Here, I want to talk about how we can specifically look at one kind of dynamic architectural interest. That is, features of golf architecture that appear as we change the course setup. Specifically, I want to look at how different hole locations change the architectural interest for players, how we can show that, and what it looks like.

Toy Holes & Obvious Results

To demonstrate the usefulness of this process that I outlined in the previous article, let’s first look at a “toy hole.” By toy hole, I mean a golf hole that is specifically designed to make a point, not to be something anyone would want to play.1 Here, I’ve mocked up a completely ridiculous hole with a crazy boomerang green that completely favors one side of the fairway over the other.

The levels of absurdity we are dealing with here are remarkable. The golf hole is about 300 yards wide. It has a bunker in the center that is close to the size of a football field. The green is pitched straight away from the tee and has nasty bunkers front and back. The entire layout effectively forces a simulated player to choose to play wide right off the tee every time.

The topography is important. The boomerang green dramatically falls away, toward the bunkers behind it, so that playing from the left side puts the player in the worst position possible. From the left fairway, when the ball reaches the right side of the green, the ball wants to run straight down the hill into the back-right bunker:

While playing directly over the boomerang from the left side will cause a significant amount of roll out, approaching the green from the right side will simply kick the ball a bit to the right. The superiority of the right fairway can be seen on the Schoolfield map (strokes-to-hole penalty map):2

Thus, it is quite clear that, given the hole location on the right, being on the right side of the fairway is preferable to being on the left. The reasons, again, are obvious. When playing from the left side, front and back bunkers leave little room to stop the ball at the correct distance. Adding to this, the green tilts away from the player leading to much more rollout than an approach from any other direction. In contrast, when playing from the right side, we have open access to the green, and the only trouble is a left or right side miss. This effect is visible when we simulate dispersion patterns from two different approach shots to the hole:

Both of these shot selections were chosen by the simulator as “optimal” because they have the lowest average strokes-to-hole of all possible angles in. So on the left, the player must try to land their shot just past the bunker in order to have a chance at a birdie putt. On the right, the player has a generous number of options for a birdie putt even with a wide dispersion pattern.

All this makes sense and is fairly obvious.

Mirroring the Hole to Reveal Dynamic Design

Now I show why I made this hole as wide as I did. All this width is a perfect way to illustrate that simply by changing the hole location a little bit, we can reveal significantly outsized effects in the optimal position and strategy. Since the hole is symmetric and we know the player should probably be on the right side, when we change the hole location to the opposite side of the boomerang green, we already know the player will prefer all that space on the left side.3

If we run the process discussed the previous article, and get strokes-to-hole heatmaps for both hole positions, we get two very different results:

After generating these two maps, we can subtract one from the other to get the difference in strokes-to-hole from each position. When we take the difference and color code the values, what comes out is a map that shows how dynamic the golf hole is depending on hole location:4

The difference is significant. One one day, players want hit their tee shots as far to the left as possible. The next day, they’re hitting it to the right, interacting with the architecture in a completely different, new way.

In this case the result is fairly obvious. However, the hole was specifically designed to make sure that the difference is easy to see. The reason this is such a useful tool is that the process works not just when we have an obvious hole. On every hole, we can actually measure the strategic change we see from a different pin position. Let’s see how this effect shows up when we look at a real-world example.

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How the Swilcan Burn Influences St Andrews’ First Hole

A good example of this effect can be seen on the first hole at St Andrews:

The key feature to the hole is its requirement that you cross the Swilcan Burn. The green sits directly against the burn. It’s a pretty easy opener, but the ease of making a birdie drops dramatically as the hole creeps forward toward the creek. The hole location can really be placed only a few paces from the water’s edge. It can tempt players trying to make birdie to flirt with the ending up in the water instead of playing one safely in the center of the large green. Using the process described above, we can see the difference in difficulty between an extremely safe hole location at the back of the green, and a scary one right up against the burn:

Above, we see a result that a strokes-gained analysis would not give us: the back pin is actually fewer strokes-to-hole than the closer one, from almost everywhere on the hole. This isn’t intuitive, but because strokes gained is an average of all shots, it will always suggest that the further hole should take more strokes to reach. We also see that the difference between the two hole locations is just 0.15 strokes-to-hole from an ideal approach location, but the danger increases to 0.3 strokes in the darker red areas.

This close-up image shows us one of the few areas where it’s easier to reach the blue hole location than the red one. What’s important to note, though, is that this map still takes distance into account. We can actually filter that out though if we want to see the impact of the architecture alone. When we compare the strokes-to-hole penalty – netting the two Schoolfield maps below – then we have a similar result, but with some important differences.

That result looks like this:

Here we still see that the back pin is relatively “safer,” even from areas where players should get a lower score. Looking at the netted “strokes-to-hole penalty” (yes, I realize how convoluted this is) shows us how much the hazards will influence the result (here the only influences are water and rough). The best way to think of this image is that it measures the “hazard tax” because it shows us how much excess danger we are in from our position. Unlike in the strokes-to-hole image above, we see that being just across from the front pin leaves the player in extreme danger because if the burn weren’t there, the player could just putt, whereas if he were playing to the back pin, the player would pitch the ball on either way.

Interesting Even When Obvious

In many different ways, this methodology helps us visualize the way the golf hole changes as we move the hole location around the green. Whether it’s how much easier the hole plays, or how much relative influence the features of the hole have on the position we are in, when we can visualize the impact of the architecture we understand it better. Ideally, this should help us design better setups for tournaments and ultimately design better golf holes altogether. In the next article, I plan to show some rather unexpected results that fall out when we start messing with the parts of a hole we’re normally not able to.

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For the last month and a half, I’ve been working nonstop on a project attempting to illustrate what I believe to be a new way to look at golf design. And after more consecutive late nights of coding than I’d like to admit to my partner, I’ve finally cleared the first big hurdle. Here, I’m going to walk through the tool I’ve been furiously building from scratch to bring my way of looking at golf architecture – an expansion on Mark Broadie’s foundational strokes gained approach – to life.

It’s going to get a bit technical, so please bear with me.

The conundrum of strokes gained

For years, I have – simultaneously – been extremely frustrated by the “strokes gained” approach to golf laid out by Mark Broadie,1 while also openly telling everyone that it is both obviously correct and is probably the most important step forward in explaining the game to have been achieved in my lifetime. I don’t want to disparage Broadie or his thesis here: it is sound and rightly influential. By using the benchmark of average strokes to hole, players are able to solve for shot-for-shot performance, find the weakest part of their game, improve, etc. It’s everything golf should be about. Broadie bases everything in analytics, on real world data.

But I’ve always felt a constant nagging that something was missing. My frustration was clear: where is the room for strategic architecture in a theory where only distance matters? The frustration was so persistent that I even bought and read through Broadie’s book, Every Shot Counts,2 to make sure I wasn’t missing any aspects of the thesis that might take care of the problem of strategy.

The strokes gained benchmarking system requires “like-for-like” comparison, and, to be perfectly honest, using distance is an entirely reasonable way to do a comparison. I just kept thinking about how some positions on the golf course are better than others, even when they are both the same distance from the hole. An obvious example would be two shots of the same distance, but one is taken from the fairway and the other from a bunker. The strokes gained approach would treat these shots as different in kind: hitting off the fairway vs sand vs rough are not like-for-like shots. They must be benchmarked against other shots from the same distance of the same kind.

For me though, when looking at golf hole design, this still doesn’t go far enough. If we care about design, then the same shot from two different angles simply can’t be the same shot. If a green tilts left-to-right, it should be easier to approach from the right side than the left side. Why? A shot from the right side hits the green where it’s tilted toward the player, which helps stop the ball. A shot from the left is just more likely to run off the green. When we start averaging these shots together, we lose the strategic positional elements through dilution. So, how can a theory as obviously correct and effective as Broadie’s still be unsatisfying? I sat with this conundrum for years.

Standing Broadie on his head

I finally found my solution by leaning into the theory instead of pushing back against it. Okay, fair enough. Strokes-to-hole is obviously the most important metric we should be looking at, so let’s look at a world where the only thing that matters is distance.

Let’s say we have a golf hole with no features: no bunkers, no contours, and everything is a perfectly flat fairway. Playing this hole is effectively an applied driving range exercise. This is a world in which only distance matters. This is a place where I fully endorse the strokes gained approach.

Here the solution becomes clear: if we play golf in a world where only distance matters, then let that be our benchmark. Forget the real world (I’m a philosopher by training, after all). If we set our benchmark on an idealized plane, then we can use that benchmark to explain the real world. Forget the golfer, and forget measuring the golfer’s shots. Instead, what if we use the golfer’s shots to measure the hole itself?

The idea is this:

1. First, set our benchmark as a player’s strokes-to-hole at every point on an idealized plane.

2. Next, calculate the same player’s strokes-to-hole on the actual version of the hole, but we have to do it at every single position.

3. Now, if we subtract the idealized strokes-to-hole from the actual strokes-to-hole, then we can see a map of where that hole is difficult, and where it is easy.

That’s it. We can use strokes gained not just as a way to look at player performance, but as a way to look at golf course architecture. I had a new thesis, and at that point, all I had to do to act on it was figure out a way to calculate a player’s strokes-to-hole at every point on a golf hole. The good news is that I have a computer and I know how to use it.

So, I literally spent the last month and a half building a golf simulator, with a built-in algorithm whose sole purpose is to calculate the strokes-to-hole at every point on the golf hole you give it. And now I get to show you all the pretty pictures this program makes.

What all this actually looks like

After the simulator runs, you end up with some images that look like the ones above. So, let me explain what we are looking at here. From left to right:

• First, the regular hole map. This is just how the vast majority of folks see a golf hole.

