American Dream Courses: Southeast
Who doesn’t love the occasional trip to a top-100 course with its awesome architecture, near-perfect conditioning, and fancy clubhouse? Equally appealing though (to us, anyway) is the discovery of something altogether less glamorous, but a little more affordable and still hugely enjoyable. In this series, we’re covering each region of the U.S. and nominating courses […]
First Peek: Tiger Woods’ Payne’s Valley
By Erik Matuszewski Big Cedar Lodge’s Mountain Top clubhouse first comes into view on the winding drive up to the resort’s newest golf course, Payne’s Valley. At a distance, it looks small atop a massive ridge and limestone wall almost 200 feet high—the highest point on the property in southwest Missouri. It’s just […]
Top 10 Courses: Japan
The 2020 Tokyo Olympic course, Kasumigaseki East, ranks third on our Top 10 list of courses in Japan behind a pair of Hugh Alison designs that are likened to Augusta National and Pebble Beach, respectively. 1. Hirono, Hirono The Augusta National of Japan, this 1932 design by Hugh Alison weaves strategically among woodlands, ravines, lakes, […]
Getting TPC Sawgrass Prepared for The Players
By Adam Stanley How does the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass get ready for such an important stop on the PGA Tour’s schedule each year? It’s not an easy process getting such a prominent venue, which also happens to be a public course, ready for the best players in the world to tackle […]
Ranking the World – United Kingdom and Ireland
LINKS presents the start of a four-part series in which we’ll be ranking the nations of the world (outside of the U.S.) according to the quality of their golf. First up: the nations of the UK and Ireland. By Darius Oliver In the first of our four-part LINKS Magazine series, Scotland has emerged as the leading country in […]
Classic Course: Renegade at Desert Mountain
By James A. Frank In 1987, when Jack Nicklaus opened the Renegade course at Desert Mountain—the first of six he’d eventually build at the luxury community in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert— it truly broke new ground. For along with typical Nicklaus features like mounding-lined fairways and a high degree of difficulty, every hole at Renegade […]
Great Courses of GB&I: Dunbar Golf Club
Scotland’s self-proclaimed “Golf Coast” offers some illustrious options for traveling golfers. But while Muirfield and North Berwick get most of the headlines, nearby Dunbar Golf Club more than holds its own. First laid out in 1856, and later redesigned by Old Tom Morris, Ben Sayers, and James Braid, this seaside East Lothian links regularly hosts Open Championship […]
Cavendish: Hawaii’s Free-to-Play Golf Course
By Erik Matuszewski At the end of a non-descript road in Lanai City, there’s a golf course unlike any other in the heaven-on-earth that is the Hawaiian Islands. The tee boxes and fairways are a bit shaggy. Drainage can be a problem. Worm casings cover many of the greens, and deer hoofprints crisscross […]
First Peek: Rancho San Lucas
By Brian McCallen Showpiece of an 834-acre resort community that bellies up to the Pacific 15 minutes from Cabo San Lucas, the newly opened Greg Norman-designed course at Rancho San Lucas is sure to be hailed as Mexico’s next great venue. Norman throttled back the bulldozers to create a low-profile layout with sweeping ocean […]
Top 10 Courses: Florida
Golf is a year-round game in the Sunshine State, where masses migrate during the winter months and there are more courses (over 1,200) than any other U.S. state. Inherently, great variety exists, from waterside courses on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico, to inland tracks built around lakes and on top of phosphate […]
