Articles by Derek Duncan

How golf architecture fans can earn a trip to Cypress Point

The respect and study of golf course architecture from the 1910s and ‘20s has never been more alive than it currently is. An aspiring architect who can transform that knowledge into a compelling drawing can earn an invitation to Cypress Point Club, ranked third on America’s 100 Greatest Courses, through the latest installment of the Read more…

How this golf course architect nailed it on his first solo design

Lost Rail, a private, stand-alone golf club near Omaha, earned second-place honors in Golf Digest’s 2023 Best New Private Course awards. It’s a remarkable property of uplands and ravines, prairies and clusters of hardwoods. A namesake abandoned railroad line cuts through a deep gully in one corner of the land, forming a dramatic hazard that Read more…

America’s Best New Courses for 2023

Each year Golf Digest honors the highest scoring new or remodeled courses in four categories: Best New Public Course, Best New Private Course, Best Renovation (courses that undergo conventional improvements like tree removal, new bunkers, altered tees and expanded or relocated greens) and Best Transformation (courses that are fundamentally remodeled with new or rerouted holes). Read more…

My 17 favorite modern Punchbowl greens in America

Of all of the notable templates holes that architects C.B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor and Charles Banks popularized in the 1910s and 20s (what Macdonald called “ideal holes” including the Redan, Biarritz and Cape), the Punchbowl is usually the most whimsical and enjoyable to play. Because of their strange shapes with sunken greens surrounded on three Read more…

Two new courses in South Carolina are hellbent on breaking convention

Great golf courses are often the passion projects of single-minded individuals. A pair of under-40 entrepreneurs, Nick Schreiber and PGA Tour player Zac Blair, are the visionaries behind two of the country’s most intriguing new courses—Old Barnwell and The Tree Farm—just 25 miles apart outside Aiken, S.C. Perhaps because of the relative youth and inexperience Read more…

The future of Texas golf is changing with these 10 intriguing new courses

Golf development is sizzling throughout the south and southeastern United States. Florida and South Carolina are red hot with new course construction. Georgia and Tennessee are warming up, and even Alabama recently debuted its first new course in nearly 20 years, the Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw-designed Wicker Point on Lake Martin. It was only Read more…

Who will be the winner of the south Florida golf boom?

Ken Bakst, the founder and developer of Friar’s Head on Long Island, crouches into the driver’s seat of a two-man Gator utility vehicle and cranks the engine. We’re off to explore what will become The Ranch, his soon-to-be 36-hole golf club in Martin County, Florida. We drive for half a mile across barren pastureland and Read more…