First Peek: PGA Frisco (East)
The PGA of America is building it and golf ’s top events are coming. Eventually. The majority of the Gil Hanse-designed East Course at PGA Frisco—part of the 36-hole municipal development at the heart of the PGA of America’s new headquarters 40 minutes north of Dallas—has been grassed and should be ready to debut by […]
A Los Angeles Golf Getaway
If you’re willing to battle the notorious freeways, several fun and affordable golf courses in Los Angeles await you—and the weather is hard to beat Angelenos validate all of the worst clichés about this sprawling region. We arrive late and leave early. We travel down peculiar vanity and dietary excursions. But the golfers of SoCal? […]
Top 18-Hole Golf Course Openings for 2021
With more than 38,000 golf courses worldwide, there’s no shortage of options for golfers with wanderlust. And given the wealth of supply and the demand for land, new golf course openings are pretty limited. But there are still some great ones to celebrate. After recently highlighting the top course debuts of 2020, it’s only fitting […]
Architecture 101: Routing
I am a dinosaur when it comes to computer-aided design, still clinging to pencils (and usually golf pencils, at that), erasers, and sheets of tracing paper when sketching out a golf course. I wear out erasers, and when working directly on a topographical map I sometimes wear out the map. The first stage of course routing […]
Personal Bests
The big-name architects designed courses that anyone-including you-can play. Here are the best from each of them. One of the great things about golf is how many courses are open to the public. Another terrific feature is that so many different individuals brought their aesthetics and expertise to the task of designing courses. Put those […]
Gil Hanse’s Architecture 101: How Bunkers Look
There’s more to a bunker’s visual appeal than meets the eye The highest form of the art of golf course architecture is blending the design seamlessly into the surrounds through the use of shaping/grading or vegetation. I certainly feel that way about bunkers. Perhaps, in my case, it is a nod to the original eroded, […]
10 Things Pinehurst Gets Right
There’s a reason why Pinehurst has earned the moniker “Cradle of American Golf.” With nine courses on property and new amenities constantly sprouting, the historic golf resort continues to affirm itself as a must-go destination for any fan of the past, present, and future of the game. Here are 10 things that Pinehurst gets right. […]
What Makes A Green Great?
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of interesting greens to the rank, renown, and reputation of a golf course. It would be similarly tough accumulating all the telling quotes the great architects have submitted on the subject—but here are a few: “Putting greens constructed with relation to the length and topography of the […]
Gil Hanse’s Architecture 101: Where Bunkers Lie
The placement of bunkers on a course is one of the key elements in creating strategy Having started our examination of golf course architecture with greens—and appropriately ascribing sovereignty to them over all other features—we turn to the most visible feature on any course, the sand bunker. Bunkers have always had two distinct characteristics as […]
Gil Hanse’s Architecture 101: Greens and Their Complexes
On a visit to The Los Angeles Country Club in preparation for the 2023 U.S. Open, I did something that I rarely do. While walking the course with the superintendent, we putted on every green. And I must say, it was a lot of fun, free from trying to “make” a putt and instead watching […]
