I've moved the key points of the story here for easier viewing;
The most famous hazard in world golf, the Road Hole bunker, has been drastically and dramatically changed. The bunker, which used to dominate the 17th on the Old Course at St Andrews, has been moved back from the putting surface and its height reduced by around two feet, thus altering the character of the hole completely.
The 17th has always been regarded as the hardest par four in the world. Many great players in many great championships have gone into its greenside bunker, stayed in it, and had their chance of fame and fortune destroyed.
It became the most notorious bunker anywhere and the only one with such a malign reputation that the BBC installed a camera in the front wall for viewers to watch the largely unavailing attempts of the world's best players trying to get out. But almost overnight and without any apparent consultation the shape, depth and even the position of the most feared patch of sand in the game has been arbitrarily altered.
As a result, says David Malcolm, a past captain of the New Club at St Andrews, "the whole town is in uproar". He went on: "Tampering with the bunker is going too far and its loss is a tragedy. A lot of players have cursed it through the years, but a lot more will mourn its passing like a dear and familiar old friend.
"This is a bunker with a story longer than any saga and more colourful than a Hollywood epic. It has provided unparalleled entertainment for thousands of onlookers in the ringside seats behind the 17th green." As recently as the Open championship in 2000 David Duval took four to get out. Remove that threat and the 17th remains a difficult enough hole, but not the hardest in the world. Not, as Jose Maria Olazabal said yesterday, one that "you think about long before you get there".
In the 1990 Open, from the front edge of the green, the Spaniard putted into the Road Hole bunker - and then took two to get out. Despite that, he says: "If they have moved the bunker back from the putting surface and made it shallower then they are taking the personality from the hole - its character."
According to Malcolm, the repositioning will make it "very difficult, if not impossi ble, to putt into it." He added: "The old bunker was eight feet wide at its base and gathered errant shots from twice that width.
"It has been replaced with 32 feet of gathering area to a pot bunker set four feet back from its original greenside setting. The crest has been lowered and the face reduced by some two feet. It is apparently a reconstruction from a photograph of Billy Casper in it in the 1960s. But what has materialised bears little resemblance to anything that any senior citizen can recall."
The work appears to have been carried out because there were complaints after the 2000 Open that the floor of the bunker was too flat, that the sand which should have curved up to the face formed a right-angle and if the ball was too close it was impossible to advance it forwards.
Last night the R & A secretary Peter Dawson said: "I would not disagree that there are some indignant people on this subject. It is always difficult to see what a concept is like until it has actually been done. But we did not ask for these changes and it is evident that they have altered the nature of the hole."
On-course work is done by the Links Management committee which is in charge of supervising the course.
"I'm not sure that anyone likes it very much; the changes have been noted and we will be in discussion about them. We will be walking the course next week to look at many things and I'm sure this work will be reviewed," he added.