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…
Venerable East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, host of the annual Tour Championship and the venue Bobby Jones grew up playing, is the latest to reach into the past and return to pre-World War II versions of its architecture.
Each spring the Alister MacKenzie Society sponsors the Ray Haddock Lido Prize, a competition for amateur architects to submit drawings of a theoretical golf hole that embodies the design principles of Alister MacKenzie.
This marks the sixth time since 1999 the championship has been played on a course that’s never previously hosted a US Open, joining Pinehurst No.2 (1999), Bethpage’s Black Course (2002), Torrey Pines’ South Course (2008), Chambers Bay (2015) and Erin Hills (2017).
Links Golf Club, an online-based golf collective of over 5,400 members, has entered into an exclusivity agreement to purchase Spey Bay Golf Club on the Moray coast of northern Scotland.
The yet-to-be-named 19-hole layout will be Bandon’s second short-course option to accompany The Preserve, a rollicking 13-hole course designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (and shaped by designer Dave Zinkand) playing through wild coastal dunes with views above the Pacific Ocean.
Every architect wants their holes to be challenging, entertaining and pretty, but these are the things that happen on the surface, and only after other critical elements have been put in place.
Australian Golf Digest