• Next, we have a perfect Broadie map: strokes-to-hole captured at every point. If you can beat the strokes-to-hole on this map, you’ve gained strokes.

• Next, we have the functional Broadie map. Since there is no practical way to measure strokes-to-hole in the real world, we just average all the fairway numbers together, and what we are left with is a strokes-to-hole map where distance is the only variable.

• Finally, we have the Schoolfield map. We’ve subtracted the actual strokes-to-hole from the idealized strokes-to-hole, and we are left with the strokes-to-hole penalty. Here, the redder the area of play, the more difficult it will be to finish the hole compared to an idealized scenario.

What is most interesting about this last heatmap is that it shows the net effect of all the hazards and contours on the player’s position. So what do we see here?

• First, we see the water hazard is dark red. It is dark red because being in the hazard means you need to drop, and that drop is costing you a full stroke – importantly – when compared to an idealized scenario, because if that water were fairway, you wouldn’t need a drop.

• Next we see that both of the greenside bunkers are bright red, because the model suggests that playing out of those bunkers will likely add about a half a stroke (compared to if they were just flat fairway).

• Next, we notice the yellowish-orange centerline bunker. The model here suggests that this bunker will cost us around 0.2 strokes compared to if it were fairway. This is much less, because the green is reachable from the sand, and the penalty is mostly wrapped up in a wider dispersion pattern.

• Finally, we see a ring of orange. This is the distance where the model has the player hitting a three wood or four iron in. The player can’t quite reach the green comfortably so the dispersion pattern is large, and the greenside bunkers are heavily in play. If they weren’t there, in the ideal world, a player would just hit it as close as possible without concern. But because so much sand is in play, the player should have 0.15 added strokes when finishing the hole.

It’s important to note here that this map is only relevant to a player of this skill (this map is simulating a “5 HCP” but that is intentionally vague and effectively unrealistic for real world conditions). This isn’t “the way the hole looks to everyone” because not everyone is going to consistently hit the same strokes-to-hole from the same location, or even from an ideal location. For better players, hitting out of a fairway bunker is more recoverable than for beginners, and any greenside bunker will in play for a higher handicapper, but scratch players are rarely affected by them with a wedge in their hands.

A program that illustrates golf course architecture

The hole above has very obvious hazards and the resulting image is not particularly surprising. This process is most interesting when we look at strategic design features that are hard to parse in the real world. So, let’s look at a case study from history.

Woking #4

Often considered the first instance of strategic golf, the fourth at Woking is an excellent candidate to look at how golf course architecture can be visualized via this method. Fried Egg Golf has a fantastic article about the history and strategic interest of the hole. You can see Tom Simpson’s sketch that I have used here:3

Generally, the hole is defined by two hazardous areas: out-of-bounds along the right side and the bunker complex in the middle of the fairway. Though, by the green, there are also two small greenside bunkers short-left, and a larger bunker that shots should roll towards on the right.

Here, I’ve added some length to the historic hole to help it fit longer modern distances. I’ve also added some topography, which is based on the note that Simpson has under his sketch:

I’ve also overlaid the “A” and “B” markers and some parts of his illustration:

While it may seem obvious on the strategic player or skilled golf architect, by using this mapping process we can just see exactly why the shot to “A” is so advantageous, and even why playing to “B” is a good idea . However, assuming the model accurately approximates how a person plays, we can also see that there is only a tiny advantage to playing to “B” rather than playing a safe shot left. The illustration just allows one to see the advantages and disadvantages, clear as day.

Importantly, however, this process DOES NOT tell us whether or not we should attempt to reach “A,” or whether we should lay up “B,” or even play left. Determining where to aim requires an entirely different algorithm, which I did have to write to build this program, but that is beyond the scope of this article. I just wanted to reiterate here that the green zones on these maps are “places that are nice to be,” but getting to those areas is a problem for the player to solve, and I will discuss some very clear examples of how and when to do that in subsequent articles on this system.

Shortcomings of the model

This is all just theoretical.

First and foremost, I want to say, explicitly, that this model does not reflect actual reality. This model was built as a purely theoretical exercise to apply the ideas I had, and to try to build something that demonstrated them. Hopefully though, it can be improved to the point where it is a practical tool for designers to communicate architectural ideas to clients who are trying to build or improve golf experiences.

Computational complexity means approximation is necessary.

I have to take a lot of shortcuts in building these maps because the number of calculations I have to run for every single pixel is very large. Now, I’ve built some pretty sophisticated ways to get around these problems, but again shortcuts are shortcuts, and taking them necessarily moves us away from reality. Here let’s look at just a few of the limitations in creating these maps that I ought to disclose, and at this point I will need to be unapologetically technical.

Improving Resolution and Adding Variables Takes a Lot of Time

The first issue is the resolution of the course itself. The problem here is that we need to calculate an average of strokes-to-hole from every point on the golf hole. In saying “every point,” we obviously have to turn a continuous problem into a discrete problem, and the choice of what level of resolution to use is non-trivial. Right now, when I set that resolution to only make a calculation for each two-yard by two-yard square, I can get the map done in a couple minutes. When I set the resolution at one foot by one foot, the process usually takes over an hour. TL;DR: I can make maps for shots from general areas on a hole pretty quickly, but as I get closer to mapping “every point” on a hole, it gets exponentially more time consuming.

Next is the resolution of shot distribution. So, we have calculated average strokes-to-hole, and I’ve chosen to do that by using a bivariate probability density function, which seems like the simplest, most straightforward method (though I would like to improve that if I can get access to analytics data). So, calculating the average means I need to calculate some number of shots from every position. Without even getting into the complexity of deciding where to hit those shots, when we have decided to hit a shot, we have to do it enough times to account for the various features of the golf course we are trying to illustrate. Right now, when I’m trying to get the job done quickly, I do the average of 50 different shots at a regular distribution. When I’m trying to do a high-resolution version, I’m using an average of 200 different shots. TL;DR: as with the previous resolution issue, accounting for more types of shots taken increases the time this takes by a huge factor.

Yet another confounding issue is resolution of rollout. The way a shot interacts with the ground is hugely important to the underlying theory. A central focus of this exercise is just illustrating that it’s harder to stop a shot on a green that’s tilted away from you than it is on one that’s tilted towards you.

One way that we think about calculating the rollout from a shot is as a series of vector additions. Imagine we were recording a shot’s rollout on a film camera. Theoretically, we could look at each frame, and in the frame calculate the velocity of the ball and add in the friction of the ground, and the effect of gravity, and with all that info we should be able to predict where the ball will be in the next frame. The “resolution” here is how many frames per second we are looking at.

If we did 60 frames per second, we’d be doing 5X the work of doing 12 frames per second. For each frame, we also need to run a number of calculations – let’s say, do three calculations per frame. Three calculations per frame, multiplied by 5X the amount of work for 60 frames vs. 12 frames, ends up being 15X the amount of work we started with in that 12 frames per second scenario. And we’re doing that for every shot we simulate, from every pixel we are simulating it from. The problem quickly becomes NP hard. Thank goodness for linear algebra! TL;DR: adding more variables, while important, exponentially increases the work needed.

Even if they were perfectly accurate, there are infinite “correct” versions of these maps.

These maps show how one player would interact with the golf course. Right now I have it set to a theoretical “5 HCP” player, but in reality, every single 5 HCP plays differently.4 Some people are long hitters who need a wedge in their hand to convert. Others are deadly accurate from inside 200 yards, but might be a bit short off the tee. Some folks can get out of trouble with a full swing where others will just lay up. Right now the program can’t account for Wild Willies or Steady Eddies: it just calculates Linear Larry, a theoretical golfer who just gets uniformly longer and more accurate as we dial down his handicap. The fact that everyone plays differently means that even if we can see the effects of the architecture from 10,000 feet, how much that might apply to different players is highly variable depending on the features.

Note here that the higher handicapper completely loses the advantages for being on the right side. Using the software we can see that this is mostly due to the simulated player’s exaggerated long-left, short-right miss, which is quite wide. This seems to fit neatly across the green, avoiding the bunkers and out of bounds. Here, obviously, better player modeling would create more accurate results.

I literally can’t even account for putting greens or trees.

This program is still a prototype. I’ve been writing it as fast as I can, but every single corner case brings more and more computational complexity. Figuring out how to model putting – at this point – feels a bit insurmountable, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. Right now, the model just uses publicly available strokes gained data to automatically return the expected value at a given distance. In this way, I fall back on exactly the type of practical analytics that Broadie does, simply because it actually works pretty well. Still, if I want to create a model that eventually reflects reality, it needs to be able to do the same strokes-to-hole calculations with a putter as it does with a wedge. Adding trees will actually be fairly easy by comparison, but, again, these things take time. The model is really just at the point where I’m not actively embarrassed to share it publicly.

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So much more to come

I’ve barely scratched the surface on what this model can illustrate, but this article is already quite long. I just wanted to communicate the general concept here before moving onto more specific areas of strategic architecture and design. I am able to use this and other maps to highlight different types of strategic elements in the game. I’ll include some of those images here as teasers:

What’s Next?

I’m going to be completely honest here: I really think that even at this early stage, this model could be super useful for architects in the industry, simply as a way to communicate their ideas with clients, especially when the client is a club with a large membership where it can be difficult to communicate with everyone. So for anyone working on a project with a simple topo map, I’d love to hear from you. I’ll soon be trying to integrate publicly available lidar topos where there are interesting courses to overlay in the model.

