6 Things to Know: The Lido at Sand Valley

The Lido at Sand Valley Golf Resort is a faithful recreation of a long-gone layout once celebrated as the best in the world. The original version was built on New York’s Long Island in the early 1900s by renowned architects C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor but demolished by the U.S. Navy during World War II […]
A Redan You Can Play in Blue Jeans: Charleston Muni

The first municipal golf course in South Carolina has a new look and new life after a $3 million renovation that was a passion project for architect Troy Miller, who got the chance to overhaul the 91-year-old Charleston Muni—a course he grew up playing and now lives next to with his family. The unique public-private […]
Personal Bests

The big-name architects designed courses that anyone-including you-can play. Here are the best from each of them. One of the great things about golf is how many courses are open to the public. Another terrific feature is that so many different individuals brought their aesthetics and expertise to the task of designing courses. Put those […]
Arch 101: How Bunkers Look

The highest form of the art of golf course architecture is blending the design seamlessly into the surrounds through the use of shaping/grading or vegetation. I certainly feel that way about bunkers. Perhaps, in my case, it is a nod to the original eroded, burrowing animal scrapes from which the sand bunker evolved. However, as […]
Gil Hanse’s Architecture 101: How Bunkers Look

There’s more to a bunker’s visual appeal than meets the eye The highest form of the art of golf course architecture is blending the design seamlessly into the surrounds through the use of shaping/grading or vegetation. I certainly feel that way about bunkers. Perhaps, in my case, it is a nod to the original eroded, […]
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 […]
Top 10 Courses: Florida

Golf is a year-round game in the Sunshine State, where masses migrate during the winter months and there are more courses (over 1,200) than any other U.S. state. Inherently, great variety exists, from waterside courses on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico, to inland tracks built around lakes and on top of phosphate […]
DLIII Redesigns Plantation Course at Sea Island

For the last 25 years—and largely under the radar—Davis Love III has been designing courses. With brother Mark, the Loves have done quite a bit of renovation work as well as creating some wonderful original layouts, among them Atlantic Dunes on Hilton Head Island, The Dunes Course at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas, and the […]
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 […]
Rock Spring Club: A Raynor Course You Can Play—For a Little While, at Least

The list of Seth Raynor golf courses open to public play is agonizingly short. Quietly, however, there’s now one tucked in a metro area with more golfers than any other in the country. The historic Rock Spring Club in West Orange, N.J., is so close to New York City that it has views of the […]