Barnbougle Dunes Golf Course
For Americans, Tasmania symbolizes the ultimate remote destination; even if most Americans don’t know exactly where it is, the name alone represents a place as far as one could imagine getting away. So it came as a surprise that our new course in Tasmania is accessible from Australia’s major population centers, especially Melbourne—a one-hour flight and just […]
Belvoir Park Golf Club, Northern Ireland
In the early ’90s, when Yanks began descending en masse on Ireland’s mightiest links, they first gathered at the magisterial courses of the southwest (think Ballybunion and Lahinch), then east coast wonders like Portmarnock and the European Club, and more recently, the raw and secluded northwest. But without direct flights to Belfast and scared […]
Ballyliffin Golf Club, Ireland
The Second Coming of Ballybunion? Years ago I subscribed to the New Yorker and it was then that I first became familiar with the name Herbert Warren Wind, the sportswriter. I was attracted not only by the clarity of his writing but by the mellifluosity of his name, which had as good a ring […]
TPC Snoqualmie Ridge
The TPC designation lends golf courses a certain cachet. The oft-challenging TPC layouts share a number of recurring design features: risk-reward par 4s; grassy mounds and swales; tightly mown chipping areas; and at least one short-but-dangerous par 3, which often seems to appear at the 17th hole (a la TPC Sawgrass). Surely one of the […]
The Orchards Golf Club, Massachusetts
The great golf secret of the Berkshires was the achievement of Donald Ross at the Orchards, followed by the unspoken tale of the course’s decline. A round of applause, then, for its stirring comeback. On New England woodland that creaks, slants and upwells into drumlins and ridges, Ross was always able to see the future. […]
Crosswater Golf and Social Club, Oregon
Rare is the golfer who hasn’t driven past a wide-open patch of grass and envisioned a golf course on it. Case in point: Jim Ramey, a former California club pro and avid outdoorsman who moved to Sunriver, Oregon, in the mid-’70s. For years as golf superintendent at Sunriver Resort, Ramey would look longingly on a nearby meadow at the […]
Philadelphia Country Club, Pennsylvania
Byron Nelson won the U.S. Open only once, in 1939 at Philadelphia Country Club’s Spring Mill Course. For every golfer who can recite that bit of golf history, a dozen more will say, “That’s the year Sam Snead blew it with an 8 on the last hole.” Indeed, Snead had needed only a par […]
Journey Golf Course, Pechanga Resort & Casino, California
Combining a great golf resort and wine tasting in California usually meant Napa or Santa Barbara, but since the Journey at Pechanga opened in August, you can add Temecula, located in an inland valley between Los Angeles and San Diego and home to 22 wineries, into the mix. The six-year old Pechanga Resort & Casino is the […]
Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, Myrtle Beach
Caledonia Golf and Fish Club in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, evokes one of those enduring layouts that were created at the heyday of golf course architecture in the 1920s. Why shouldn’t it look and play like a work of creative genius? Its designer, Mike Strantz, after all, is doubly skilled as a craftsman of both turf and fine […]
The Links at Fancourt, South Africa
Gary Player may be the greatest ambassador South Africa has ever known, and for golfers, there may be no better reason to visit Player’s native country than his 2000 design, The Links at Fancourt. Part of a 72-hole resort and residential community, the par-73, 7,748-yard layout sits on a former airfield, in view of the […]