While I still have more to explain and discuss about the model here, it’s clear that, as a solo developer, I’ll soon be bumping up against the limits of realism I’ll be able to replicate without access to (1) datasets of player data, (2) topographical maps of courses with reasonable resolution, and (3) academic knowledge about the physical behavior of golf balls on different surfaces. I’m interested in exploring ways to keep pursuing this research, potentially within an academic setting or through a partnership with architects who might find these types of illustrations valuable. If you’re interested in using this engine for a project, or if you’re involved in research and see a home for this kind of methodology, I’d love to compare notes. Feel free to reach out through Substack, leave me a comment, or message me here.

The Private History of San Francisco Golf Club

This all started when I — genuinely accidentally — found out this not-for-public-consumption book had somehow ended up in the SF Public Library. The article starts by talking about an interesting book about golf history, but then spirals into a discussion of the culture and economics of exclusion in golf.

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We’re Not Going to Agree on What Links Golf Means

If there is one article I ever wrote that overlaps with my academic background, it’s this one. Language is so much more complicated than people give it credit for, and that often leads to people fighting over meanings in a completely backwards sense. This comes down to deductive vs inductive frameworks. People tend to instinctually see language as a deductive framework, starting with words and meanings and then finding their counterparts in the real world. I think most academics in fields around language will suggest that words and meanings are inductive, that is, they are created and use to describe existing things in the world, whether or not they are in formal categories. This a subtle, but completely different framework. Now, sometimes words that reflect things in the world do have precise axiomatic definitions, but often they don’t. The term “links” is a fantastic example illustrating the differences.

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Why I Advocate for Golf for Non-Golfers

I live in the Bay Area and we had a looming budget deficit crisis two years ago. Last year the crisis went went from looming to very real, and part of balancing the budget meant cutting a big chunk of funding from the Rec & Parks department. A very real part of that cut was cutting subsidies to the golf program.

At that point, many of the folks in the public golf space started grumbling about how we needed to fight this. I strongly disagreed. This article was me trying to articulate my position on municipal golf and the politics of golf, especially during periods of austerity. I don’t think mine is a popular position, but I hope the piece communicates why I advocate for some very different positions on how municipal golf venues should serve the general public in areas where golfers are a small minority of the population.

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A Generalized Theory of Green Speeds

To me, this was the second in a series of heavyweight academic topics I went into this year. There is a small-but-noisy contingent of folks in the golf space who advocate for slowing down the green speeds. I wanted to articulate not only why I’m a part of that group, but when it’s appropriate. It’s not enough to just say we need to slow them down, but why and how. The essay is focused on connecting the parallel relationship of faster and faster green speeds with the rise of high launch clubs, the dominance of the bomb-and-gouge strategy, and how that’s all but killed the ground game. Slower green speeds, ironically, could renew interest in the ground game with thoughtful course design.

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Great Par 4’s: #9 at Soule Park

This hole stuck with me after playing Soule Park. It made me want to write another entry in the series where I take a single hole and talk about the unique things that make it so interesting.

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From Doak to Digest: Golf Rankings Are Built on Assumptions No One Talks About

This is the third academically focused article I wrote this year. It’s part of a series about course rankings/ratings that started last year.1 This piece discusses the axioms underlying ranking/rating frameworks, and how they affect the resulting lists/scores. It is one of the articles that I’m really proud of, even though it’s not written for anyone but myself. I think this stuff is subtle and interesting, but I understand why most people don’t care. It’s just that, the only reason why I care about course ratings is to learn about cool courses I want to play. However, I like very, very different kinds of courses; e.g., I absolutely love both Machrihanish and Iona but for entirely different reasons. So, if I’m going to figure out which courses I’ll like from a list, I really need to understand why the folks rating them give them a certain score.

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George Waters on the Designing Golf Podcast

I honestly thought it was just a really, really good interview, because it really got into the details of how course conditioning, and more importantly expectations about course condition, affect the greater golf economy.

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The Case for Doubt: Prestige, Friction, and Corruption in Golf Course Rankings

This was part of the series about course rating/ranking.2 Yet another academically focused article that deals with the epistemological problems that come with golf course rankings/ratings and the outlets that publish them. I was surprised that this article got the attention it did. Though, while I would certainly suggest the actual subject matter is boring and philosophical, what actually falls out of that is a bit more interesting, because it points to some strong economic incentives that would lend themselves to corruption in the golf media industry. Still, for me, the most interesting topic was a kind of “literature bias” that allows us — even forces us — to better appreciate certain courses we visit.

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1990-2010

Golf media completely ignoring the awkward history of Cypress Point Club when the Walker Cup shows up is as predictable as it is disappointing. I thought this was a very appropriate tie-in with the previous post about the potential for misaligned interests between golf media and the golfing public.

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I Did Some Research for SF Public Golfer Magazine

Just wanted to share some fun stuff I worked on that ended up getting published.

How I Designed a “Perfection” Template

I did really well in a template design contest and wanted to share the tools I used to do it very, very quickly.

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How I Think About Finishing Holes

The first in a series were I take long-winded thoughts I have in golf forums, and then try to convert them into something publishable so people interested in my writing can find them.

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The Course Diaries from Scotland

So, I tend to avoid doing “course reviews” unless I’ve played the course a dozen times and I want to talk about the merits of every hole on the course. I’ve done this for Gleneagles SF and I plan to do it for Golden Gate Park Golf Course in the future. These are courses I understand. When I play a course once, or even a few times, I still mostly have no idea what I’m talking about, and don’t want to pretend to.

However, I went on a trip to Scotland this year and wanted to do some kind of write-up. While my thoughts on these courses are mostly very ignorant, I can at least talk about my experiences there, and I see a course diary as the best way to do this.

North Berwick West Links

Musselburgh Links

History, Hickory, Fun

Gullane Golf Club

Three courses on a hill

The Machrihanish Golf Club

An exceptional links

Dunaverty Golf Club

Perhaps the ultimate third place in golf

Iona

If there is a place I most enjoyed in Scotland, it was here.

I will likely continue this series with a piece on the Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh, which is a very important place to me.

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Golf Course Wiki

It’s a good reminder here that this Substack is here to support my efforts to build a kind of Wikipedia for Golf Courses. Growth this year has been reasonable, but I will admit to hoping things progress more next year.

Fully Mapped Additions

I’ve mapped a few courses this year including Brambles, Dunaverty, Musselburgh Links, and a completely unnecessary mapping of the Bruntsfield Links made simply because I love that place so much.

Again, anyone can add the details of a course they love so folks can research different courses and print out the course guides for free.

Tournaments software stalls

The main headwind was beta testing the tournament system I’ve built into the wiki. I just haven’t found anyone interested, and I haven’t had a ton of time to do it myself.

Front-end changes coming eventually

The second major project was revamping the front-end of the site to make it more modern and more user friendly. That’s made progress, but it is not complete, which has stalled a lot of other work on the site, because I don’t want to get the front-end work and the back-end work so far apart from each other that merging them becomes extremely complex.

Bots everywhere all at once

Finally, I’ve had a ton of problems with bots this year. My page rank is pretty good on most search engines, and with the proliferation of AI, that’s meant a hoard of bots hit my pages all day every day. It’s probably increased hosting costs for me by 4x. I’m very, very hesitant to put my site behind Cloudflare, because it could really slow things down. I will probably try to integrate Anubis instead, but that might take some time.

What’s Next

I’m currently working on a general theory of golf design. Ambitious? Yes!

This year I read the academic textbook Characteristics of Games, by George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield and K. Robert Gutschera. Garfield and Elias have really influenced my thoughts on golf, and I’ve referenced their work on multiple occasions here even though they’re talking about games more generally. I also read Every Shot Counts, by Mark Broadie simply because I was very frustrated by the presuppositions of the strokes-gained system, and wanted to actually read the source material. Ironically, I think the tools in the strokes-gained system, combined with the characteristics that Elias, Garfield, and Gutschera discuss in their book, will provide a roadmap to get a coherent theory done, and I’m hoping to actually get that written down.

I always tell people to reach out, especially if you’re in the Bay Area. I’d be happy to grab a round of golf. And thanks for reading again this year,

— Matt

Iona is a small Scottish island off the coast of Mull, another island. To get to Iona from the closest mainland city, Oban, you have to take a ferry from Oban to a port town called Craignure on the isle of Mull, drive (or catch a bus) across that entire island to the port at Fionnphort, ditch the car, and then catch a much smaller passenger ferry from there to Iona. Because of Iona’s extremely remote location, getting there is a bit of a challenge. Apparently there used to be a more direct route, but as of 2025, the best route seems to be through Oban, so we left from there.

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Getting There Is Not Easy

The most important concern about the ferries is that they are regularly delayed and cancelled due to inclement weather. When we were in Oban getting ready to make the journey out to Iona via Mull, we were informed that multiple ferries from Mull to Iona were being cancelled that day. To maximize our chances of actually getting on a ferry from Mull to Iona, Caledonian MacBrayne staff advised us not to dilly dally upon our arrival in Craignure, and instead to drive immediately from Craignure to Fionnphort to catch the Iona ferry in hopes of beating the expected inclement weather. We were lucky that all our ferries proceeded on schedule, but I would strongly urge anyone who chooses to make this journey to plan a buffer travel day on either side of a scheduled ferry.

The ferries to Mull are much larger than I expected, likely because they seem to be designed to carry automobiles. The ride takes about an hour, and while it’s generally fine, folks who might become sea sick should be prepared in case the weather acts up.

The views between Oban and Craignure are spectacular. There are castles, lighthouses, islands, and mountains all within view.

After arriving on Mull, the real challenge of the journey begins. Getting to Fionnphort means driving 35 miles on the A849, a single track road, where encountering another vehicle means someone needs to stop to allow the other to pass at a designated passing place. This takes a bit of patience, concentration, and really being willing to take a break when you need to. I’d strongly recommend anyone making the journey to review the etiquette on how to navigate these, because you’ll need to be ready for anything (including rain, which we encountered quite a bit of, and free-roaming livestock).

