The golf course superintendent at St Andrews keeps the 17th green firm and half-starved on purpose — firm enough that a ball can bounce off the back edge and onto a public road that is still in play.
The Road Hole is widely called the hardest par-four in championship golf. You tee off blind over the corner of a hotel. Bail out to the safe side and you are in thick fescue with the deep revetted Road Hole bunker guarding a green that is one of the shallowest on the entire Old Course — a long, thin, angled sliver with the bunker eating into the front and a low stone wall and a paved public road waiting a few feet off the back. On almost any modern course that road would be marked out of bounds. At St Andrews it is part of the hole. If your ball ends up on the tarmac, you play it off the tarmac. Championships have been decided by players chipping and putting off pavement.