I Was There: 2005 Open Championship
The 134th Open Championship was played in my backyard. At the time, my wife and I were living in a two-bedroom flat beside the 18th hole of the Old Course at St. Andrews, a vacation home we’d owned for two decades and had decided to occupy full time two years earlier. The bay window of […]
Interview with a Flagstick
Recently I had the rare opportunity to spend some time with one of the most iconic figures in golf—the flagstick at the 18th hole of the Augusta National Golf Club. With the Masters approaching, and at a decidedly turbulent time in the life of all flagsticks, he was extremely gracious with his time and remarkably […]
Classic Course: Country Club of Charleston
Rare are the moments, while playing a golf course for the first time, that you round a corner or reach the brow of a hill suddenly to come face to face with a shotmaking assignment so visually arresting that you stop dead in your tracks, speechless except perhaps for a murmured “wow.” Examples that come […]
PeperCare: Affordable Course Act
When I’m appointed Czar of Golf, my first order of business will be to address the game’s three big weaknesses—its glacial pace, extortionate expense, and damnable difficulty—and I will do so with my signature decree: the Affordable Course Act. The ACA will at last bring high-quality golf to the millions of U.S. citizens who currently […]
Great Courses of Britain & Ireland: Burnham & Berrow
Burnham & Berrow. It’s a quintessentially British name, tripping off the tongue all toffee, treacle, and tweed. It could be—should be—the name of an elite firm of London barristers or perhaps the official haberdasher to the Royal Family. Instead, it’s a golf club, nestled in a quiet corner of southwest England and blessed with a […]
LINKS Golf Podcast Episode 6: George Peper’s 50 Favorite Courses (After Playing 750)
In this episode, we speak with LINKS editor George Peper and discuss his column in our Fall 2018 issue, which is about him playing his 750th golf course—an astounding milestone, even by George’s standards. In the column, he picks his 50 favorite courses that “stand out above the other 700,” so we touch on several […]
George Peper: 750 Courses and Counting
About a month ago, I played for the first time a fine links course on England’s Somerset Coast called Burnham & Berrow. Now, normally this would be an occasion of no particular significance—certainly not worth trumpeting in the first line of a LINKS column—but in this instance it meant something. You see, B&B happened to […]
Kiawah Island Golf Resort Expands into the Future
Thirty years ago, when I was editor of GOLF Magazine, we began recognizing America’s premier golf resorts with the presentation of a very limited number of gold medals. Among the first recipients was South Carolina’s Kiawah Island Resort, then just a dozen years old and sporting a pair of golf courses by Tom Fazio and […]
George Peper on Par 3 Courses
I’m afraid I have no interest in Par-54 courses… but I love the holes that comprise them Our Spring 2018 issue’s cover story focuses on the spate of high-profile Par-3 courses that have sprouted during the last couple of years. It got me to thinking about the love-hate relationship I’ve always had with the par […]
The Best Par 3 in Scotland? Hopeman GC Says So…
By George Peper I thought I knew something about golf courses—and Scottish links courses in particular. So imagine my surprise earlier this year, while on a visit to St. Andrews, when a headline in one of the local pennysavers trumpeted the “Best Par-3 in Scotland” on a course that rang only the faintest of bells. Hotfooting […]
