Top 12 Scenic Public Courses in America
Get the camera ready—it’s photo safari time. The following list of courses is ranked according to eye candy and accessibility. This roster is limited to public-access courses in the United States that may or may not have hosted major championships or boast superior design, but which definitely overwhelm the senses with scenic beauty and visual […]
My Favorite Public Golf Holes in America (Front Nine)
Being asked to name your favorite 18 holes in America is something of a dream assignment for any golfer. Until, that is, you begin to second-guess yourself, at which point you soon realize this is going to take way longer and induce a lot more anxiety than you’d originally anticipated. A lot of golfers could […]
Bandon Dunes Set to Add a 19-hole Par-3 as Its 7th Course
Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is adding even more golf to a resort already home to five 18-hole courses and a 13-hole par-3. Set on an inland dunescape between the first hole of Bandon Trails and the Pacific Ocean, development is proceeding on a second par-3 layout (this one spanning 19 holes) affectionately being referred to […]
10 Top Dual Greens in the U.S.
There are double greens and then there are dual greens. Double greens are essentially one large green that’s shared by two different holes, with separate hole placements and flags. Think St. Andrews, one of the world’s most famous courses, which has seven double greens. In contrast, dual greens are when a single hole has two […]
The Brilliance and Beauty of Bland Golf Holes
Last year, Colton Craig learned an important lesson about golf course architecture in the most unlikely of places. Walking through the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, full of what he calls “wild exhibits that stimulated the artistic side of my brain,” the Oklahoma City-based designer came to an empty room with white walls. “The vacant […]
10 Venues We’d Love to See Host a PGA Championship
When the PGA of America voted to strip Trump National Golf Club Bedminster of hosting the 2022 PGA Championship—stating that holding it there would be “detrimental” to its brand—the organization began a hunt for a suitable replacement. Just a few weeks later, the organization announced the move to Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., […]
“Getting to 18”: Tom Doak’s Invaluable Addition to the Golf Library
A relatively small, though certainly important, part of a golf course architect’s job is deciding on a hole’s cosmetics, or how it’s going to look. A more important layer for most is its strategy, or how it’s going to play. By far the most crucial consideration, however, as it pertains to the functional, operational, and […]
Links Courses of The Americas: The Few, the Proud, and the Imposters
The British Golf Museum defines a links course as “a stretch of land near the coast characterized by undulating terrain, often associated with dunes, infertile sandy soil, and indigenous grasses such as marram, sea lyme, and the fescues and bents which, when properly managed, produce the fine-textured, tight turf for which links are famed.” By definition, there are […]
Creating Alternatives to Original Golf Templates
The word ‘template’ is, of course, part of modern-day golf architecture speak. It’s not quite clear when the term was first used to describe certain hole designs, but we do know it has its origin in golf pioneer C.B. Macdonald’s trips to Britain and France between 1902 and 1906 when he sought to identify the […]
The Essential: Tom Doak
Growing up in suburban Connecticut, Tom Doak would accompany his father on business trips to places like Pebble Beach and Harbour Town, where he caught the golf bug. He later traveled extensively throughout the British Isles on a Cornell University post-graduate scholarship, paying particularly close attention to the Old Course at St. Andrews, studying it […]
