Coming off the success of his masterpiece design at National Golf Links of America in 1911, a course he created to broadcast to the world the full potential of golf in the United States, C.B. Macdonald turned his attention to another groundbreaking task, The Lido. Located on the south shore of Long Island on a Read more…
When the latest installment of golf’s newest and most popular head-to-head match-play event, Capital One’s The Match, tees off on Monday, it won’t be the first time the game is played on a public-access golf course. It will be the first time it’s held on a course that most viewers might reasonably be able to Read more…
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…
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…
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…
The Lido at Sand Valley in central Wisconsin opened in May and is a down-to-the-inch recreation of The Lido that C.B. Macdonald built on Long Island from 1914 to 1917. Heralded as one of the country’s greatest courses, it went extinct in the 1940s when the U.S. government converted the land to a naval base. Read more…
Editor’s Note: Ladera Golf Club was named Best New Private course by Golf Digest for 2023. We will announce the winners of our other categories in the coming days. When building Ladera, their new course in the southern end of the Coachella Valley, Los Angeles-based entertainment executive Irving Azoff and Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice Read more…
Ben Crenshaw has never been a typical tour pro. Playing through an era defined by power and the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, Greg Norman, Fred Couples and Davis Love III, Crenshaw stood out for his putter. He held a fascination with the history of the game, its past champions and the Read more…
The Lido at Sand Valley Resort, opened this June, has been one of the most anticipated and publicized new course debuts in recent years. The reason is twofold. The first is because it’s an uncommonly bare, muscular and intensely shaped design that defies easy comparison. As depicted on social media, magazines and elsewhere, the Lido Read more…
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…
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…
We often refer back to the players who prevail on certain courses as a means to measure the greatness of those designs—at least as tournament tests. Jack Nicklaus, Lanny Wadkins, Tom Watson, Tom Kite and Tiger Woods have helped cement the reputation of Pebble Beach. Oakmont has identified greats like Gene Sarazen, Bobby Jones, Sam Read more…
El Cardonal sits in the desert uplands above its sister course with panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean and holes that run primarily north-south, meaning the prevailing coastal winds are typically crossing.
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…
The Lido at Sand Valley Resort, opened this June, has been one of the most anticipated and publicized new courses in recent years. The reason is twofold. The first is because it’s an uncommonly bare, muscular and intensely shaped design that defies easy comparison. As depicted on social media, magazines and elsewhere, the Lido shows Read more…
For T.S. Eliot—and many Masters green jacket aspirants—April can be the cruelest of months. September, on the other hand, is the most opportunistic, at least for the rest of us. Bidding for items in the sixth annual Take a Swing ForeBatten silent charity auction, one of the game’s largest and most anticipated golf and travel Read more…
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…
It’s been a little over a year since World Golf Hall of Fame player Tom Weiskopf passed away at age 79 (he’ll be inducted in 2024). If there was a golf design hall of fame, he’d be in that one too. The last course Weiskopf was actively involved in building is Black Desert Resort in Read more…
Major golf developments are nothing new for Pinehurst, but the announcement that its brand-new #10 course will open in April 2024 is one of the most impressive in modern times. The Tom Doak design will be the North Carolina resort’s first original new 18-hole opening since #8 opened in 1996. Pinehurst’s goal was to have Read more…
What makes an ideal match-play golf course? High on the list would be holes that force players to make clear decisions on the tee, including what line to take in order to put second shots into advantageous positions, and even what club to hit—driver, or something less? The course would be at least as much Read more…