Toughest Set of Par Fours
It’s neither length nor configuration alone that makes for a tough par four. It’s any combination of those two traits, plus lack of width, invasive bunkers, adroitly placed water hazards, terrain, wind, and the severity of the green complexes, including extra-speedy or wildly contoured greens. We’ve identified the 10 toughest sets of par fours in […]
When is Your Golf Course Ready for a Renovation?
Your course’s renovation clock is running. It’s not a matter of if, but when. To the untrained eye, nothing looked out of place in 2018 at Reynolds Lake Oconee’s Great Waters, a lakeside stunner designed in 1992 by Jack Nicklaus. Beauty can fade, however. So can infrastructure. It was time for a facelift. “Every golf […]
Greatest Finishing Holes in Golf
A great finishing hole might offer supreme challenge, dazzling aesthetics, myriad risk/reward options, or historical impact. The elite offer a combination. Merely because the hole is hard and drama-drenched, however—I’m winking at you, Carnoustie, Bay Hill, and the Blue Monster at Doral—or because it’s iconic in other ways—Hello, Olympic Club, Riviera, and Merion—doesn’t make it […]
Meet the Masters of Restoring Golden Age Classics
As countless clubs across the globe approach their centenaries, it’s clear that many Golden Age classic courses deserve restorations. Fortunately, there’s a supremely skilled assemblage of architects to help them find their way back. We asked five prominent restoration experts to share their experiences and insights into this ever-burgeoning aspect of design. These days, the […]
Golf’s Best Match-Play Venues
The ideal match-play courses yield maximum risk/reward opportunities. These courses qualify among golf’s best match-play venues.
The 10 Greatest Moments in Ryder Cup History
For more than 90 years, the Ryder Cup has delivered countless memorable moments. Some of those moments have been tinged with elation, others with agony, but the bottom line is that they were unforgettable. Here are the 10 greatest Ryder Cup moments of all. 10. Welcome to the Party (1979) During the 1977 Ryder Cup […]
The Best Golf Courses to Play at Twilight
After-dinner golf tastes sweetest at Scotland’s Royal Dornoch One of the underappreciated joys that the summer solstice yields is golf in the early evening. Some days are so much fun you simply don’t want to stop. In June and July, every golf course offers supplemental sunshine, an artist’s palette of changing colors, and fewer golfers […]
The U.S. Open Returns to Torrey Pines South
It’s Torrey time again for the U.S. Open. Torrey Pines’s South course, the most celebrated municipal layout west of the Mississippi, takes center stage in mid-June for the second time. Thirteen years ago, Tiger Woods cemented forever Torrey’s reputation for tournament drama. His clutch 12-foot birdie putt at the par-five 72nd hole and subsequent 18- […]
Golf’s Meanest Greens
Destination Yipsville: The meanest greens in golf belong to Oakmont Country Club Gene Sarazen once described Oakmont as possessing “all the charm of a sock to the head.” The smackdown begins at the first green and never lets up, due mostly to the ferocity of the putting surfaces, a lethal combination of speed, contour, and […]
Golf’s Ultimate Tests of Patience
In the first in a series about the attributes that are central to the design, challenge, and joy of the game’s most cherished courses, we identify the “Ultimate Test of Patience”: Pinehurst No. 2 Anyone who warms to the mention of golf’s greatest courses cannot help but engage in the time-honored grill room discourse on […]
