Advice from the Architects: How to Approach a Trip to Bandon Dunes
Over the past two decades, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort has built quite a base of loyalists—some of whom return for a buddies’ trip every single year. But the ever-growing golf destination on the Oregon coast also continues to expand its fanbase with first-timers eager for a remote escape and a taste of authentic links golf […]
Mickelson National Makes Its Debut
Five years ago, Kevin Smith, the Director of Communications at Alberta Golf, stood on what was to become the 10th green at Mickelson National Golf Club and held onto a flag in the dirt. It looked more like the moon than a golf course, he said. After half a decade, Smith got to play his […]
Modern Classics: Great Waters
Jack Nicklaus returned to Reynolds Lake Oconee to modernize and renovate his three-decade-old gem Jack Nicklaus has done some great things in the state of Georgia. There are those six green jackets, of course. But Jack also did some pretty fancy tailoring about 100 miles west of Augusta, where he built—and recently renovated—Great Waters at […]
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 […]
Jack Nicklaus at 80
Jack Nicklaus is telling stories. He’s seated on a makeshift stage for the reopening of the Great Waters course at Reynolds Lake Oconee, a design he originally built in 1992 in the picturesque, golf-mad community between Atlanta and Augusta. Back then, Nicklaus convinced the ownership that instead of building a string of McMansions along the 90 miles of lakefront, they should take […]
LINKS Exclusive Q&A: Course Architect Keith Rhebb
By Adam Stanley What a life it’s been for Keith Rhebb. A life, he says, he couldn’t even imagine in his dreams. Rhebb got his start in 2002 after working for a construction company in his hometown of Lincoln, Neb., and has made a name for himself working alongside Bill Coore and Ben […]
Landmand Golf Club: A New King-Collins Design
“The terrain is so bold, wild at times,” Rob Collins says of the site at Landmand Golf Club in northeast Nebraska where he and design partner Tad King have routed 18 holes that are set to open in 2021. “It reminds me of Ireland with 100-foot dunes everywhere you look.” King and Collins’s much-anticipated […]
Where Would Coore & Crenshaw Be Without Kapalua?
Just imagine a golf world without gems such as Sand Hills, Bandon Trails, Cabot Cliffs, Friar’s Head, and Streamsong Resort’s Red Course. Such a scenario might have been reality if it wasn’t for the success of the Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course in Hawaii, which shut down in February 2019 for a nine-month renovation costing upwards […]
Who Deserves Credit for a Golf Course Design?
The recent publication of Golf Digest’s top-100 course ranking raised eyebrows and set tongues wagging. And rightly so, raising eyebrows and stirring debate is precisely what rankings are for, though cynics might insist there are less philanthropic reasons. As all credible grading is apt to do, this list launched a million conversations over the relative […]
The Essential: Dick Wilson
These days, many define the post-war period in golf design as the “Robert Trent Jones Era,” but it’s sometimes forgotten that for nearly 20 years he had a rival matching him course for course. Louis Sibbett “Dick” Wilson, born in Philadelphia in 1904, dropped out of the University of Vermont (which he had attended on […]