18 of America’s Best Short Par Threes
The 9-hole course I played as a kid, Canton Public Golf Course in Connecticut, culminated with a short, downhill par three that would make or break every round I played there, sending me home on my bike either smiling or steaming. Sadly, that terrific family-owned course no longer exists, but my memories of that 9th […]
Top 10 Widest American Courses You Can Play
Bow-and-arrow target golf can be fun on occasion. But if you just unwrapped a new driver, all you can think about is smashing the ball all over the yard. Fortunately for the big bashers out there, and the wannabes, too, there is a fistful of public-access courses in the United States that combine world-class design […]
7 Golf Holes with Tremendous Amounts of Sand
“A water hazard is like an airplane crash, [if you hit your ball into one] there’s no hope,” Rees Jones once said. “Being in a bunker is like being in a car crash,” he continued. “There’s a chance of survival.” There’s sound logic in the 82-year-old’s perspective, but its degree of truth can fluctuate from […]
David McLay Kidd: A Continuing Education in Course Design
After early acclaim led to stinging criticism, course architect David McLay Kidd has gone back to his roots David McLay Kidd had lost something. But he thought he might know where to find it. He took his design team to Bandon Dunes, the much-heralded links course he’d created a decade earlier at age 30 on […]
8 Unique Critters & Creatures in Golf Course Logos
Playing golf around the Ring of Kerry in southwest Ireland is a bucket-list journey—the opportunity to play phenomenal links courses like Lahinch, Waterville, and Tralee. Yet one of the biggest surprises from my last trip was a wonderfully fun course called Dooks, which is stretched across sand dunes tucked into a stunning corner of Dingle […]
Sand Valley: America’s Next Great Golf Resort
Bountiful Barrens: Less than five years old, Sand Valley is already America’s next great golf resort—and so much more Gazing out on an August evening from the back porch at The Lodge at Sand Valley, I found it difficult to imagine what this land must have looked like just 10 years ago, before more than […]
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 […]
New 14-Hole Short Course “QuickSands” Coming to Gamble Sands
David McLay Kidd and Troon Golf recently announced that ground has been broken on a 14-hole short course called “QuickSands” at Gamble Sands in Brewster, Wash.—the first of its kind in the state of Washington. The property’s second course joins the original McLay Kidd-designed 18-hole Sands course, the links style layout set in the high […]
Golf’s Greatest Trees
No part of the golf course has come in for as much stick in recent years as its trees. Until around 2010, trees enjoyed a healthy-enough reputation, but over the last decade golfers have gotten wise to their shortcomings—impeding views, blocking sunlight, restricting air movement, sucking soil nutrients the turf needs, and hindering strategy. Actually, […]
The Best Courses Under Five Years Old
A classic golf course has its quirks, charm, and beauty. To walk in the steps of legends or feel connected to golfers of an era-gone-by can never get old—nor will the uniqueness of a course that has been on the same plot of land for a hundred years. But there’s just something about a modern […]
