When Alister MacKenzie built Cypress Point on a piece of coastline Robert Louis Stevenson once called "The greatest meeting of land and sea in the world" people were calling it the finest course in the world.

A friend of MacKenzie’s suggested to the architect, in line with the rave reviews the new course on the Monterey Peninsula was attracting, “You surely cannot compare St Andrews with Cypress Point?”

“I agree” said the doctor, “St Andrews cannot be compared with Cypress Point. St Andrews is first class, there is no second and Cypress Point comes in a very bad third.”

There was not greater admirer of The Old Course, not even Bobby Jones or Peter Thomson although they came close.

In The Spirit of St Andrews MacKenzie wrote: “The stalwarts of St Andrews were perfectly indifferent to these criticisms. They knew that most of the critics had never seen or played on a real golf course before so they could not be expected to appreciate its virtues".

This week the Women’s British Open is in St Andrews and it will remind us of the connection between great golf and the unconventional.

Too much golf is predicated on the view the game should be both fair and predictable.

How can it be fair a drive hit down the middle of a fairway finish in a bunker? How can a course with 14 par-4s and only two par-3s and two par-5s be “balanced” or champion “variety”?

How can a course where the first and 18th holes share a fairway be safe? Or where one hole (the great Eden par-3,11th) plays straight across the seventh fairway. How is it reasonable you can be 10 metres short of the fifth green and 85 metres from the cup? No returning nines?

Not many courses can replicate The Old Course because it’s necessarily built on a sandy slither of sandy, dune land between the beach and the farmland beyond. It heads out from the clubhouse to the far point, loops around for a few holes and plays all the way back.

It’s not a course many describe as "fair". You can hit good shots, get a bad bounce and finish in an awful spot. You can get the bad side of the draw and be hitting long irons into greens where hours earlier players had been hitting wedges.

There are bunkers which don’t get even reasonably close to being “playable for all” yet it’s the most playable course for an average player in the world.

MacKenzie understood the "playable for all" principle wasn’t conflicted with building hazards which asked for a high level of competence. See the 15th at Kingston Heath and the fearsome ‘Big Bertha’ bunker defending the left side of the awesome par-3 he made in 1926. And it’s a snack if you compare it with The Road Hole Bunker on the 17th hole at St Andrews.

All of which makes it certain watching the women this week will be as fascinating as golf on The Old Course always is.

The best golf we’ve seen a woman play in Australia was at Royal Melbourne in the 2015 Australian Open. Lydia Ko was three months short of her 18th birthday but around MacKenzie’s Australian masterpiece the New Zealander put on a clinic, genius for her understanding of the strategic questions the course as asking and her clearness of thinking managing the pressure of golf on those fearsome greens.

Ko only weeks ago won the gold medal in Paris on a course much different from St Andrews, Cypress Point or Royal Melbourne but whilst she might not win it’s always fascinating to watch a truly great player like Ko try and unlock the secrets of the finest course in the world.