A golf trip to Bandon Dunes is nirvana. It’s the only resort with five 18-hole courses ranked among our 100 Greatest Public Courses, and getting here is so coveted, Bandon Dunes recently instituted a lottery system just for the chance to make reservations. Once you do secure time at one of golf’s greatest locales, what Read more…
You shouldn’t be intimidated as a guest at a country club. Maybe in the past, but more than ever, private club regulations are changing to be increasingly inclusive. Still, it’s nice to have some guidelines on what you can and can’t do. Can you take that phone call? Should you be taking photos? In general, Read more…
OAKMONT, Pa.—Let’s be clear that Oakmont Country Club is not ugly. Put another way: If you were to play a golf course this ugly every day, no one would feel bad for you. It’s worth noting that Oakmont is fifth in Golf Digest’s ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, and of any course in Read more…
Of course, the U.S. Open is synonymous with long, thick, penalizing rough. But why? Does the USGA have a special tactic for growing especially brutal rough, or are they benefitting from the U.S. Open being held at an agronomically favorable time of year? Or is it both? To learn more about how the USGA is Read more…
Of all golf course architects, Alister MacKenzie, who died in 1934, is the most entertaining to study. The courses he left behind, from Cypress Point to Crystal Downs to Royal Melbourne and beyond, are consistently creative, engrossing and visually explosive. He pioneered a flamboyant style of bunkers and green shapes, the boldness of which still Read more…
In early March, shortly after the conclusion of the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing, I paid a visit to Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii to catch my breath and perform a bit of ambassadorial work for the resort. I anticipated sort of a busman’s holiday featuring some work, a little golf and Read more…
Like an abstract painting splattered on a canvas, the skill of golf course design is easy to dismiss. A tee box, a green, a fairway and some bunkers in between. The whole time you think, Hell, I could do that. Then you dive deeper, and you realize it’s not so simple. Whenever Golf Digest publishes Read more…
Pre-COVID, many golf clubs had no waitlists to join. For those with an extended process, provided you were a decent person or didn’t show any of your indecencies to the admissions committee, you could expect to wait a few years at most. Now some of those membership lists have waits upwards of seven years, with Read more…
The final three holes at Quail Hollow Club, site of next week’s 2025 PGA Championship in Charlotte, are notoriously known as the “Green Mile,” a reference to the color of the floor that death row inmates walk on the way to the electric chair in the Stephen King novel and movie of the same name. Read more…
One unfortunate side effect of many golf trips is the feeling of being in a bubble. Most people enjoy the tranquil and repetitive nature of playing golf every day before retiring to relaxation and then awaiting the chance to do it over again. There is, however, an increasing number of golfers who revel at the Read more…
The bulldozers have been blazing in Florida and South Carolina. Georgia and Tennessee are warming up, and in 2023 Alabama debuted its first new course in nearly 20 years. It was only a matter of time before Texas jumped into the fire. For a state of its geographic and demographic heft, Texas lags its peers Read more…
In Golf Digest’s biennial ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, you’ll find many of the most exclusive clubs in the country, yet you won’t spot one of the most exclusive clubs—one which accepts only one percent of applications—and not because of underwhelming course architecture. In fact, it has no course at all. Epic Golf Read more…
When our writer first played Al Zorah in 2018, there was a course, a temporary clubhouse and plenty of ambition. Coming back this year, it’s hard to describe the scale of what’s there now.
Australian Golf Digest