When you find yourself navigating both oncoming traffic and oncoming cows, you know you’re on Mull.

Iona

Only permanent island residents are allowed to have cars on Iona. Thus, when you arrive at the ferry terminal at Fionnphort, you’ll leave the car behind and hop on the ferry. Then your vacation really begins.

We stayed at Argyle hotel. It was adorable. While not the cheapest place we stayed in Scotland, compared to the prices in Edinburgh, it’s downright reasonable.

There are a few bonafide tourist attractions on the island, and most of the visitors are pilgrims visiting the Iona Abbey. But the main attraction if you ask me is the island’s natural beauty. There are plenty of sandy beaches you’ll have all to yourself if you’re willing to walk a bit. Hiking up mountains and through valleys was genuinely delightful. One afternoon we went to see a concert, which was just a musician that lives on the island and plays small shows for free at the village hall. But I came here for the golf course.

Yes, the village is tiny. It’s cute. I keep telling people it feels like something out of a Wes Anderson movie, and that hasn’t changed. It’s so tiny that I was recognized as “the golfer” because one of the locals saw me get off the ferry carrying my golf bag.

The Golf Course

The course is free to play. It’s about a mile walk from the center of the village, and is quite a nice introduction for what to expect on the island. Still, it’s about two miles round trip on top of an 18-hole round of golf, so pack light and plan accordingly.

I saw maybe two other people playing golf there. I’m sure there are more people during the high season, but you’ll very likely have the whole place to yourself, only sharing the course with sheep, cattle, and the occasional person on their way to the beach.

Spoiler alert: if you don’t want to see images of the golf course, stop reading now.

There seems to be a strong contingent of folks in the golf space that want to preserve the specialness of the Iona golf course. I rarely see pictures shared. I’d seen very little of the course before arriving. Only a couple youtube videos. I’m not really sure why though, as Finlay MacDonald, the greenskeeper, regularly posts videos of his rounds there.

There’s really no point in me describing the course. If you want to visit, it will be because you want to visit a course that’s really still the way it was 150 years ago: free, with sheep and cattle mowing the fairway, and a bit of attention, albeit imperfect, paid to keeping the greens as true as is practicable. It won’t matter if I recommend hiking boots instead of golf shoes or explain why there are shovels next to the greens. It won’t matter if I describe how spectacular the views are. It won’t matter if I mention how irreverent the back nine can be. If you want to visit, it will be obvious. So with that, I’ll leave it to the photos to tell the story.

It is a different kind of course. We had a wonderful time on the island. The effort to get there meant everyone else wanted to be there as much as we did.

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While my trip to Scotland this year was for the Buda event, there were two golf courses I went out of my way for. I wanted to try to get down to Kintyre specifically to visit Dunaverty Golf Club. As I’ve stated before in this series, I’m a fan of Jim Hartsell’s writing on golf. In his books and interviews, he talks about Dunaverty at length (he’s a member). As a fan, I think I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t try and see what he’s on about with a relatively unknown golf course in an obscure part of Scotland.

Dunaverty is Breathtaking

Dunaverty Rock, the Mull of Kintyre, Sanda and Sheep Islands, and the Antrim coast are all visible as you move through enormous dunes at Dunaverty. After crossing the burn that cuts the course in half, you’ll need to pass between dunes that are easily 20 feet high. The first two-thirds of the course will be some of the most undulating terrain you’ll ever play. The walk above the beaches is incredible, even if the best views mean you’ve hit a poor shot.

You start out heading toward the sea, then you play along the coast through the dunes. Just after you make the turn, you’re taken up to a high point on the course, to look back over everything you’ve played. The photo op is perfect. The view is as exhilarating as the shot back down to the water. Then you head back up the hill inland, where you’ll pop in and out of sight of the coast, until finally you get one last clear look at the 17th green, before turning toward the clubhouse at the end of the round.

Why You Won’t Find It on Any Lists:

I’m a bit shocked that Tom Doak gave Dunaverty a Doak Scale “2” in his Confidential Guide, but I certainly know why many folks don’t rank it higher.1

Length

The fact is that Dunaverty GC is par 66, 4799 yards. That’s well short of the minimum par 70, 6000 yards expected of modern courses. Whether or not these are hard and fast expectations, absent a blustery day, many of the holes are going to be too short to challenge the long hitter. That said, given the location, a blustery day should be expected.

The Quiet Finish

There seems to be a lot of criticism paid to the closing holes (13-18). Some suggest they fail to deliver the same level that the first ten do. While there are scenic views through this section, they are not as intense, and they are definitely not very well framed by comparison. Many of the holes have players looking away from the sea. For those focused on the large contours, the holes along the course’s floodplain may disappoint. The course does not revisit the sea. The volume starts to get turned down, and the round gets more and more quiet, until it fades away back at the clubhouse. I can both see how people feel that the intensity of the links is not there on these holes and agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the premise.

First, I think the 13th and 14th holes are excellent. They are both highly contoured, have remarkable views, and are both strategic. Next, the approach to the 17th is one of the most anticipated shots on the course, even reminiscent of the first hole at the Old Course. Lastly, I’m entirely supportive of a quiet finishing hole. I’m a match-play zealot who thinks the last hole should be a birdie-fest so tight matches are “won with a birdie” and not “lost with a bogey.” So, for me, this leaves holes 15 and 16 and I’ll be honest that – while these are perfectly serviceable golf holes – they aren’t as spectacular as the rest of the course. For folks on a vacation to see only the best and most expensive course in the world, yes, I can see how this might make them balk. For me, it just adds character – a bit of wabi-sabi for a course that’s nearly a century and a half old.

A Distinct Lack of Bunkers

Something players might not notice during their round is that there are not really many bunkers on the course. In fact there are only two, and they are both quite small. The only other notable hazard is a creek that crosses the fairway short of the 17th green. One of the two bunkers is on the seventh hole, where if the player misses short, they will be dragged down into the depths below and end up in this bunker. The other is an unassuming greenside bunker on the 16th hole. And I will admit, the lack of bunkers does seem odd if you notice it.

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A Defense of the Bunkerless

Here, I think this lack of bunkers is worthy of discussion. There are some out there who see strategic golf as first and foremost press-your-luck strategies executed against various hazards on the golf course. Here, the lack of bunkering implies the lack of strategic interest. I would push back against this line of thinking. The clear delineation of bunkering gives a guide to the thoughtful player, yes, but the not-so-subtle contouring that one must play around at Dunaverty will create strategic advantages for the local who knows where and how to hit shots in different winds, and where and why the shots will miss safely when they are imperfect.

The Press-Your-Luck Strategy of Bunkering

While I wholeheartedly agree that press-your-luck as a strategic interest is very real, my main concern here is that it is very much not the only form of strategic interest. Bunkering does supply a high penal gradient, onto which a slight misjudgement is punished, which means strategic caution should be employed. The difference of one foot can mean a perfect lie on the fairway versus a miserable pitch from the sand. However, high penal gradients in highly windy courses lend themselves to significantly more luck than many might like. If the course also includes wild contours, the amount of luck involved might be a bit much.

Wind as Exaggeration

I see wind, as a hazard, as woefully underappreciated in modern golf. Where the bunker defines areas of danger on the ground, wind is often much more hazardous even if it’s less obvious. At Dunaverty, misjudging a strong wind on any of the opening 12 holes can easily lead to a lost ball, but another relevant danger is just that players might end up on the wrong side of a dune. And with wind, we may require a knockdown or ballooning shot depending on how these contoured dunes interact with the hole.

Whatever the misjudgement, a headwind or crosswind will exaggerate that miss. Thus, we don’t actually need the sharp gradients of bunkering to capitalize on strategic interest. The ballooning shot in the headwind misses by 50 yards. Having a bunker there to catch it makes little sense as the advantage gained by the careful player will certainly outweigh the half-shot disadvantage that a greenside bunker would have created. The penal gradient of a bunkerless course may seem more subtle, but again, the wind narrows that wider margin for error.

Large Contours as Large Tipping Points

It would be foolish to discuss Dunaverty without mentioning the most enormous, and strategically consequential contours on the course:

The first obvious example is the fourth hole, where a mound blocks the front end of the green, with a punchbowl beyond it. Here, a player who feeds the ball into the punchbowl will be rewarded. But the player who misjudges the hole short ends up with a blind pitch in. And a player who misses long will likely fly the green completely and end up with a nasty downhill chip. On a still day, there is plenty of room for error here, but the prevailing wind is usually a headwind of some kind.2 This means the biggest unknown on the hole will be distances, with ballooning shots being a real concern.

The fifth hole requires anything less than a perfect tee shot to be moving toward the center of the fairway to hold. Shape a shot into the central fairway contour and you have a chance to hold it and have a decent approach. Anything offline will run into the rough, and the prevailing crosswinds will push the ball left, meaning players trying to hit something straight will need to start their shot toward the beach.

The seventh plays like an Eden hole on steroids. Don’t miss it short! So the safe shot is to miss it long, which leaves a nasty downhill putt that moves right toward the danger.

The ninth hole is surreal. It’s something out of a bizzaro version of golf architecture. The goal is to play over a ridge to a blind punchbowl green. The awkward thing is, though, you could play it just to the ridge, and the ball would run all the way down and onto the green. You could also play to number, hitting it high, with zero reliance on getting a good run out. Either option is an entirely sensible way to play the hole. This type of optionality (which is inherently anti-penal because the hole is easier when you have multiple ways to play it), is still highly strategic. On a windy day, you may hit a knockdown to the ridge and just run it over. One a clear day, you may want to try and get it as close as possible to the number you want to hit. Either way, you’re choosing a viable tactic and trying to execute it well.

