This is architect Seth Raynor’s original Redan, meaning the narrow green, flanked by bunkers short and behind, is angled from the tee with the back half of the putting surface running away from the player.
The USGA has recently made The Country Club’s routing for the 2022 US Open public, and the layout will debut a combination and sequencing of holes never used before.
Looking to get beyond these standard and often redundant rankings of “greatest” holes, we began wondering: what are some of the most underrated holes on the PGA Tour? Which holes deserve more attention than they get?
There will be a membership component to Te Arai when it opens in October 2022, but the two courses will alternate between private and public tee-times on different days.
An unexpected recent architectural trend is the popularity of short courses: entertaining, quick-play accessory designs stuffed with ambitious architecture.
It will be novel to see how Augusta National looks and sounds devoid of the typical eruptions of blooming flora – or the eruptions of roars and gasps from the patrons – and with gold and orange accents rather than pinks, reds and whites.
Rough has long been a useful tool for creating demanding setups and for tournaments that hope to test a certain skill set, but other appeals of the game are sacrificed when the measure of success is relegated to hitting the ball to predetermined positions.
Architecture’s best rule is: Use what’s there. Sometimes that’s a perfect landscape, a Shinnecock Hills with wild grasses, sand ridges, a distant bay. Sometimes it’s Florida citrus land, a pasture and canals.