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 […]

Great Courses of Britain & Ireland: St. Enodoc

Occupying the extreme westerly tip of the British Isles, with mood and scenery unlike that found in any other part of England, the county of Cornwall is more Celtic than Anglo-Saxon and, as any Cornishman will quickly tell you, it’s the region of Britain with the likeliest claim to being thehome of legendary King Arthur […]

First Peek: Mammoth Dunes

By James A. Frank   The course is called Mammoth, the fairways are mammoth, the views and the surrounding forest are mammoth. Even the early hype about this David McLay Kidd design in the middle of Wisconsin has been mammoth. But big isn’t the whole story. Which isn’t to say that size doesn’t matter. It […]

An In-Depth Update on The Links at Perry Cabin

By Erik Matuszewski One of the most notable course openings for 2018 is a mulligan of sorts for one of the most famous families in golf architecture. Call it a rebirth on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When the Links at Perry Cabin opens in late May along the Chesapeake Bay, it will deliver a […]