What You Need to Know About Le Golf National, Site of the 42nd Ryder Cup
Call it TPC Paris. Le Golf National, site of the 42nd Ryder Cup, is located on the outskirts of Versailles, 20 miles southwest of Paris, and its towering dunes and natural amphitheaters would make architect Pete Dye blush at the less than accidental resemblance to his house of horrors at TPC Sawgrass. Designed by Frenchman […]
100 Years of Pebble Beach: A “New” Course for the U.S. Open
By James A. Frank In 2019, Pebble Beach Golf Links will celebrate its 100th birthday and host its sixth U.S. Open. To commemorate these milestones, each issue of Links Magazine and LINKSdigital between now and then will tell the unique story that is Pebble Beach. Every golf course is a work in progress, changing over […]
Royal Golf Club: From Corporate Playground to Community Course
By Adam Schupak When Art Fry, co-inventor of the Post-It Note, visited the construction site of Royal Golf Club in Lake Elmo, Minn., he took one look at the stunning clubhouse view of Horseshoe Lake and said, “I’ve played a thousand rounds here and I never knew there was a lake there.” That’s just […]
Arcadia Bluffs South Course – A True Modern Classic
By Tony Dear Thanks largely to social media, the names C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor have become familiar to more than just a small group of golf historians and architecture geeks in recent years. As their fame has grown, so has the desire to play the numerous top-100 courses they designed during the Golden […]
Country Club of Orlando – A Renovation Lesson for Classic Clubs
By Graylyn Loomis I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, where hilly terrain and serious elevation change are standard on most golf courses. With that upbringing, I’ve often been skeptical of courses on flat land, finding them uninteresting. But, over the last few years, my bias has eroded as I’ve seen what […]
The Hotchkiss School Course: A Raynor Course Open to All
Golf architecture geeks surely know the name Seth Raynor. A local surveyor (and non-golfer) plucked out of obscurity by Charles Blair Macdonald to help him build the National Golf Links on Long Island, Raynor became Macdonald’s partner, the yin to his yang, and following his boss’s “template hole” formula designed a number of notable […]
What Next for the Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch?
By Tony Dear It has become decreasingly mysterious with every passing article—and there have been many—but the Sheep Ranch still possesses sufficient intrigue and anonymity to ensure the golfer recounting his experiences of the place speaks mostly to a hushed audience. Images and stories have been filtering through for nearly two decades, and its […]
Prince’s Golf Club: A Gem in Southeast England
By Graylyn Loomis When the revolutionary rubber-core Haskell Golf Ball arrived in Britain around 1900, it rendered old—and even contemporary—courses obsolete. To combat the problem, a developer decided to build Prince’s Golf Club. It was considered very long at 7,000 yards when it opened in 1906 and was heralded as a course for the […]
Restoring a Classic: Sleepy Hollow Country Club
By Ian Critser With a resume that includes restorations at Winged Foot, Merion, Fishers Island, and dozens of others, Gil Hanse is no stranger to giving new life to classic courses. While Sleepy Hollow Country Club north of New York City may not be as well known, the work that he and his team have […]
You’ve Got to Play: 17th at Danzante Bay
By Tony Dear As you climb the sharply uphill par-four 16th at Danzante Bay, all thoughts are on what lies over the ridge behind the green. You putt out a little quicker than normal, then drive vigorously to the crest of the hill. You’ve heard about the par-three 17th hole. Maybe you’ve watched Round […]
