 30 yards away from the road. He did an admirable job with this task, though some members with their keen eye feel that the green might be a bit out of character (e.g. slightly too big and rolling) with the others on the course.
The demise of the Dowie (named after the first Club Captain, J. Muir Dowie) is more complex. Hoylake, famed as Darwin says for its mighty winds and mighty champions, has always lent its course for the contest of the biggest events. It hosted the first Amateur Championship in 1885, the first contest between amateurs from Great Britain & Ireland and the United States in 1921 (which became the Walker Cup), and in 1967, it hosted its tenth Open Championship. By then though, the game was changing with professional golfers carrying more sway than before. The concept of internal out of bounds was a particularly prickly subject with the professionals and it was decided for the 1967 Open that the area left of the cop on the 7th would not be treated as out of bounds. "
*****
Even with the demise of the Dowie (old #7, #9 in the Open routing) and the Royal (old #17, #1 Open), there are several other opportunities to go OB near the greens at Hoylake with the cops that create interior out of bounds around the old race course. It's a fascinating and historic golf course, and a lot of fun to play.