Perfectly-struck drives are running into the famous fairway dips, which unfortunately collect balls into tight areas, and need to be lucky not to settle down into one of the thousands of divots dug daily by eager tourists or on top of a divot recently filled with a sandy mix.

The latter infuriated the late Payne Stewart who ran a campaign on the US Tour to have divots filled by hole-cutters at least at tournament times when fortunes could be won or lost on the basis of a good or a bad fairway lie.

Playing explosion shots from loose sand in mid-fairway was not to his taste in an age when divots tended to be shallow. But he would have been totally phased if he saw what is going on today.

The modern golfer is digging deeper and longer with modern equipment as suited for a day on the bog as a day on the golf links. They are digging divots as deep as 1.5 inches and running up to three inches wide and six inches long.

Things have got so bad a weigh-in for "divot of the day" is possibly a novel idea. Imagine posing for a prize-giving photo in fisherman pose, divot held by the tail!

How the guilty players manage to get through the ball effectively is a mystery of the age. They should be coming back with broken wrists from such savage impacts with the turf. Or, they should be met by irate greenkeepers and fellow players willing to do the breaking for them. Because nobody can play with a ball sunk below its axis in a monster divot; and no greenkeeper should have to spend his life fighting a war on divots.

The St Andrews administration acknowledges the taking of a divot has always been a part of the game but, aghast at what is happening to their Old Course, they are now running classes to teach amateurs how to play shots which will improve their scores and reduce damage. The bump-and-run form of play has become an almost dead art as wide-flanged wedges encourage players to dig deep.

Gordon Moir is the chief greenkeeper at St Andrews and he has found it necessary to speak out on this vexed topic. "Every Sunday, on the Old Course alone, we have seven people working from 5.30am to 8.30am, which equates to over 5,000 divots being repaired in the course of a morning, and the divot fillers are often helped by other staff as the day wears on."

He is fortunate the Old Course is closed for play on Sundays as this allows some opportunity to catch up with the 42,000 players who persist in digging up fairways. Given an average of 30 divots per player that's 1,260,000 divots and a huge headache.

They do something in the winter by requiring players to tee up on mats for their shots through the green. But this is only a partial solution as most play and most damage happens in high season when a golfer is allowed to dig away in return for a greenfee of �125.

They are also experimenting with seaweed in their divot-filling mixes in an effort to encourage faster germination. But they have been losing, with torrential rains frequently washing their new mixes away, and it is with some relief winter brings respite.

"We could use a different kind of grass that grows quicker, " says Moir, "but that would change the nature of the course. We don't want that."

But the Old Course is changing anyway. With over an acre of newly soiled and seeded land each season . . . yes, over an acre of divots . . . players are no longer walking on the ground that Old Tom Morris strode so many years ago.