The 10th is a second hole with Eden template-like qualities, where you can’t miss short, but missing long leaves a nasty downhill putt toward the danger. Here, again, the volume turned all the way up. The hole might be considered absurd to some, playing straight up hill, except that the architectural principles are right there to see. Miss left if you must, or right if you must, just don’t miss short, and expect a terrifying putt if you are beyond the hole.

The 13th, where the course tends to quiet down, is the last of the contour-focused strategy. There is out-of-bounds all along the right, so the safe play is to the left, however, there are two trenches that meet on the left side, exactly where it is safe to land the ball. So taking the safer path could make reaching the green in two difficult, if not impossible. The canny player who takes on the hazard right, should have a clear shot and a chance to squeeze through a narrow opening to reach the green in two. On this hole, yes, a fairway bunker on the left would provide a more obvious strategic threat, but it’s not necessary. The “valley of sin”-style hazard here provides enough trouble to the scratch player to limit the number of risk-free eagle putts.

What I Wish I Could Change

Any course with a hundred year history should be exempted from nitpicks like this, but I will offer one anyway. I wish there were a way to return players to the sea before sending them home. The obvious way to do this would be, after the first hole, to send players straight to the fourth. Then after they finish the 17th, send them straight to the current second hole, then third, and finally finish via the 18th. Here, we’d allow players to leave the quieter section of the course and return to the wind and dunes one last time before heading in.

Unfortunately, my illustration shows how convoluted this routing would be. It just seems forced. I certainly wish there was a graceful way to do it, but I’m honestly fine with how the course finishes anyway. I just think it would be nice to return to the excitement of the early holes at the end of the round, but it is likely impossible without swapping the 18th and the first, which is really outside the realm of a reasonable ask.

Why Do I Think Dunaverty Offers Something that Typical Golf Destinations Cannot?

Finally, there is something about Dunaverty GC that I think is important, that is harder to put to words. Dunaverty has a sense of place that most other courses do not have. Where this stands out is at course’s restaurant. The restaurant at Dunaverty seems to serve the neighborhood as much as it serves the golf course. Everyone else in the restaurant when I ate there were locals, and many of them weren’t even there to play golf. They were just there to have a meal by the sea.

This has always been important to me. It is one of the first things I wrote about when I started writing about golf. At Machrihanish I was greeted after the round by a couple of very polite servers, and the dining area was rambunctious, with many tourists, along with a few groups of locals. At North Berwick, I was resigned to the club’s bar with members and their guests. At Dunaverty, however, I was surrounded by locals and given a table, where I was able to watch folks tee off to start and finish their rounds. I could see the folks playing on the course were almost exclusively locals, and many were older, and were very often women. I really appreciate this, but I’m not entirely sure why. There is nothing wrong with being a popular enough course to have lots of visitors. And all the courses I visited were very welcoming. I don’t want to be someone who is obsessed with an “authentic” aesthetic that makes no sense. I definitely understand the inherent contradiction of me, a tourist, discussing the tourist-to-local ratio of a golf course. It’s self-contradictory and I can’t explain it.

It’s just that courses like this – welcoming to others while still serving their community first – still affect me. Another place I think is really comparable is Pacific Grove. There is something about extremely special, yet imperfect courses with spaces welcoming the wider community, that really stand out to me. Pacific Grove has it, Northwood has it, and Dunaverty has it too. Perhaps it’s something to do with “third place”-ness.3 You are welcomed to Dunaverty GC in a way that you are not, or cannot, be welcomed in other places. Given the costs of travel, it seems like places like Dunaverty or Pacific Grove are defined by reasons not to visit more than reasons to make the journey. I’ll admit this isn’t a very coherent view, but at least it vaguely makes sense to me.

If you are looking for a reason to skip Dunaverty, you’ll find plenty: it’s hard to get to, the course has weak points, and the design doesn’t cater to most expectations. Still, I will be going back. I could play the first 14 holes at Dunaverty for the rest of my life, and I likely wouldn’t have much desire to leave. The combination of friendliness, accessibility, and affordability are at the heart of places I see as creating positive experiences, even if these places are imperfect.

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After a brief discussion with my partner about why I can quickly write a coherent essay about a golf topic on golf forums, yet it takes me weeks to write a long form article for this site, she suggested I try adapting these post to short form articles. So this is my first trial of that idea.

Let me know what you think.

When I think of finishing holes, I’m approaching the subject as match play zealot. I think the my favorite finisher right now is Hanse & Wagner’s 18th hole at Soule Park. The only downside is that, well, the club changed the routing, and now the hole is the ninth.

The general function of the last hole in a game is that it should be relevant to the game. That is, we would like to see the drama of the leaderboard change. This, however, does not mean that the hole needs to be brutally difficult. If we have a brutal finisher, we’ll likely have a low stroke index hole, and having a stroking hole as the last hole will be frustrating to scratch players in games where the last hole decides who wins.

At my club, we play a nine-hole rabbit, a game that is almost always decided on the last hole. However, the last hole is stroke index of four, which means that higher handicappers will get a stroke here. This, however, has so frustrated the regulars that there is a local rule where the you swap that stroke with the next lowest indexed hole, so that folks who birdie the last hole don’t lose a chance at winning to a mid-handicapper who reaches the green in three but chips close. It’s not the end of the world to change the way strokes are handed out, but it’s definitely a pain and creates a sense of unfairness for higher handicappers.

Following this line of thinking, the function of the 18th hole changes depending on what game you’re playing. While we focus on stroke-play in America, and our ideas of “what a great 18th hole should be” are often molded by that. We ought to remember that the greatness of the 18th hole is about the game we play. Some folks have suggested that if the Old Course at St Andrews ended with the Road hole, it would be considered the greatest finisher in the world. And I agree it would be a great finisher... for stroke play. I’ve always seen the 18th at Harding Park as the type of stroke play finisher that people who like stroke play like: forced carry, half-par length, nontrivial risk in even playing for par, much less birdie, success is rewarded, failure is punished. The Road hole mirrors all of these attributes.

However, the Old Course was built around match play. Arriving at the 18th hole in a match is a special case, it’s the most exciting thing that can happen in a match, and it should be highly valued. It’s as exciting as baseball’s bottom of the ninth, two outs, with the bases loaded. It usually doesn’t happen, so when it does, we should all be on the edge of our seat. This type of design should lend itself to high optionality holes — where people can play the hole the way they want to play it, i.e. no railroading by the designer) — and “heroic” design. When I say “heroic” design here, I’m using my framework for this term, not Robert Trent Jones’. In my framework, I’d consider something “heroic” when it’s basically a forced gamble, but has positive expected value, where the reward is greater than the risk. Why I think it functions well on an 18th hole in match play is exactly the fact that we want to be risk averse in exactly that moment. All the positive long run expected value means nothing when the match hinges on one gamble.

The way I see it — and this is overtly an aesthetic choice — the goal here should be to have the winner of the hole “win” with a birdie, rather than have the loser “lose” with a bogey. The “loss” to a bogey can happen on any shot, but the “win” with a birdie has to happen on the last putt, which extends the excitement. This also allows the competitors are smiling and shaking hands after the round rather than one player cursing and feeling shame for messing up. This is made worse when the loses “loses” because of the requirement to hit a shot they don’t particularly like to hit (hence no railroading by the designer), because at that point, the loser isn’t cursing him or herself, but the designer. This means we should see match play 18th looks like half-par holes that tend to be par 3.5, rather than stroke play’s half-par finishers that tend to look like par 4.5’s.

This is why I see “soft hazards” like valleys of sin (say, at the Old Course, North Berwick, and Machrihanish) are so compelling. They take birdie off the table for playing the hole in two shots, but they also create some problems for the longest hitters trying to drive the green without making “going for it” a bad bet. Finally, they’re usually paired with a trivially “not in play” hazard (OB on the right side for the Old Course and North Berwick), where only folks attempting to reach the green should suffer the consequences, because the lay up left is completely unpunished.

This is why the 9th at Soule Park is so compelling to me. The green is theoretically drivable, but it’s not without risk. At the same time, there are strategic choices to be made along the way, and each decision should be influenced by where the other player plays their shot. All of this is likely less important for stroke play, which is likely why the course didn’t realize the hole’s brilliance, and flipped the nines. I still think it’s a near-perfect finisher, especially when it’s paired with a brutally difficult 8th hole (formerly 17th), much like the Old Course.

At the end of the day, we should judge a finishing hole by the game the course was designed for. And really, we should consider more often whether the course we’re playing would be more suited to a different game. It should at least make our rounds more interesting even if it’s not our preferred format.

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I’m a fan of Jim Hartsell. When I tell people to read When Revelation Comes, it’s because I think the book is genuinely important for golf. In that book Hartsell includes the Machrihanish Golf Club as one of the four courses he always plays when he travels to Scotland, so, naturally, I figured I should try to get to it while I was there. It’s out of the way, but not too far out of the way. Unfortunately, the drive out to Campbeltown from the Edinburgh Airport didn’t work out the way I’d wanted. The airline didn’t get my bag on my flight, and I’d originally planned on arriving in Campbeltown around 6 or 7 PM, but instead got in around 10:30 PM, without golf clubs, and was exhausted. Campbeltown is a beautiful, small town. Ironically, there are no golf courses in town. They’re all about a 10- to 30-minute drive away, which is quite the opposite of other golf regions. It wasn’t always that way. There was a course above the town from 1912 to 1940, but now folks must drive to their golf.

