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…
Selecting a single hole at Oakmont Country Club to break down for our “The Hole at…” video series is challenging. Most courses have two or three candidates that are especially compelling for their history, architectural variety or beauty, so the choice is narrower. Others, like Augusta National, have a dozen or more, complicating matters, though 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…
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…
How do courses decide where to put the hole locations on any given day? It might seem like a straightforward question with a simple answer, but it’s something most golf course superintendents invest more time in than you might realize. To learn more about this process, we caught up with Chad Blank, who recently transitioned Read more…
There is simply too much great golf in the United States to recognize only 100 venues, so Golf Digest first launched its Second 100 Greatest Golf Courses ranking to accompany its trademark America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses list. The results have been just as competitive for the Second 100—in this year’s edition, two courses, Forest 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.
All golf fans have seen the clips from the 16th hole at the WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. A good time is virtually guaranteed. Yes, perhaps too much of a good time on occasion, but that’s Scottsdale in a nutshell. The Arizona city loves golf, and golf fans love it right back. If you’ve Read more…
For nearly all golfers, the idea of playing The Old Course in St Andrews is the holy grail. For a select few golfers this year, that dream will become a reality.
Australian Golf Digest
