Which is the harder par 4 – 17 at St Andrews or 18 at Carnoustie?

17 at St Andrews SAYS FERGUS BISSET

The infamous Road Hole at St Andrews is perilous enough for the best golfers in the world. Ask David Duval and Tommy Nakajima, who both saw Open chances disappear in the base of the treacherous Road Hole bunker. For the average amateur, though, it’s like some sort of sadistic trial imagined by disgruntled golfing gods.

Before considering the physical tests posed by the hole, there’s the psychological challenge to deal with. The threat of the Road Hole is so engrained in the golfing psyche, it has the upper hand before you even reach the tee. Its intimidating presence looms ever larger through a round on the Old Course.

When you do reach the 17th tee, what’s in front of you appears as something from a golfing anxiety dream. There’s no sight of a fairway – only a wall, an old railway shed and a hulking great hotel. You know the fairway exists, but it seems a distant prospect.

Pick a target on the shed and go for it. Anything that doesn’t get properly airborne is dead; anything turning left to right could end up in suite 316 or in someone’s pint in the Jigger Inn’s beer garden.

If you chicken out left, you’ll find thick rough, with no chance of reaching in two. If you hold your nerve and find the fairway, the second shot is no less daunting. The greedy Road Hole bunker stares ominously back up at the fairway, reminding you of its intent.

The green is incredibly narrow and almost impossible to stop a ball on. Short of the surface leaves a hugely difficult up-anddown, but not as difficult as long, where you might find yourself on the path, on the road or up against the wall.

Say your prayers and prepare to put a big number on the scorecard.

18 at Carnoustie

SAYS

If you want to enhance your chances of success on Carnoustie’s fearsome finale, best to avert your gaze from any worrying aerial photos and avoid delving too deeply into the famous Angus links’ Open Championship archives. Easier said than done, of course, for Jean van de Velde’s 1999 meltdown in front of millions is permanently etched on the minds of all who witnessed it!

In The Open, the hole measures 499 yards from tees the other side of the infamous Barry Burn, and off the whites at 444 yards, that same meandering burn gives you much to fret about all the way to the green.

It crosses the hole early on before looping around the first part of the fairway, where it is in play for anything leaking right or left, with OOB just a few yards beyond it on the left. A little further up the hole, longer hitters will also be thinking about three right-hand bunkers and the mounds in the left rough as the fairway narrows down menacingly.

The OOB fence, which does then migrate a little further left, comes back in earnest up at the green, where anything left could well catch a slope and end up the wrong side.

Then there’s the final crossing of the burn to contemplate. If you’re in range but in the rough, think carefully, as it’s sufficiently short of the green to snaffle up anything even slightly misstruck. In 2007, eventual champion Padraig Harrington found the Barry Burn not once but twice on Sunday.

Add in the almost inevitable wind from one direction or another and you really couldn’t pick a more demanding hole to close out your round.

And, unlike the 17th at St Andrews, there is no short par 4 afterwards to potentially soothe your post-disaster pain just a little!