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The Course

I was playing the course on my second day, so I got up that morning and made the short drive west. I still didn’t have my clubs, but I was able to borrow a set from the operator of the inn I was staying in Campbeltown (shout out to Jamie from the Rosemont Guest House, a very nice man and a real life saver in that moment). I was lucky enough to be paired up with a member at the course, so I had a guide, and a guide was very necessary on many of the holes. It was one of the most interesting rounds of my life: borrowed clubs, wild contours, and plenty of wind. I didn’t expect to play well, and I played mediocre at best. That said, I’d be happy to come back and get beat up here again and again.

I just think this course is interesting enough to go into full detail, so I will. I wasn’t able to photograph every hole, but I’ve linked to the course guide on each one in case you want to have a look.

1: Battery

If you’ve heard about Machrihanish before, it’s likely in relation to this hole. The tee sits on a point overlooking Machrihanish Bay and plays back – over the beach – onto the course. Such a shot is effectively unheard of in golf, which is why this tee shot is so unique and well known. If I had a hot take about Machrihanish GC, it would be that this hole is a complete fake out, and draws players in, only to surprise them by being completely different through the rest of the course.

2: Machrihanish

The second hole is just fascinating from a design perspective. The hole plays up to a burn (and the longest hitters can use a press-your-luck strategy here), but then you must hit your first blind shot up over a ridge to the green. This is where players first encounter the extreme contouring on this course. Here, shorter players may want to play the hole as a par five: playing out to fairway, then over the burn avoiding two bunkers, and lastly up to the green. Just an absolutely interesting hole that hints at the dramatic contours to come.

3: Islay

Here, you realize what a strange experience you’re in for at Machrihanish. You must play your tee shot almost across the second green, over a blind contour, to a wide and undulating fairway beyond. This is paired with an interesting, narrow green with bunkers peppered around it.

4: Jura

Here we have the shortest hole on the course, and it might be considered one of the weaker ones if it were not placed on top of the huge dunes, rather than in between them. The winds here will make the trivial wedge something worth fearing.

5-9: The Gauntlet

When I remember my time at Machrihanish, it’s typically the holes in the Gauntlet – a series of holes so demanding that each tee box feels like some kind of joke. Reach the fairway or you’re in big trouble, and that’s even before considering how much wind is a factor. None of these holes is trivial and every single one seems almost surreal. I really wish I’d taken more photos here.

5: Punch Bowl

This was probably the first dogleg hole where I thought anyone trying to cut the corner would be a damn fool. Missing the fairway here is just crazy, and there’s a hidden bunker inside of the dogleg to give an extra dose of bad luck to anyone who gets greedy. The contours are so large and so hidden that you likely won’t notice the dropoff and bunker short of the green.

6: Balaclava

Another impossibly intimidating blind shot into one of the most contoured fairways you’ll ever see. Avoid the spectacle bunkers and good luck on the contoured green.

7: Bruach More

The difficult tee shots continue here. This is a long par four where you’ll have to use an aiming post on your approach to the green. Thankfully, as is visible in the photo, players can make a running shot over the blind dune and have it roll on.

8: Gigha

A short two shot hole where players must hit down to an island of fairway and then play back up to an incredibly elevated green that falls off on most sides.

9: Ranachan

The last of the absurd tee shots is here. The ball is played to a semi-blind fairway, but there is plenty of room. The hole seems almost devoid of contouring given the previous holes in the gauntlet, but it still has plenty.

10: Cnocmoy

Things start to calm down a bit when turning back to the clubhouse. That isn’t to say it’s much easier – this hourglass-shaped par five has enough contouring and danger along the sides to terrify a mid-handicapper – however the hole is a bit more approachable. Play smart here and you’ll likely get down in bogey or better, just keep it in the fairway.

11: Strabane

A long par three from an elevated tee box. The only thing really relevant here is the wind. If it weren’t windy, the hole might be forgettable, but in the wind, the height of the teeing area complicates everything. Thankfully, there is plenty of fairway mowed short of the green, so you have plenty of options on how to advance the ball.

12: Long Hole

One of the most interesting parts of the obscene amount of contouring at Machrihanish is the way it thwarts traditional par five strategy. The long ball here, with as much rollout as possible, could end up anywhere. A second shot trying to reach the green is thwarted by extremely choppy, broken ground, just short of the hole. Running the ball up to the green will be an impossibility, the goal here is to get the right approach, while accounting for the prevailing wind.

13: Kilkivan

The 13th fairway may as well be the surface of another planet. Humps and bumps and even a hidden bunker wait to punish most drives. The green has one of the largest false fronts I’ve seen in my life. It’s taller than I am, and it’s ready to send you into one of the greenside bunkers if you get unlucky. Tough hole, but at least you can commiserate with the cattle across the fence as you leave the green.

14: Castlehill

Castlehill starts off with a fairly welcoming landing zone, but the hole gets bigger and bigger until you reach the green, where it looks like a huge chunk of earth is missing. Don’t expect to run one up here.

15: The Hut

The ultimate par three at Machrihanish. The front and right side are peppered with bunkers, but the left side miss is far-and-away the most dangerous mistake. Miss left and you’ll have to negotiate this eight-foot wall before even seeing the green surface. If you’re going to miss on this tee shot, miss short.

16: Rorke’s Drift

If you were going to argue that there was a weak hole on the course, I think you might have to point to the 16th. Still, it’s a long par three with a solid personality. The green is raised at an angle in the front, which will deflect running shots. At the same time, it falls off on the right. There are a few ways to approach this hole in the wind, and it’s definitely gettable from off the green.

17: The Burn

As you cross the burn again, the gigantic dunes are all behind you, but there are still as many subtleties left on the fairway and green as on your standard links course. It just looks less intense, as you’ve just left some of the craziest dunes you can play in Scotland. The ground is still choppy short of the green, and there are a trio of bunkers to deal with.

18: Lossit

The finisher, again, is another fakeout. The contours become significantly more gentle, but here, at the final green suddenly the front edge drops off. It drops off in front so dramatically that players should pray they don’t miss short. The green then slopes toward this edge, so don’t expect an easy putt by playing it safe.

The Clubhouse

I think the clubhouse at Machrihanish is worth discussing. The place is clearly sponsored by Springbank Distillery, and I suspect the owners are members. I always appreciate the type of clubhouse that is welcoming and celebrates the game. The food and drinks were both good and the prices were not exorbitant. The atmosphere was a bit raucous, and I even heard some polite looking company complain about how noisy it was. They were right of course. The socializing area overlooks the course and beach, but there are nooks out on the patio that will provide all the peace you need.

Conclusion

I don’t know what else to say. The Machrihanish Golf Club’s Championship course genuinely affected me. I’d play there every week if I could. It’s far-and-away the most “it’s just worth seeing” course I’ve probably ever been to. That said, I’m a weird golf nerd, and lots of people might hate it here. The biggest worry I have is that it is wildly punishing to the higher handicapper. If you can’t control your drive in the wind for at least 190 yards, and to that at least 90% of the time, you’re going to struggle. The rough is brutal here. It’s so tough most wayward shots will just get you a “yea, that’s lost” comment. The Gauntlet section of the course is comically difficult, and only someone free from card-and-pencil concerns with golf will have fun when things don’t go their way. I would insist that anyone short of a single digit should consider playing match play and ignore the numbers they right down.

The biggest drawback to Machrihanish GC is just getting there. The drive to Campbeltown was just exhausting. It is such a distance from Edinburgh or Glasgow, and on such a circuitous route, that it is simply too difficult a destination for most folks to take on. On top of that, while Campbeltown is a quaint town, it’s not the thriving metropolis or the seaside village that most folks look for on the East Lothian or in Fife. I see this as a good thing. The prices at Machrihanish were easily half of what they were asking at North Berwick. I’m willing to drive the extra three or four hours it takes to get off the beaten path so I can have a local’s experience. I think most folks who love golf should make the drive, just don’t do it when you’re jetlagged. I definitely plan to make that drive again after a full night’s rest, because I’d honestly like to play the course a dozen more times if I can.

How Did I Get to Gullane?

Gullane, pronounced “Gull-an,” “Gill-an,” or even “Gool-an,” is a town in East Lothian, the heart of Scotland’s “Golf Coast.” While the town is most notably the home of Muirfield, I came to play an event at Gullane Golf Club. The BUDA event was put on by some of the folks at Golf Club Atlas’ industry discussion forum, (in)famous for strident opinions on golf architecture and the clashes that can follow. I was quite nervous about attending because I’ve not always had the most polite exchanges with some of the personalities there, but the event typically takes place at sites like Gullane GC that appear in Darwin and Rountree’s Golf Courses of the British Isles.1

It turns out I had no reason to be nervous. Despite the normal difficulties involved in meeting up with folks you’ve never actually met in person, the event went swimmingly and I couldn’t have had more fun. Through the event we played golf, and visited many of the most prominent bars and eateries in town. We visited the local golf museum, and had a dinner that featured a lecture from Gullane GC’s club historian. It was a golf nerd’s version of a very nerdy golf trip.

Gullane GC’s three courses are situated on Gullane Hill, which is one of many volcanic plugs in the area that jut up suddenly and seemingly unnaturally. That a links course exists on such a geological feature is unique and a bit strange. While most links exist on low, coastal dunes. Gullane GC’s courses defy expectations as they slowly (and sometimes rapidly) traverse up and down this hill. The hill does not give the impression that it is a huge dune, like the oversized features at Dunaverty or Royal County Down. No, it’s very much a huge hill with three links courses that run across it.

