What We Know About the New 13th Tee at Augusta National
Here’s what we know about Augusta National’s ambitious 13th tee: pretty much everything—minus one elusive detail Not long ago, players would turn up Masters week and get asked about course changes. Some reported phantom revisions, insisting the club had tweaked and tugged away at the design when no such thing occurred. The Lords of Augusta […]
Notable Golf Courses with a Draw or Fade Bias
There is a sacred stretch of days each year when golf fans park themselves on the sofa and are seduced once again by the azaleas, cathedral pines, and lightning-fast greens of Augusta National. As he/she does annually, the committed fan will bone up on their Masters history and, perhaps, read something new about a course […]
Geoff Shackelford: The Tee Box Affair at Augusta National
A real-life, Grishamesque thriller is coming in April, full of high-stakes machinations, Southern charm, and unsuspecting protagonists How, you ask, could a closely mown rectangle become a non-coma-inducing potboiler? The intrigue centers around the forthcoming fuss over a tee at Augusta National debuting after years of speculation. Anyone with a golf pulse will opine on […]
In Their Prime: Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have already produced an incredible resume of courses. But could it be that we haven’t even seen their best yet? Bill Coore always said he and design partner Ben Crenshaw feel most comfortable working on one to three projects a year. Any more than that, he added, might prevent […]
5 Things to Know: Tiger Woods’s New Utah Course Design
Tiger Woods and his design firm recently announced plans for a new private golf course that’s tied into the Marcella Club in Park City, Utah. Given the location, it’s not a surprise that modern luxury living is the vision of the club, which is leaning on Tiger’s name in selling expensive real estate lots, including […]
Geoff Shackelford: Golf Architecture is Getting its Due
Golf architecture is having a moment. Finally! From the public-course world up to the elitest of the elite, golfers are bonding over a shared affinity for course design. To the small legion of geeks out there—guilty as charged—we’ve long wondered why the masses failed to share our passion even as architecture has long been golf’s […]
Golf’s Most Prolific Architects
Specifying exactly how many courses certain architects designed is pretty tricky. A number of layouts credited to them might have been redesigns or renovations of existing courses. Or, they might simply have “worked on” the course, whatever that means. For the purposes of this article, an original course earned the designer a full point, but […]
Jay Blasi Puts Me Right on Chambers Bay
Oh, Chambers Bay, how I love thee, let me count the ways… For starters, after several decades of use as a rock quarry, lumber yard, railroad depot, bus barn, paper mill, wastewater treatment plant, and sand/gravel mine, the site was eventually developed for what would become a top 100 golf course (golfers can get behind […]
6 Design Traits of Residential Community Golf Courses
What architects do—and don’t do—when creating residential community golf courses It’s hardly a revelation to say that golf course architects are charged with delivering attractive, compelling designs with every new course they construct. In the case of courses for residential communities, however, there are some different considerations at play. Because each development is unique, requiring […]
The 10 Best “Hills” Courses in American Golf
In Alister MacKenzie’s Golf Architecture, published in 1920, he espoused 13 General Principles of Architecture. Number four stated: “The greens and fairways should be sufficiently undulating, but there should be no hill climbing.” Yet, he also preached about the necessity of variety and placed great emphasis on utilizing natural features. In diametric opposition to what […]