Robert MacIntyre slams well-known St. Andrews golf gap: ‘Blow it up’

Scotsman Robert MacIntyre isn’t afraid to voice his opinion, and his newest tirade proves that time additional.

After tying for twenty fifth on the Alfred Dunhill Hyperlinks Championship, which Tyrrell Hatton received for a report third time, MacIntyre walked off the course and instantly slammed the Previous Course’s penultimate gap, the well-known par-4 seventeenth.

“Blow it up,” MacIntyre instructed Martin Dempster of The Scotsman after his spherical on Sunday.

“I don’t suppose there are a lot of worse holes in world golf.”

Often called ‘The Highway Gap,’ the seventeenth contains a tee shot like no different on the planet. You need to hit a lower over the nook of the St. Andrews lodge, making the tee shot on this dogleg proper fully blind. Out-of-bounds, subsequently, looms down the best facet, which all the time shoots bursts of hysteria via a participant’s thoughts. However the strategy doesn’t get any simpler on this 495-yard behemoth. The placing floor is pencil-thin, protected by a central, notorious bunker that’s almost not possible to get up-and-down out of. Past the inexperienced lies a street that offers the opening its identify and simply previous the pavement sits a centuries-old wall. Typically, gamers haven’t any selection however to richoceht chip photographs off the stone in an try to get it again onto the inexperienced. They’re usually unsuccessful.

Picture by Harry How/Getty Photos

For these causes, birdies are sparse.

“I feel it’s a horrible gap off the again tee. It doesn’t have to be modernized, to convey pleasure it must be a gap you’ll be able to hit a golf shot into and never one the place you simply hit it onto the inexperienced and attempt to rise up and down,” MacIntyre defined.

“It nearly performs like a par-5. They attempt to do issues to this golf course that don’t have to be carried out. [On Sunday,] I rifled a drive off the tee after which a 4-iron and I used to be the furthest up the opening.”

MacIntyre has loads of motive to be livid with this gap. Throughout Saturday’s third spherical, he made a double-bogey six after his strategy landed in need of the inexperienced and in need of the Highway Gap Bunker. He didn’t get up-and-down to save lots of bogey, not to mention par. Regardless of that, he nonetheless shot a 7-under 65, however he didn’t come near carding that quantity throughout his last spherical on Sunday. MacIntyre might solely summon a 2-under 70, not a nasty rating given the blustery circumstances, however nowhere close to pretty much as good because the spherical he turned in on Saturday. But, MacIntyre managed to publish a greater rating on the seventeenth gap on Sunday, though he nonetheless dropped a shot, carding a bogey-five. He missed the inexperienced quick once more, failing to get up-and-down as soon as extra.

Nonetheless, his top-25 end on the Dunhill Hyperlinks does nothing to his Race to Dubai rating, the DP World Tour’s equal of the FedEx Cup. MacIntyre nonetheless holds on to the sixth spot within the standings and is locked into the ultimate two occasions of the yr on the DP World Tour within the Center East.

Jack Milko is a golf employees author for SB Nation’s Taking part in Via. Be sure you take a look at @_PlayingThrough for extra golf protection. You may comply with him on Twitter @jack_milko as properly.