Courses
Royal Birkdale: The Fairest Examination in Links Golf
In five weeks the Open Championship returns to Royal Birkdale, and the certainty worth holding onto amid all the build-up is this: whoever lifts the Claret Jug …
Courses
Courses
Carnoustie: The Course That Earns Its Nickname
There is a reason the players call it Carnasty, and it is not affection. Carnoustie sits on a flat, exposed strip of the Angus coast north of the Tay, and on …
Courses
TPC Sawgrass: The Course That Was Built to Be Watched
Most great golf courses were laid out by men who wanted to find the best holes hiding in a piece of ground. Pete Dye’s Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass was …
Courses
Muirfield: The Course That Asks for Every Wind
The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which is the formal name of the members’ club that has owned the course at Muirfield since the late …
Courses
Royal Melbourne West: The Sandbelt Course That Set the Argument for the Other Hundred
The Sandbelt, on the south-east side of Melbourne, is the patch of land on which Australian golf was decided. The patch is about eleven miles across, runs in a …
Courses
Pebble Beach Golf Links: The Course That Looks the Way Golf Looks in Your Head
The thing to know about Pebble Beach Golf Links, before any conversation about the holes or the architects or the championships, is that the course is public. …
Courses
Whistling Straits: The Pete Dye Course That Pretends to Be a Links and Almost Gets Away With It
There is a small category of golf courses in the world that have been built, in defiance of the land available to the architect, to look as if they were always …
Courses
Royal County Down: The Course at the Top of Most Lists Nobody Has Played
The course rankings that the magazines publish every other year do not usually settle on a single answer for very long. Augusta moves up and down. Pine Valley …
Courses
Oakmont Country Club: The Course That Refuses to Be Modernised
There is a sentence the late Doc Giffin, who spent half a century answering Arnold Palmer’s mail, used to put to visiting writers when they asked him …
Courses
Riviera Country Club: A Course That Asks Different Questions
There is a particular sensation a player gets the first time they walk onto a Riviera fairway, which is the sensation of standing on something that does not …