Top 10 Courses: Scotland
Here are our top 10 courses in Scotland, the Home of Golf 1. ST. ANDREWS (OLD), St. Andrews Six hundred years old and going strong. The Road Hole, Hell Bunker, Swilcan Burn, and Valley of Sin all await at the world’s most famed and fabled course, which hosted a record 30th Open Championship in 2022. […]
Gil Hanse’s Architecture 101: Where Bunkers Lie
The placement of bunkers on a course is one of the key elements in creating strategy Having started our examination of golf course architecture with greens—and appropriately ascribing sovereignty to them over all other features—we turn to the most visible feature on any course, the sand bunker. Bunkers have always had two distinct characteristics as […]
My Top 5 Golf Bucket-List Experiences
This May will mark seven years that I’ve been working in golf media, and there’s nothing more I can say except I’ve been living the dream. I’ve played Augusta National (short version: Used Jack Nicklaus’s locker in the Champions locker room, birdied 12, can still recall every shot). I’ve tucked behind the curtain at Shadow […]
My Courses: Greg Norman
From Australia to Hilton Head, Greg Norman has played courses all over the world. The Shark gives us his answers in this edition of “My Courses.” MY FAVORITE COURSE: The Composite Course at Royal Melbourne—one of the most natural courses in the world. Alister MacKenzie didn’t move any dirt. The flow of the course, the […]
Dream Nine: Par Fours
The par four. Routinely benign, sometimes repetitive, yet often unforgettable. More than any length on the golf course, it’s the par fours which will likely make or break your round. Let’s face it: A birdie on a par four is just a bit more rewarding, isn’t it? With that in mind, the premise is simple: […]
My Courses: Gary Player
Very few golfers have played such a global variety of golf courses as Gary Player—the nine-time major champion shares his answers here in “My Courses” MY FAVORITE COURSE: If you were asked to choose your favorite rugby player and your child happened to be a star, you would have to pick him, right? So, I’ll […]
Golf’s Greatest Bunkers
During the 1980s and early ’90s, this fledgling golf addict would watch the European Open from the Old Course at Sunningdale Golf Club outside London and enjoy the ever-entertaining Peter Alliss mixing witty, playfully acerbic dialogue about the players with keen insights about the course. One observation in particular has remained with me these past […]
Dumbarnie Links
On a trip to Scotland last fall I had the opportunity to play a sneak-preview round at Dumbarnie Links. Clive Clark, a member of the 1973 Great Britain and Ireland Ryder Cup team, has taken a relatively undistinguished landscape and created 18 fun, testing, and memorable holes. About nine miles south of St. Andrews on […]
Game Changer: What Does Climate Change Mean for Golf?
In his wildly imaginative novel Golf in the Year 2100, Bob Labbance postulated a future in which golfers would strategically control factors like temperature, precipitation, and wind while playing a high-tech version of the game that he termed “Altered Environment Golf.” He made it sound like great fun. But if you believe what the overwhelming majority of the world’s […]
LINKS Golf Podcast Ep. 23: Four Days and Seven Rounds in Scotland
The hosts discuss Graylyn’s recent trip to the UK where he split a week between golf in Scotland and a wedding in England. Playing the St Andrews New Course, St Andrews Jubilee Course, Muirfield, Crail (Balcomie), and Elie, Graylyn explains how he managed to see many courses in a short period of time in one […]
