Someone on here like Rich Goodale would probably be the one to add the specific names and dates and events but apparently the old course was widened under the direction of Sir Playfair and perhaps carried out by the likes of Allan Robertson. The reason given was the golf course had become more crowded than ever before at that time and had just become far more dangerous as players played up and down corridors at each other apparently sometimes not much more than 40 yards wide. I seem to remember the cost of widening the course by removing a lot of the natural vegetation was something like 50 pounds.

As for actual architectural design it seems credit has been given to Allan Robertson for designing the 17th green and the Road Hole bunker that might be considered to be the first dedicated man-made features of significance in golf architecture. Of course Old Tom is given credit for the 18th and other improvements.

If you're asking who was responsible for combining the first few holes and reducing the course from 22 holes to 18 in the 18th century you got me. Maybe it was William Morris' great grandfather who was beginning to dream of the English Arts and Crafts Movement that was to sweep the entire world and powerfully influence everything, including the great Golden Age of golf architecture around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Tom M

Read Tom P's post below.

Tom P

I have no idea who did the original routing.  It was in the 1850-60 period when (under the influence of Playfair) the course was widened.  Anybody interested in the changes made then should read James Balfour's book.  After that, most of the changes were realitvely cosmetic, except for the changes to 1, 17 and 18, as you mentioned.

Brad

Good point, but I can't think of a catch basin on any true links course I have played, but then I have never looked for one....

Tom

My understanding that at least some whin removal was required to widen the course, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the programme was ongoing.

As for the 1904-5 changes, I don't remember reading of any of importance.  What are you thinking of?

Seems to me that asking who designed the Old Course is something of an inappropriate or unnecessary question. Since its history and TOC is obviously the most famous, scrutinized and analyzed golf course in the history of golf and the story is the golf course just sort of evolved from play way, way back hundreds of years before man-made or man-designed architecture was even thought of, I'd tend to just go with the fact that it never was actually "designed". People just started playing on it hundreds of years ago and the rest is history. The fact that it's so narrow doesn't even give routing considerations or alternatives much latitude. There's little question in my mind that TOC preceded golf course architecture itself by perhaps up to three centuries, and that fact in and of itself is perhaps one of the most interesting and unique aspects in all of golf, not to even mention in the subject of golf course design and architecture too.

Tom MacWood:

May I ask you why you asked this question? If it's to attempt to assign the beginnings of golf architecture much farther back than I suggested a week or more ago, as well as the proposed starting date of golf architecture by this USGA architectural archive initiative, perhaps you should look elsewhere than TOC to try to do something like that. Or perhaps you feel there is a ton of information about the architectural beginnings of TOC that's out there somewhere that nobody's noticed or considered and that you might be able to somehow unocover that and bring it to light. Again, I think TOC's history is pretty well known and what isn't is probably so far back as to be permanently shrouded in the mists of time.

Al Gore

Rich
What do you mean by without any significant whins? Does the photo show a ban of whins between what would become the New Course and the outward-nine of the Old?

When the bunker project was being debated no one questioned the loss of the whins. If the recollection of Low, Huthcinson, Everard and Fowler aren't good enough another good source is Guy Campbell and Bernard Darwin in the History of Golf In Britain. Its difficult to question the great grandson of Robt. Chamber's creditibility (and Low, Hutchinson, Everard, Fowler and Darwin's for that matter); he was as well versed on the history of St. Andrews as anyone.

I'll have another read of Balfour's book this weekend and see what it implies.

"Were the whins removed at the same time the course was converted from 9 to 18 holes? I was under the impression the massive whin removal or die back came later."

No. Apparently it may not be well known when golfers began to play TOC back again, instead of playing out and perhaps walking back in but that may've begun in the 17th or even the 16th century or even earlier.

In 1764 the first four holes were consolidated into two holes making the course effectively 18 holes instead of 22 holes. The fact that the course was considered to be 22 holes before 1764 would indicate golfers had been playing back in for some time using essentially the same hole corridors, greens and cups they had played out on.

So before 1764 and perhaps for a good long time golfers had apparently been playing those 22 holes utilizing 12 cups and shared hole corridors. When the course was reduced to 18 holes in 1764 golfers were still playing out and in along shared fairway corridors app. 40 yards wide utilizing 10 cups.

In 1832 the practice of cutting two cups in the common out and in greens was established even though players were still playing out and in along those app. 40 yards wide shared hole corridors. Before two cups were cut on the common greens an etiquette existed where the group that arrived first on the common green with a shared cup could putt out first.

