Q&A: Golf Course Architect David McLay Kidd
It’s almost 25 years since David McLay Kidd burst onto the scene with the design of Bandon Dunes’s original and eponymous course. Since then, the Scot, who now calls Bend, Ore., home, has established himself as one of the leading architects of his generation with a number of top-ranked designs both public and private. At […]
Great Public Golf Courses Around Seattle
In his 1962 travelogue Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck wrote of his shock at seeing the rapid expansion of Seattle. He’d thought of it as a “little city of space and trees and gardens, its houses matched to such a background,” but it was now a place of eight-lane highways with traffic that rushed with […]
Book Review: “Golfing the British Isles” by Peter Gray
On the back sleeve of Peter Gray’s Golfing the British Isles, it says that, although he is a middle-handicapper, the author, “has played many of the world’s top 100 courses.” It’s an interesting statement to make because while a majority of golfers (including LINKS readers) will know that’s perfectly possible, many will wonder how an […]
The Leeds Triangle: England’s Underrated Golf Destination
With the world of golf shifting its attention to the northwest of England as the Open Championship returned to Royal Liverpool for the 13th time in the club’s 154-year history, many visitors from the U.S. likely secured tee times at Open venues Royal Birkdale (30 miles north) and Royal Lytham and St. Annes (65 miles […]
Royal Liverpool (Hoylake): Flat Out Great
Despite, or perhaps because of, its lackluster landscape, Royal Liverpool—better known as Hoylake—can still be counted on to provide a bumpy and exciting Open Championship By the time the opening tee shot is struck at the 151st Open Championship, avid golfers who have consumed every preview they can find will have grown weary of reading […]
The Value of Variety in Golf Course Design
As the spice of both life and golf (many readers will consider them one and the same thing), the importance of variety cannot be overstated. Imagine a course without any; where every nondescript hole looks and plays much the same as the others—how uninspiring and utterly forgettable. Alister MacKenzie spelled out how fundamental variety was to […]
Q&A: Golf Course Architect Kyle Franz
He won’t qualify as early 40s for very much longer and has been a part of the golf design business for more than 20 years now. So, it’s fair to say Kyle Franz probably isn’t the new/young kid on the block anymore. Actually, thanks to an extensive resume that includes working for the world’s best […]
Book Review: “Golf Architecture for Normal People” by Geoff Shackelford
Geoff Shackelford’s 10th golf book (he also wrote a tribute to champion racehorse Zenyatta in 2011) probably won’t sell enough copies. That’s not to say it won’t sell plenty; it will—the author’s words are indisputably authoritative and invariably entertaining. It just won’t sell enough. Not all 70 million golfers worldwide will buy a copy, though […]
Great Courses of Britain & Ireland: The Berkshire
Less well known than some other heathland courses west of London, this club’s two Herbert Fowler layouts deserve their due In a 2018 essay titled “A disappearing landscape: The heathlands of the Berkshire, Hampshire and Surrey borders,” Alan G. Crosby of the British Association for Local History wrote that at the beginning of the 18th […]
18 of the Best Dogleg Holes
It would be a gross overgeneralization to say all straight golf holes are boring. The Old Course at St. Andrews has a lot of straight or straight-ish holes, but thanks to a combination of tantalizing fairway/green contours, bothersome bunkers that really are best-avoided, firm ground, and an ancient stone bridge, there’s not a single hole […]
