One of the arguments made on this board and elsewhere after the hidden-from-public decision to modify the public course St Andrews Old is that change is a constant on the course.
Using aerial overlays, here is a comparison of the pre-2012 2nd to an aerial I found from 1932:
http://golfcoursehistories.com/TOC.htmlI had not seen this aerial before. Has anyone else?
The only real change I notice is maintenance, specifically narrowing the fairway. (If someone wants to use the "constant change" comment to describe the New, the aerial comparison shows he's got a strong argument.) The addition of the OB tee for Open / Dunhill floggers is irrelevant because it has no impact on the play for golfers like you and me.
Small wonder some questioned the utility of those bunkers Dawson & Co just killed: they were marooned in the rough! What do people think of widening that right-hand fairway line? Personally, I think would have made a lot of sense had they kept the bunkers.
As an aside, the loss of width is the change I see most often in my studies of old aerials. People talk about added length but the loss of width, everywhere from TOC to Pine Valley, is striking. When you consider that old courses have been lengthened
and narrowed, small wonder rounds are longer and fewer people are taking up the game.