Interview with a Flagstick
Recently I had the rare opportunity to spend some time with one of the most iconic figures in golf—the flagstick at the 18th hole of the Augusta National Golf Club. With the Masters approaching, and at a decidedly turbulent time in the life of all flagsticks, he was extremely gracious with his time and remarkably […]
I Was There: 2005 Open Championship
The 134th Open Championship was played in my backyard. At the time, my wife and I were living in a two-bedroom flat beside the 18th hole of the Old Course at St. Andrews, a vacation home we’d owned for two decades and had decided to occupy full time two years earlier. The bay window of […]
Mr. Pro-Am: Barry Hyde
It was only fitting that at the Wyndham Championship last August—which marked his 300th PGA Tour/Champions Tour pro-am—Barry Hyde’s team won. His first pro-am was with another colorful character, Ken Green, and along the way he’s won with the likes of Vijay Singh, Gene Littler, and, the latest, Hudson Swafford. Hyde, 53, is known for […]
Bandon Dunes’s Junior Bandonista Program
By Erik Matuszewski When Ryan Page took a work-related road trip from Seattle to San Francisco with his wife and four kids last summer, he made a point to squeeze in a couple days at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort on the rugged Oregon coast. Or, as he calls it, Daddy Disneyland. The Kaysville, Utah, resident […]
Great Courses of Britain & Ireland: Lindrick
There are two golf clubs in England that will be forever linked with the Ryder Cup: One is The Belfry, the other is Lindrick, and they couldn’t be more different. The Belfry (or more precisely its Brabazon Course) was “purposely built” in the 1970s to host important tournaments. In human terms, it is a big strapping youth, […]
Classic Course: Country Club of Charleston
Rare are the moments, while playing a golf course for the first time, that you round a corner or reach the brow of a hill suddenly to come face to face with a shotmaking assignment so visually arresting that you stop dead in your tracks, speechless except perhaps for a murmured “wow.” Examples that come […]
Gil Hanse’s Architecture 101: Pathfinding
In this age of GPS and satellite navigation, we seldom set out on a journey in our car not knowing our final destination or how we are going to get there. That is not the case for the golf course architect setting out to route a golf course. While the goal is always the same—to […]
Vancouver Island Golf Trail
By Chris Santella When I first visited Vancouver Island in 1989, its British heritage was palpable. Accents in the provincial capital of Victoria were English proper, and high tea at the Fairmont Empress a must. On a recent trip back, another British export was very much in evidence—golf. Though the island has fewer than 800,000 […]
The Full Scoop on Bandon Dunes’s New 5th Course – The Sheep Ranch
By Ian Critser While on a recent trip to Bandon Dunes, we had an unusual resort guest sit next to us at breakfast one morning—Ben Crenshaw. While listeners of the LINKS Golf Podcast will have already heard about this encounter in Part 1 of our Bandon Dunes episode, most won’t know the actual reason he […]
Links Living: Belfair
The site of this year’s PGA Professional Championship, this private golf community in South Carolina’s Lowcountry is also debuting a Sports & Lifestyle Campus No stranger to hosting championship events, Belfair boasts two acclaimed Tom Fazio-designed courses, both perennially ranked among the best residential courses in the country. For more than 12 years, this private […]