Architect David McLay Kidd’s peer group of golf course designers, as least by his estimation, is small. It consists of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. This makes sense given that these four design/build operations have accounted for the majority of top ranked courses over the last 25 years, Read more…
It’s an interesting life being a Golf Digest course-ranking panelist. The rules and ethos you must uphold resemble those of the military or a fraternity. Break any of them and a dishonorable discharge awaits. The panel, and really the Golf Digest brand, is much bigger than any individual. In fact, we don’t like our panelists’ Read more…
At first impression, the new Karoo Course at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida strikes chords of both familiarity and otherness. With its washes of sand, nibbled-on bunker edges and burbling swaths of turf it is of the moment in golf architecture, a clear branch off the tree of Sand Hills and Bandon Dunes, nurtured in Read more…
Grant Moir, from Scotland, is better described as the “set-up guy.” Over the next few days, will oversee logistical preparation of the Old Course at St Andrews, which is hosting the AIG Women’s Open for the third time.
Golf is a sport of ingenuity. It’s a game of doggedness, passion and creativity centered around a desire to consistently improve and grow the game. In the never-ending arc of time, the greats always figure out what to do whether they’re A. W. Tillinghast, Pete Dye, Tom Fazio or … Ed from South Carolina? This Read more…
Architect David McLay Kidd is well-suited to take on our latest “Ask An Architect” question. The Scotsman burst into the profession when he built the first course at Bandon Dunes for developer Mike Keiser in the late 1990s. Over the course of his career he’s had his share of other great sites like Gamble Sands Read more…
“These greens are so much faster than the putting green,” is one of the golf’s most common excuses – so common, in fact, that we decided to ask a superintendent if it holds any merit.
When The Cabot Collection announced in 2022 that it had acquired Castle Stuart in Inverness, Scotland, rebranded Cabot Highlands with a second course by Tom Doak now under construction, it was the luxury resort developer’s first venture into Europe. Cabot has now purchased the Golf du Médoc in Bordeaux, France, marking an expansion into the Read more…
The most important development in golf-course architecture during the past 20 years is the elevation of sand-based sites. Encouraged by the success of destinations like Bandon Dunes, developers have spent this time scouring the globe for sandy, dunes-like properties on which to construct new courses and lure golfers, several of which make their debut on Read more…
There was a time not too long ago when Central Florida was an afterthought for great golf. Too flat, too monotonous, too boring. Streamsong’s success has thoroughly rebuffed that notion, and now an ultra-exclusive private club, High Grove, seeks to further redefine the region’s golf potential. High Grove, located in Venus, Fla., will feature 36 Read more…
The first amateur golf design competition was likely held in 1914 when Country Life Magazine asked readers to submit suggestions for a theoretical hole. Actual architect C.B. Macdonald, one of the judges, liked the par 4 that Alister MacKenzie sketched so much (MacKenzie was still a doctor and not yet a practicing designer) that he Read more…
Architect Jim Urbina answers our question about which courses are worthy of being restored to their original versions. Urbina began working for Pete Dye in the 1980s and joined with Tom Doak at Renaissance Golf Design in the 1990s to help create America’s 100 Greatest Courses representatives like Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald and Sebonack. He Read more…
In just 14 months, Dream Golf, the upscale resort golf enterprise run by Michael and Chris Keiser, have announced the development of two 36-hole public golf properties. The first, last April, was Rodeo Dunes, set amid several thousand acres of choppy prairie dunes an hour northeast of Denver (preliminary construction on the first course, designed Read more…
Australian Golf Digest
