American Dream Courses: Northwest
If you’re into cool, small towns with more breweries than grocery stores, snow-capped volcanoes (dormant since Mount St. Helens blew in 1980), arid high desert, and primitive beaches backed by dark coniferous forests, then you’ll likely fall as hard for the Pacific Northwest as I did. The golf gets pretty sensational, too. You know about […]
Mickelson National Makes Its Debut
Five years ago, Kevin Smith, the Director of Communications at Alberta Golf, stood on what was to become the 10th green at Mickelson National Golf Club and held onto a flag in the dirt. It looked more like the moon than a golf course, he said. After half a decade, Smith got to play his […]
The Sheep Ranch Makes Its Bandon Dunes Debut
While most everyone was fixated on the seemingly endless ocean views upon pulling up to the Sheep Ranch pro shop at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Bill Coore’s attention was elsewhere on opening day for the Oregon resort’s fifth 18-hole course. Coore was focused on the smiles. After success with Bandon Trails and the par-3 Bandon […]
My Round at Caledonia Golf & Fish Club
The moment you make the turn through the gate at Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, you realize this is no ordinary public facility. Your first exposure to the former rice plantation is a drive down the club’s long and narrow entrance road, a half-mile stretch splitting the gap between the 1st and 10th holes enveloped […]
New 14-Hole Short Course “QuickSands” Coming to Gamble Sands
David McLay Kidd and Troon Golf recently announced that ground has been broken on a 14-hole short course called “QuickSands” at Gamble Sands in Brewster, Wash.—the first of its kind in the state of Washington. The property’s second course joins the original McLay Kidd-designed 18-hole Sands course, the links style layout set in the high […]
The Best of Harry Colt’s Lesser-Known Courses
U.S. readers will certainly know the name Harry Colt (born Henry in London in 1869)—the man who showed the world amateur golfers (though he did make the cut at the 1891 Open Championship) were capable of designing golf courses and doing it so well it could become a legitimate profession. A Cambridge grad, Colt gave […]
The Grove XXIII: Michael Jordan’s New Course
If there’s one thing that’s evident in The Last Dance, the documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, it’s that Jordan loves golf. Like, really loves golf. Golf architect Bobby Weed had the opportunity to work with Jordan on his latest project, The Grove XXIII—the roman numerals representing “23,” Jordan’s iconic jersey number while […]
Modern Classics: Great Waters
Jack Nicklaus returned to Reynolds Lake Oconee to modernize and renovate his three-decade-old gem Jack Nicklaus has done some great things in the state of Georgia. There are those six green jackets, of course. But Jack also did some pretty fancy tailoring about 100 miles west of Augusta, where he built—and recently renovated—Great Waters at […]
Ranking the World – Continental Europe
In the second installment of our four-part series ranking the world’s golf countries (outside of the U.S.), we turn to the increasingly attractive offerings among the 20-plus nations of Europe. Unlike golf in the British Isles, which we covered in the previous issue of LINKS, quality and quantity in Europe varies dramatically. There is less […]
American Dream Courses: Southwest
After exploring the southeast, we stay at a similar latitude but move across the country to the southwest for the second installment of our “American Dream” series—specifically California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and southern Utah. The southwest isn’t blessed with quite as much golf as the southeast perhaps, and there are comparatively few old-school golf […]