In May of 1857 St Andrews approved a code of 22 Rules, decreeing for the first time that one round on the links, or eighteen holes, should be reckoned a match, unless otherwise stipulated and from that point on golf followed that 18 holes stipulation of TOC which had been designated "Royal and Ancient" in 1834 by King William IV.

Between 1848 and 1850 with the advent of the gutta ball beginning to replace the featherie TOC was becoming more popular, more crowded up and down those out and in shared app 40 yard wide hole corridors and consequently far more dangerous.

At that point app 50 pounds was allotted to begin clearing the whins on either side of those app 40 yard hole corridors thereby widening the golf course and incidentally turning it into more of a "strategic" course. It seems that Robertson was responsible for overseeing this clearing undertaking with perhaps Hugh Playfair decreeing that it be done. He also built the 17th green and the Road Hole bunker often believed to be the first dedicated man-made golf architecture of real consequence---eg the actually manufacturing of a green site and bunker.

Did they do this with the intention of creating "strategic" golf? It doesn't sound like that to me. It sounds to me like they did it to alleviate congestion and danger and came to realize that one could then choose various directions to play instead of having to hit up and down those app 40 yard wide shared corridors to common greens both out and back in again. Obviously an app. 40 yard wide shared fairway corridor with whins on either side and with golfers coming at you at all times didn't leave much room for direction options of the "strategic" kind.  

But according to one old salt at St Andrews, nobody ever got killed in all those years preceding the clearing back of the whins except some old "cuddy".

When C.B Macdonald who spent two years there (1872-74) at college and learning and falling in love with golf proclaimed that golf at St Andrews in those old days was so different and so simple, apparently he wasn't shittin'.

Martin:

If you consolidate four holes into two holes and you play those two hole twice that would be 18 actual holes. Right.  

That was done around the middle of the 18th century. Around the middle of the 19th century apparently two additional holes were added---eg at least #18 by Morris and what else, #1? So, at that point, maybe two holes were lost or obsolesced, I don't know.

I've never been to TOC and I don't know much about it other than what I've read, but it would seem odd to me that for a couple of centuries everybody has done the math wrong.  

But what the Hey, maybe since we're all into this new spirit of restoration those two lost holes should be revived and restored and brought back into play.

If they were then golf has to follow that example because we're talking the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. So what the hell would that make golf then----20 holes or 22 holes?

You tell me because I can't figure it out. I guess I have a mental math blockage this morning.  

TomP states "Between 1848 and 1850 with the advent of the gutta ball beginning to replace the featherie TOC was becoming more popular, more crowded up and down those out and in shared app 40 yard wide hole corridors and consequently far more dangerous."

Its interesting to note how much design can be effected just from equipment changes alone....not necessarily a direct change by the hand of any one man, but more an incremental creeping of smaller changes, as evidenced most boldly at the Old Course.

Considering that the modern ball flies twice as far as its feathery forerunner, its not hard to calculate the space requirements as a consequence......and the design additions needed to fill and adapt to this increasingly larger space.

"Its interesting to note how much design can be effected just from equipment changes alone....not necessarily a direct change by the hand of any one man, but more an incremental creeping of smaller changes, as evidenced most boldly at the Old Course."

Paul:

Good morning General.

It's even more interesting how much design can be and has been effected just by the evolution of the Rules of Golf.

The slow "clublength by clublength" creeping away from the previous cup or hole of the teeing ground to eventually become designated areas first in 1875 and then in 1888 changed the design of architecture and courses too.

Not just that but the whole idea of the "spatial" in golf was transforming too and getting far more expansive. A good example of that is those old drawings, paintings and then early photos of golfers teeing off and putting. Can you believe how close to them everyone was? Those people are all over the player. If that was today those players would stop and scream; "Would all you people mind getting the F... out of my face so I can play my shot!"

How and how much the Rules of Golf has changed golf and golf architecture is a huge subject for another time but I think if those on here contemplated the weight and extent of it, it would absolutely blow their minds.

After a time Max Behr even began to cast what the Rules were doing to golf and golf architecture into a MORAL context and tone. Essentially he began saying that the Rules of Golf were making some areas "evil" or sinful and other areas "good" or Godly, ending up with his description of that horrid moralizing witch of a schoolteacher, Mrs Grundy, making otherworldly penal bunkers to make you pay for your sins for going into them.

A point of clarification. Whins are not gorse. My understanding is that whins are wispy tall grasses and that gorse is the knarly bush.

Wasn't it gorse that was removed and the corridors widened in the late 1800's?

Or do the Scots view the two terms as interchangeable?

Bob