Great golf courses are comprised of great golf holes and any course ranked in The LINKS 100—the top 100 courses in the world as voted by golf architects—is obviously chock full of superb individual holes. Some of these holes, however, are unconventional, even quirky. By quirky, that’s not to say they are bad; rather, that they have a peculiarity of personality or mannerism, meaning, they are quite different from the textbook norm.
Here then are the 10 quirkiest holes from courses in The LINKS 100, listed in order of the course’s ranking.
18th Hole, Cypress Point—Pebble Beach, Calif.
343 yards, par four
Three-time Masters winner Jimmy Demaret thought so little of Cypress Point’s closer that he labeled the layout, “the best 17-hole course in the world.” Bill Coore, on the other hand, calls the 18th, “a very underrated hole.” In truth, the 17th at Cypress might even be quirkier, with its cluster of trees and sand in the middle of the fairway, 270 yards from the tee. Nonetheless, the 18th confounds by climbing stealthily through intruding cypress trees, bending to the right even as the fairway tilts to the left. With so little visible fairway amid the trees and bunkers, this scorecard-short hole is disconcerting in every way.
17th Hole, St. Andrews (Old Course)—St. Andrews, Scotland
495 yards, par four
Perhaps the freakiest hole on the Open rota, the Road Hole calls for a blind drive over a corner of the Old Course Hotel, followed by an approach to a narrow green set on a diagonal. Guarding the left-front is the frighteningly deep, stacked sod Road Bunker. On a shot struck slightly long and right, a pebbled road—or a stone wall—will likely come into play. As five-time Open champion Peter Thomson once remarked of the 17th, “As a planner and builder of golf holes worldwide, I have no hesitation in allowing that if one built such a hole today you would be sued for incompetence.”
8th Hole, Pebble Beach—Pebble Beach, Calif.
416 yards, par four
Jack Nicklaus has long proclaimed this hole as the greatest second shot par four in golf. It’s also home to one of the least inspiring tee shots in golf, which means the approach is so stupendous, it makes for one of the greatest holes in the game. Pebble’s 8th begins on a tiny rectangular tee box, perched on the edge of the Pacific. The tee shot is a blind layup, over a hill with an aiming rock, and must be struck no more than 240 yards, for what beckons at fairway’s end is a gaping abyss that eats into the direct line of play. What remains is a 175- to 190-yard shot over an ocean-battered gap in the cliffs to an alarmingly small green framed by five bunkers.
13th Hole, North Berwick (West)—North Berwick, Scotland
400 yards, par four
In a LINKS article by Tony Dear, he quotes Tom Doak as saying a quirky feature is one that’s unexpected or unusual and which you don’t normally see on a golf course. “That could include things like blind shots and severe contours in odd places like the middle of the fairway or right next to the green—or the stone wall in front of the 13th green at North Berwick.” Indeed, the hole called “Pit” vexes even the most experienced course connoisseurs. Its green is wedged between sandhills and said stone wall, which cuts diagonally to the line of play. Writer Jim Finegan noted that the wall marks the collar of the green and thus it is possible to incur an unplayable lie on a putt!
5th Hole, Lahinch (Old)—Lahinch, Ireland
154 yards, par three
A holdover from Old Tom Morris’s 1893 design, the hole known as “Dell” is one of the most famous and beloved eccentricities in golf. The flat, shallow green resides in a small amphitheater, with massive sandhills in front and in back obscuring almost the entirety of the putting surface, save for a front-right sliver. A third sandhill to the right of the green completes the framing. To help the golfer cope with a blind shot, the club thoughtfully places a white stone on the fronting hill that rotates daily, which aligns with the pin placement that day.
6th Hole, Riviera—Pacific Palisades, Calif.
199 yards, par three
The drivable par-four 10th rightly grabs “greatest hole” honors at Riviera, and the uphill 18th is the club’s most recognizable, but for one-of-a-kind features, the donut-shaped, two-tier, back-to-front-sloping 6th green takes the prize, thanks to the pot bunker jabbed into its mid-section. This George Thomas original from 1927 requires players to putt around the bunker or even chip over it, a daunting task even for seasoned PGA Tour pros. Twenty-two yards deep and 40 yards wide at its maximum, the green serves up four separate putting quadrants that surround the six-yard-wide pot bunker. Almost a century after its debut, this green remains weird—and fun.
14th Hole, Cruden Bay (Championship)—Cruden Bay, Scotland
431 yards, par four
Drenched in quirky charm, this certified cult classic is a personal favorite of both Pete Dye and Tom Doak. Situated 23 miles north of Aberdeen, Cruden Bay offers one wild seaside hole after the next, including the head-scratching par-four 14th with its funnel-shaped green, which many contend resembles a bathtub. “The hillocky landing area on the 14th is scandalously narrow,” wrote Jim Finegan, “and the approach vanishes over a direction marker into a dell, where the long, level green, suggestive of a sunken garden, gathers the shot.”
1st Hole, Prestwick—Prestwick, Scotland
345 yards, par four
Home to 24 Open Championships, including the first 12 editions, Prestwick has always had its passionate admirers, as well as its fierce critics, who have deemed its archaic eccentricities as relics best confined to another era. Any one of a half-dozen holes could qualify for this list on quirk factor alone. The first hole, “Railway,” is one of the quirkiest, scariest in golf, with a high stone wall and an active railway flush with the landing area’s right side from tee to green. There are few more terrifying opening tee shots than at Prestwick, with the prospect of a train coming at you in your backswing. Intruding from the left, and progressively narrowing the fairway, is a dense patch of low dunesland, pocked with sand and scrub. The green itself practically melts into the stone wall.
9th Hole, Harbour Town—Hilton Head Island, S.C.
332 yards, par four
Home to a PGA Tour event since 1969, Harbour Town was Pete Dye’s attempt at countering the prevailing architecture traits that dominated the era. Dye, with Jack Nicklaus consulting, crafted a claustrophobic classic in the Lowcountry, full of dark lagoons, pines, and moss-draped oaks. The 332-yard par-four 9th sports one of the slenderer corridors. With pines and the practice range to the left and more pines to the right, your swing feels constricted no matter what club you have in your hand. However, it’s the exacting approach you won’t soon forget. The diminutive, wing nut-shaped green is fronted by a yawning, cavernous bunker and in the gap behind the green is the smallest, meanest pot bunker this side of Scotland. It’s tough to pull the trigger on this one.
14th Hole, Bandon Trails—Bandon, Ore.
325 yards, par four
This 2005 Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw design captivates with its beguiling blend of dunes, forest, and meadow. Where things get dicey—and controversial—is at the tiny, bait-and-switch par-four 14th. With its downhill tee shot, the 14th looks drivable, but a nasty green can thwart even a decently struck lob wedge. Drives hit just short or right often funnel down to the trees, but even if you find short grass, the narrow, turtleback, elevated green can be impossible to hold when approached from the right. The putting surface has been toned down over the years and the green surrounds made a tad more accommodating, but it remains one of the most polarizing holes in golf.
Take a look at The LINKS 100 and let us know what other quirky golf holes you would add to this list.
