Best Public Golf in South Florida

south florida

From the outskirts of Ft. Lauderdale to Boca Raton and greater Miami, compelling rounds of public golf await across all of South Florida. Here, we spotlight six noteworthy courses to seek out the next time you visit the southernmost stretches of the Sunshine State. Osprey Point Golf Club (Boca Raton) While it might be difficult […]

America’s Top 10 Munis

munis

The chief requirement for making this list is that the golf course must be owned by a municipality. We’re judging here on the quality of the design, test of golf, scenic appeal, and tournament lore. For best-value munis? We’ll leave that for another time. Here then are the 10 best municipal courses in the U.S. […]

Old Head: The World’s Most Spectacular Course Turns 25

old head

The most spectacular course on earth celebrates a special anniversary There are bucket list courses. Then there’s the Old Head. More than two decades have passed since I boldly proclaimed the new Old Head Golf Links to be the most spectacular course in the world. Following a fall 1998 visit, I put into words what […]

12 Absolute Must-Play Resort Courses in Mexico

mexico courses

With more than 160 courses, some that embrace mountain and jungle settings, others that take in ocean and desert landscapes, golf in Mexico is all about variety. What the majority of the country’s greatest courses share, however, is their accessibility to resort guests. Not every top Mexican course is open to outside play, but many […]

12 of Golf’s Scariest Watery Graves

watery graves

Whether you call them water hazards or penalty areas, golf’s lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans often become final resting places for our errant shots. You can recover from deep rough or a bunker. But there’s no coming back from a water hazard unless it’s a very shallow one and you’re feeling especially courageous. Here’s a […]

Pete Dye’s 9 Scariest Holes

scariest holes

Tiger Woods once asked me, “Has anybody ever built harder courses than Pete Dye?” I replied, “Nobody has ever built courses that are more visually intimidating than Pete Dye.” Tiger shot back, “Exactly.” Indeed, Dye himself stated, “My overall philosophy is to make the hole appear more difficult than it really is.” In reality, Pete […]

6 Things to Know: The Lido at Sand Valley

the lido

The Lido at Sand Valley Golf Resort is a faithful recreation of a long-gone layout once celebrated as the best in the world. The original version was built on New York’s Long Island in the early 1900s by renowned architects C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor but demolished by the U.S. Navy during World War II […]

Modern Classics: Lofoten Links

Lofoten Links

Inside the Arctic Circle. 24-hour-a-day summer golf. Awe-inspiring scenery. Norway. Need we say more? According to Rudyard Kipling, “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” A latter-day version of Kipling’s observation might be, “Only Norwegian golf course superintendents and bucket-list-chasing golfers venture out beneath the midnight sun.” Lofoten Links is fast […]

10 Great 18-hole Courses on Fewer Than 100 Acres

100 acres

In January 1930, just 14 weeks after the Wall Street crash and the catastrophic collapse of the U.S. stock market, course architect Alister MacKenzie set sail from Hoboken, N.J., bound for Buenos Aires. During a roughly eight-week stay in South America, the Scotsman designed, or suggested improvements to, at least six courses in Argentina (including […]

5 Great Public Courses Near Detroit

detroit

Motoring around “Motor City” reveals a trunk-load of challenging designs from some world-famous architects As one would expect from a state with the most public golf facilities in the U.S, a host of verdant courses can be seen from the window seat of a plane flying into Detroit Metropolitan Airport. 5 COURSES — 98 MILES […]