The tournament we played consisted of four rounds. On the first day we played Gullane no. 2. The next day we played no. 2 again, and then Gullan no. 3. The last day we played Gullane no. 1. In the end, my team didn’t win our event, but I personally ended my matches even with a loss, two draws, and a win. I’ll count that as a moral victory, even if I didn’t actually help my team in a meaningful way. This trip wasn’t about winning anyway, it was about visiting a course with exceptional architecture, and that’s what I’m here to discuss.

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Gullane No. 2

We started the event at Gullane no. 2. It was the only course we played twice, and I suspect it’s the course most visitors play.

The course starts out at the edge of town, plays west for two holes, and then suddenly climbs up Gullane Hill.

After the round starts, players are greeted with view after view of the Firth of Forth back toward Edinburgh.

This view at hole 11 shows the width and tidal range of Aberlady Bay ahead, with Arthur’s Seat and Edinburgh on the right side of the horizon.

The town of Gullane below the 17th tee, with North Berwick Law prominent on the horizon.

The Links Clubhouse shown here (center-left) with Gullane’s more classic architectural style in buildings and hotels along East Links Road.

Views of the fields south of Gullane show up later in the round.

But the views of the firth are the most prominent.

Thoughts on No. 2

Of the three courses at Gullane Golf Club, I think no. 2 is the most classic style of links people expect to play when they come to Scotland. There is significant elevation change, notable on holes three, 11, 13, and 17. However, this elevation change is not nearly as prominent as on course no. 1. Diagonal hazards feature prominently as well, on holes four, 13, and 16, and arguably elsewhere. The classic, revetted bunkers prove a substantial menace throughout the round, keeping aggressive play honest.

The views on no. 2 are as impressive as those on no. 1, even if it has a smaller viewshed. Undoubtedly the views at Gullane GC are its strongest selling point. They are effectively unparalleled in East Lothian, and there is hardly a links course in the world with the height and breadth of views that Gullane’s has.

I would say there are six memorable holes: two, three, 11, 13, 14, 17, which constitutes one-third of the course.

If I had to nitpick, I’d say it’s the classic links architecture that detracts from many of the holes’ individual personalities. Still, there are obvious standouts. Hole two forces players to hit to the right side of the fairway and hope for a friendly rollout. Hole three is probably the most memorable hole, having players drive the ball straight up, to a short fairway that leaves players approaching a green split by a centerline ridge. Hole 11, a mid-to-long par three, has players pitch downhill over a trio of bunkers, hoping to roll onto the green without running over, or trying to fly the ball all the way to the green in the prevailing, strong winds. The 13th is an absolute brute of an uphill par four. The reverse cambered 14th will test each player on every round. And the drivable 17th will be memorable for any long hitter. That most of the holes are classic links on firm turf is hardly a criticism, but my personality prefers the interesting to excellence.

Gullane No. 3

The no. 3 course at Gullane is very different in character from the other two. It’s very short. It’s very, very gettable for most players. And it’s really fun.

The round starts out like it does on the no. 2 course. Play to the hill, and then start to climb.

However, after the first climb, we play back and forth across the side of the hill, and then play downhill toward Luffness New.

After that we head toward Aberlady Bay.

We continue along the bay.

Then we start heading back up the hill.

Where we play straight down the 15th (bottom-right of above image), which is probably the most memorable golf hole at the club.

After that we head back to town and curl around the clubhouse, ending the round next to the children’s course.

Thoughts on No. 3

My memories of no. 3 focus mostly on two things: the fantastic green complexes and how short the course is. If you have a hickory set or even persimmons, they might be more fun to play here. There is even a hickory store in Gullane, called Jack White, where I think rentals are available, though I believe it operates by appointment only. I just remember this course as being too much fun, and since I’m pretty decent off the tee, it was a wedge fest into most of the greens.

Memorable holes:

Two - contoured green surrounded by bunkering

Four - press your luck up the hill, and don’t be short – putt your approach shot?

Six - fantastic green complex

Seven - perfect use of elevation and roll out, with risk from fairway bunkers – luffness

Nine - contoured fairway to a semi bowl green

10 - False front - false right green complex

11 - Play it off the backboard

12 - Real tester of a longer, dogleg par 4, tester of a green

14 - A unique tester of an uphill par 4

15 - One of the most interesting holes I’ve ever played. It plays all the way downhill, and you can even use your putter off the tee, or hit a pitch and run, or even take a mid-iron.

17 - Short par 4 with choppy land short of the fallaway green.

18 - Mid-length par three finisher, with an undulating green complex. Kind of cheating because par 3 finishers are unique.

I’d say there are 12 very memorable holes, which is two-thirds of the course. More of a focus on green complexes here, because the shorter length of the course feels more like throwing darts into the green than trying to guide long irons into them. This is also boosted by 15 being one of the most memorable holes I played.

Gullane No. 1

The no. 1 course was my personal favorite, but which course people liked best was hotly debated throughout the event.

Looking back from the first hole, leaving the village

The second hole gently takes you the hill.

Small riveted bunkers on contoured dunes are much more dangerous than they look.

Looking west. Muirfield is visible in the distance, with the Renaissance Club beyond that, followed by the Archerfield Links, and finally North Berwick’s West Links.

Looking north. Fife in the distance, with the Lomond Hills featured prominently.

Here, on the seventh tee, looking west with Arthur’s Seat and Edinburgh in the distance, it is impossible to not be overwhelmed with the beauty of the site. The views at this point are undeniably among of the best in all of links golf.

The ninth is an iconic example of links golf.

The aiming poll on the 11th. The blind tee shot here is one of the more memorable bits of quirk on the course.

Anti-tank fortifications are remnants of the second World War2

The par 5 12th tempts players to reach the green in two, but doing so can be perilous.

One last look back to the coast after finishing 13. From here, you’ll head back into town.

The iconic pumphouse next to the 15th green. There is enough bunkering here to make sure you remember that despite the elevation, you’re on a links course.

On the 17th you’ve finally found your way back to the town.

Thoughts on No. 1

To me, Gullane’s most obvious standout feature is its viewshed. It’s why Harry Rountree’s portrait of the course features the peak of the property. Insofar as this viewshed is the focus of these courses, it is – without question – featured best on this course. I’ll often talk about courses “doing a bit” and if they achieve what they’re trying to do well, then regardless of whether the bit is my favorite, I’ll give credit where credit is due. I don’t play golf for the view, and despite folks like Alister MacKenzie consistently pushing aesthetics as essential to course architecture, I’ll always remain focused primarily on design. That said, the design of no. 1 is exactly what players who come to play links golf are looking for. However, the course design is very focused on presenting the elevation both as a hazard, and as an aesthetic feature. I think it succeeds in doing both.

From the gentle climb up the second hole3 to the dramatic drop down the seventh, to the two dives down to the coast, to the return to a central peak at the 16th green, the story of the club’s courses is a story of elevation change. I think it’s done best on no. 1, even if it’s not fair to hold no. 2 and no. 3 to the same standard. That said, in terms of memorability, I think the no. 1 course holds its own:

Two - really unique, long narrow green complex that suits the valley it sits in.

Four - spectacles on the tabletop

Five - climbing up the hill, with a long par four, where you dare not leave it above the hole.

Six - feels like the opposite of five, while finishing the climb up Gullane Hill, a short par 4 that’s effectively drivable if the wind is with you.

Seven - the top of the hill at the tee, send one all the way back down to the bottom. A contradiction in links golf, but its uniqueness makes it memorable.

Nine - par 3 by the sea, with bunkers everywhere, ready to gobble up anything less than perfect

11 - blind shot over the ridge

12 - risk reward par 5 along the coast with an amazingly contoured green

13 - absolute monster par 3

14 - long par 4, where any lay up brings two centerline bunkers into play

15 - memorable par 5, for the intricate green complex and the bothy on the right side of the fairway.

17 - down the hill with a wall of bunkers blocking access to the green, an interesting wrinkle for longer hitters, but it makes for a quirky approach for us mortals.

For me, there are 12 memorable holes here, and I think many of them are memorable for very specific, exciting shots the course asks you to hit.

Gullane Children’s Course

Finally, I want to bring attention to the lesser known Children’s Course. This is a mostly flat, six-hole course just east of the finishing hole of Gullane no. 3. I think it’s important to recognize that this club is doing exactly what I think clubs should be doing in taking seriously the responsibility of introducing golf to beginners. The course is free, and is operated as a public service. The only drawback is that adults must be accompanied by children to play. While I’d like to see an overt offering for non-golfing adults to access as a way to learn while having fun, for all practical purposes, this offers an avenue for the vast majority of non-golfers to access a place to play instead of a place to practice. I think there is a huge difference between the two and I think it’s commendable that Gullane GC is committed to keeping that intro to golf available to most people.

What I Learned

Here, I wish I had more of a narrative to tie these three courses together (Aikman etching citation4). Mostly, the two main experiences I had were first feeling nervous about the event, and then feeling refreshed that everything went swimmingly. To tie the courses together, I would say that what I expected was traditional linksland, and what I found was a links course laid out on a hill that defies the very conception of linksland, and yet, the turf is there and the ball dances down the hill just like you’d expect. I came away from the experience with an interesting and different perspective of what links golf can be. It was unexpected, but plenty of fun… much like my experience as a whole.

Who Should Consider a Trip Here

I think there are lots of people who would really enjoy a visit to Gullane GC. First and foremost, it’s folks who love to play golf with their eyes open. When you look out from Gullane Hill, you’ve got the best views on the golf coast all to yourself. I can’t think of another links course where you can look out in every direction and see for miles and miles. If that sounds like something you prioritize, then definitely visit Gullane no. 1, and don’t look back. Book two rounds if you must. The other courses aren’t going to offer the same level of viewshed as the no. 1 course will. You’ll get much of the same views in the western and eastern direction when playing no. 2, but you won’t actually be able to climb the full hill.

