Could it be that the ultimate target in golf, the standard 10.795cm (4.25-inch) hole, is just too small?

When TaylorMade Adidas CEO Mark King suggested just that recently, it sparked some colourful comments from the golfing community. He said making the hole bigger would encourage more people to take up the game. Just what every CEO of every golf club and ball manufacturer (...and, guilty as charged, every golf magazine editor) wants.

A US golf magazine put King's comments to the test but conducting a golf day where the holes were expanded to 38cm, or 15 inches in the old money, which is literally bigger than  bucket. Participants found they scored, on average, eight shots better than normal and the winner of the day fired a round 14 shots under his handicap. Not surprisingly everyone agreed that the bigger hole, indeed, made the round a lot of fun.

But was it the easy scoring and lack of three putts that made the day fun or was it the fact that most groups took less than three and a half hours to complete the round? I think taking less shots is a by-product of keeping the round moving, after all, a quick game is a good game.

Is it time to examine changing the size of the hole or have we come too far in the game's history to alter the size of the hole?

Personally, I think the hole size is perfect the way it is. One of the things that attracts us golfers to the game and keeps us swinging away for a lifetime is the hole ... to get the ball into the cup sooner than our mates, making our best ever score or simply making that snaking putt that you know you couldn't make in another 100 attempts. If the hole was big enough that making a hole-in-one became ho-hum, where would the love for the game coem from. Instead of being one of the most frustrating damn games in the world, that we love dearly, it would become as boring as shelling peas.

Besides, I like the fact that the size of the hole was primarily determined by some Scottish bloke looking around in a shed for some pipe he could use to fashion a tool to cut a hole in the greens at the local course. One story has it that a 4.25-inch diameter pipe was laying about the famous Musselburgh Links and an inventive chap at the club built the first hole cutter. That was in 1829 and some 62 years later, when the new rules were issued by the R&A, the club determined that the hole size should be standard on golf courses everywhere.

The R&A discussedexactly what that size should be and decided the 4.25-inch diameter hole would be the norm. Had the excess pipe used to make the first hole cutter been a gaping 15 inches the game might have been completely different to what we know today.