TIL a very fascinating fact: St Andrews’ current counter-clockwise routing as we know it was not the original choice. Up until the late 1800’s golfers actually played it clockwise, starting from the first tee and playing to the 17th green, and so forth. The more I delved into this topic (Jeremy Glenn at golfclubatlas.com has an excellent article about Reverse St Andrews), I realized it makes so much sense. We all see bunkers and hazards at StA that make absolutely no sense at all, right? Well they were designed and placed there because StA were routed clockwise back in the days.
The reverse routing, or the original routing continued to be played regularly up until the late 1920’s, then Royal Links Trust shut it down, saving for the occasional special times.
So, a humble suggestion for WGT. If somehow they could get the approval from RLT to map the entire reverse routing and create a brand new STA it would be the coolest addition ever to WGT, bar none. In fact I think the entire community should petition for this to happen.