Gallacher on golf.

Ithink you will see more and more courses making the moves Hoylake announced this week.

They are shortening a par-three hole to 139 yards, while two tees will be added to the 18th to make it a 607-yard hole.

Two greens – the third and the seventh – will also be adjusted and a run-off area will be created on the end of the 13th hole. It is being done ahead of The Open in 2022.

Courses are trying to keep up with technology – or proofing against it. I think you are also going to see changes at the likes of Muirfield and Turnberry too.

There is not that much room for manoeuvre at a lot of these courses, so you almost have to change the layout and reclaim a bit of land. You have to change a par three to make another hole a bit longer.

In Martin Ebert, they have got a brilliant course designer. He has worked on Turnberry and Royal Portrush before.

He will change Hoylake and the players will know that these changes have been made. But the way the course will play, you would think it has been like that forever.

It is a sign of the times and there is definitely a need now for longer courses.

But some of the driving numbers this week from Mexico at the World Golf Championships were outrageous.

It is at high altitude and the weather is good but the ball is going 390 yards through the air at times. If you can keep that halfway straight, then that is real longdriving stuff.

The USGA is looking into restricting the ball to help with the distance problem.

When these guys start looking into things and ruffling a few feathers, then normally something happens.

The USGA and R&A published the results of their Distance Insights Project earlier this month. Their official position is that something needs to be done about the increasing distances in the game.

Change is inevitable and you are going to have to do something.

“Some of the driving numbers this week from Mexico were outrageous”

We used to have a smaller golf ball, now we play with a bigger one and it may have to be made bigger still, even just for the top guys.

Every sport has to have changes. It is not just ours.

There are changes that come in to sports like football, tennis, Formula One and cricket every year. It is just part of each sport’s self-evaluation.

In tennis, they restricted the size of the tennis ball so it would not go so fast for the big servers.

Something has to happen as you cannot keep making changes to these fantastic, iconic Open courses.

KNOWLEDGE: Paul McGinley, pictured, had Jimmy Rae as caddie for several years