Virginia’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Club wasn’t designed by its namesake purposefully for matchplay, but it assumed status as one of the USA’s premier team-competition venues.
These days, new golf courses—especially those that might chart high on national rankings—tend to burst onto the scene with great fanfare. There’s usually a press release announcing the plan to build the next sensational Gil Hanse, Tom Doak, Tom Fazio or Jack Nicklaus design, followed by updates of the construction progress all the way up Read more…
When Castle Pines Golf Club hosts this week’s BMW Championship, it will look a lot different from the last time the PGA Tour visited the course in 2006, the last year of The International. Created by Castle Pines founder Jack Vickers, The International was one of the most unique events on the schedule. Held for Read more…
Architect David McLay Kidd’s peer group of golf course designers, as least by his estimation, is small. It consists of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. This makes sense given that these four design/build operations have accounted for the majority of top ranked courses over the last 25 years, Read more…
At first impression, the new Karoo Course at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida strikes chords of both familiarity and otherness. With its washes of sand, nibbled-on bunker edges and burbling swaths of turf it is of the moment in golf architecture, a clear branch off the tree of Sand Hills and Bandon Dunes, nurtured in Read more…
Architect David McLay Kidd is well-suited to take on our latest “Ask An Architect” question. The Scotsman burst into the profession when he built the first course at Bandon Dunes for developer Mike Keiser in the late 1990s. Over the course of his career he’s had his share of other great sites like Gamble Sands Read more…
When The Cabot Collection announced in 2022 that it had acquired Castle Stuart in Inverness, Scotland, rebranded Cabot Highlands with a second course by Tom Doak now under construction, it was the luxury resort developer’s first venture into Europe. Cabot has now purchased the Golf du Médoc in Bordeaux, France, marking an expansion into the Read more…
John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s Chief Championships Officer, has said the association is focused on taking the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens to the historic “cathedrals of the game.” The venues booked for most of the next 25 years support that assertion, including several mainstays among America’s 100 Greatest Courses in Shinnecock Hills, Oakmont, Merion, Pinehurst Read more…
The most important development in golf-course architecture during the past 20 years is the elevation of sand-based sites. Encouraged by the success of destinations like Bandon Dunes, developers have spent this time scouring the globe for sandy, dunes-like properties on which to construct new courses and lure golfers, several of which make their debut on Read more…
The first amateur golf design competition was likely held in 1914 when Country Life Magazine asked readers to submit suggestions for a theoretical hole. Actual architect C.B. Macdonald, one of the judges, liked the par 4 that Alister MacKenzie sketched so much (MacKenzie was still a doctor and not yet a practicing designer) that he Read more…
Architect Jim Urbina answers our question about which courses are worthy of being restored to their original versions. Urbina began working for Pete Dye in the 1980s and joined with Tom Doak at Renaissance Golf Design in the 1990s to help create America’s 100 Greatest Courses representatives like Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald and Sebonack. He Read more…
In just 14 months, Dream Golf, the upscale resort golf enterprise run by Michael and Chris Keiser, have announced the development of two 36-hole public golf properties. The first, last April, was Rodeo Dunes, set amid several thousand acres of choppy prairie dunes an hour northeast of Denver (preliminary construction on the first course, designed Read more…
Architect Steve Smyers is one of golf’s top designers. His credits include Old Memorial in Florida, Maridoe in Dallas and the Pfau Course at Indiana University. Smyers also has been a nationally competitive amateur player and was a member of the 1973 University of Florida National Championship team with Andy Bean, Gary Koch and current Read more…
Hitting and holding greens at Pinehurst #2 is one of the most befuddling challenges in the game of golf. Whether it’s a resort guest or a professional tour player, finding a way to get second and often third or fourth shots to settle on the putting surface will determine success. The elevated greens have sloping shoulders Read more…
Architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. fields our question about the importance of trees on golf courses. Jones Jr. began designing courses with his father, Robert Trent Jones, in the 1960s and has built more than 200 in countries around the world, including Chambers Bay in Washington and Hogs Head in County Kerry, Ireland. Question: In Read more…
Alister MacKenzie has been departed for 100 years, but his architectural concepts and design philosophies live on. In fact, you could say they’ve taken on a life of their own. Each year since 1998, except for 2004 and 2020, hundreds of aspiring architects and dreamy designers have conjured the spirit of MacKenzie when putting pen Read more…
It should be no surprise that our 2024 ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Holes, the first of its kind since 1999, is heavily populated with representatives from the America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses ranking. These holes are why those courses are considered great. To formulate this ranking, Golf Digest compiled a list of more Read more…
Let’s be frank: the merits of Pinehurst No. 2 can fly right past most golfers. Everyone who visits the resort wants to play the fabled No. 2, ranked 29th on America’s 100 Greatest Courses, but many who do leave thinking either it’s too brutally difficult, or they don’t get the fuss. There are no long-range Read more…
Australian Golf Digest