I also think that all three courses are aspirational for folks who love links golf, but really like elevation change in their game. I know that sounds crazy, but those two features definitely don’t obviously go together. If you like the idea of smashing a drive all the way down a hill to try and reach the green, you’ll love Gullane 2’s 17th hole. If you just want to hit it as far as you can, there’s the 7th holes on both Gullane 1 and Gullane 3. If you want to try to hit a full iron, pitch down, bump and run, or even putt down to the green on a par three, Gullane 3’s 15th hole is a must visit.

There’s really a lot of depth here, and it’s all built around the fact that the courses are all on a hill. If you come for the hill, you’ll leave happy. If you’re in Scotland for the first time, expecting to play something traditional, this club will have plenty of holes for you, but the full courses here will be very different from most of the other links regions. It’s a unique feature they have there, and they embrace it.

Background

So, if my memory serves me correctly, I actually only spent a few hours designing the template. I know, I know: what’s to design if you’re “designing a template”? I would say that I put a bit of effort into the shapes, and I should explain them here.

I Got (un)Lucky

I think the main thrust of this is that what put the idea of Perfection into my head was just mostly luck. I recently played North Berwick, and it was very, very windy, and I played pretty poorly (though I had moments of glory sprinkled here and there). When I teed off on the 14th, I actually drove the ball wide right, and it landed on the 4th green. After taking relief, I again pushed it right, missing the landing zone and ending up in the rough right of the green. I ended up with a pretty standard bogey, but I was really annoyed that I didn’t get to hit that shot. I wanted to send a pitch and run onto the green, even if it ended up on the beach. I desperately wanted another chance to hit that shot. I’d already contemplated returning to North Berwick just to hit that shot. I wanted to hit it ten different times. Thus, when I sat down to design a template. I didn’t even think twice about it. I just opened up my computer and got to work.

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This Ain’t My First Rodeo

I didn’t design all three submission entries allowed. I didn’t think I had a chance at winning the contest, because I’ve been burned before. Last year, I submitted my entry to the annual Lido Prize and it was promptly never heard from again. I loved that design. I still love it. I had sketched it up on PGA 2K23, then taken screenshots from different angles so that I could trace it by hand at the appropriate angle to maximize the impact on paper. I’m not the best artist, however, so if I’d known they were accepting digitally created entries, I would have designed it completely differently:

I put a ton of work into this design. I absolutely stand by it, and honestly think it’s fantastic. It allows multiple options off the tee, and four different strategies for four different pin positions. I realized after that year’s winner was picked that my design likely only got a cursory glance. I learned then: less is more; play to the audience. The 2024 Lido Prize winner had a ton of risk-reward, plus the novelty of a beach as a hazard… which I would assume immediately presents huge safety issues, but whatever. It was a good design. It’s not the kind of design complexity I’m interested in. I’m usually focused on optionality over risk-reward tradeoffs. Let people play the hole the way they want to play it, unless it’s an easy shot, and only then force people to take chances.

I think the lesson I learned from that helped me in this contest: don’t put too much work into it. Find an idea that’s immediately identifiable, and go with that. Don’t over complicate things. Don’t worry about letting the reviewers know I thought a lot about positioning the forward tees such that the challenge was effectively the same. Maybe barely show the forward tees, if at all.

I Did Some Research

I thought about the contest, and realized a template contest was never going to be about me and what I can design. I didn’t want to try anything too cute. I just wanted to find a template that played to the themes I care about, but also one that would fit with the architect’s existing themes.

The only bit of research I did was to look at the holes that were already planned for the course: Punchbowl, Dell, Gate at North Berwick, bathtub green, #4 at Huntercombe, #14 at Pine Valley, Double Punchbowl, Redan, Short, Lion’s Mouth, Road. There are a few things I gathered here. The Dell template means blind shots are allowed. The inclusion of two punchbowls, the Gate green, and a bathtub green means the spirit of fun over skill is definitely important to the architect. And the fact that there’s already a North Berwick template means that if I take my template from North Berwick, they’ll already be familiar with the ideas without me having to explain it on paper. All of this pointed to Perfection as a suitable entry.

Perfection is a Masterclass in Optionality

I care about optionality on difficult shots and fun as a theme. I was drawn to the second shot on Perfection exactly because it’s a challenging shot, but offers exactly the optionality on a difficult shot that I’m obsessed with. You can bite off as much as you want. Fly the shot 180 yards straight to the hole if you want or play it 120 yards and let it bounce down toward the green. You can get to the hole either way, but the more you hold back, the more variance you bring into the result. Here the tradeoff I prefer is not risk for reward. It is a risk that offers control vs an easier shot where much more randomness is involved, instead of an automatic disadvantage. That’s really the only way I could put my personality into the design without making it too cute or messy.

Process

The Mechanics of Creating the Design

I do my two-dimensional designs in Inkscape. It’s a free vector graphics software that works on all the major operating systems. This is how I quickly sketch up a yardage book-like image for the Golf Course Wiki. It is a vector graphics program that lets me layer different editable images on top of each other and it allows me to trace novel designs with multiple sources at the same time.

Here I’ve layered the course plan, which is under the topo/layout, which is under the google earth image with correct distance measurement, which is under the actual yardage book image. All these images are scaled and sit on top of each other as exact in their sizes and positions as possible. This allows me to bounce back and forth quickly, throughout the design process, with everything already locked into place. Here, I can make adjustments on the fly, referencing different materials where needed.

Next, I tried to just map the hole as best I could from the real hole. I started with the rough, traced the rough, then traced the various cuts on top, adding a new vector using the “pen tool” on top, until I got a pretty approximate illustration:

This is just the first step, and needs to remain as a reference. So, to start tweaking I just copy the layer.

After this, I start flipping back and forth between the reference image. I traced the existing topo lines with the pen tool. I added the unchanged lake into the left side of the image. I added all the trees. I basically tried to get everything where it should be from the reference images before starting to add the specific design aspects I wanted.

What I Actually Designed

Here, to defend myself from the charge of “it’s just a template,” I’ll write about what I actually added to this version of Perfection:

• The most obvious change is integrating the left-side fairway bunker into the shore of the lake, and I also tied that into the waste area behind the hole that represents the beach.

• More importantly, I was focused primarily on the biggest weakness of the hole – that it is a blind shot, and that carries real danger and risk to the folks playing it. The first benefit I had was that this was going to be the opening hole, so I could rely on a starter to limit access to the tee, worst case. However, I thought it was important to keep line of sight from the back tee to the second tee, so that players could clearly see the group ahead when hitting the most potentially dangerous shots. To facilitate getting players, visibly, to the second tee, I extended the beach waste area farther than it needs to extend, and instead offered a bridge to incentivize players to get into next group’s line of sight as fast as possible.
  
  My biggest worry about this modification is the shape and the playability of space just left of the landing area. To get line of sight, I had to make the land drop off dramatically. It overly punishes a standard pull or hook with a nasty shot left of the green.

• The beach waste area was also placed and extended and curved to protect the 10th green. In retrospect, after watching Andy Staples talk about his concerns, I would have extended it to the edge of the build area to offer more protection to the 11th tee.

• I kept the general idea of the hole, but I extended and curved the contouring of the carry hazard and ignored the contouring short-right of the green. I did so because multiple teeing locations could be placed short of the carry hazard, which would likely be positioned forward and right of the back tee. This change in contours on the left side of the landing zone should help deflect shots more rightward to the green. This would offer more of a kick to players who are playing off tees farther right, without changing the nature of the hole for players off the centerline tees.

• Probably the most significant change from Perfection is the area short-right of the green. I left most of the existing contouring there both to preserve the natural appearance of the trees that protect the 11th hole. I did add a (not properly marked) bump short of the green, to feed shots toward the green. Then, I allowed that existing contouring to mimic the bumpy drop off short-right on the original hole.

• The original hole has a subtle green, but there is still some drama. That drama comes from the fact that the obvious miss (right), means you need to pitch or chip the ball straight at the hazard. The only thing I did with the green was make sure that that danger was there. I did this by marking a funneling contour that helps balls running in from the fairway, but drops off in back so that chips coming in from the short-right miss would easily run into the beach waste area. This is why I also completely removed any rough behind the green. Players need to know that flying the ball straight into the green comes with risk. That risk lends itself to the standard right-handers miss (long-left and short-right). The long-left miss is obviously the beach waste area, but that funneling contour adds more risk to the short-right miss by making that pitch up more dangerous.

Changes I Would Make Considering the Attention

• Extend the rough more left of the green.

• Add small arrows to indicate architecturally important areas of slope instead of just submitting a topo. Especially along the left side of the landing area, mound short of the green, and the section of the green that runs into the beach waste area.

• I did not know there would be carts on the course, so I would extend the fairway or at least add a dew path along the right side so walkers and folks in carts have a clear route to the green without climbing the ridge.

Result

Welp, I lost

Ah, well, you can’t win them all. I’m happy I got as far as I did. I’m glad I got this down before I knew if the hole won or not. It was obviously an honor that it was even selected for discussion, much less that it made it to the final four. Designing golf holes is really fun for me, so it’s something I’d be doing even if there were no prize. I hope this helps other folks with a bit of graphic design. Inkscape is free and fairly easy to learn with a bit of help from YouTube. I really think more people should be using it for these types of design instead of just working with pencil and paper.

I visited Scotland this year to play golf in the BUDA event and I’ve been writing about the courses I visited.2 As part of that trip the group I was with went to play the Old Course at Musselburgh Links. The course is arguably the oldest golf course in existence, with evidence of play as far back as 1672.3 We were given the choice of whether to play with rented hickory clubs or our standard sets. I chose to rent hickories, and even though they were tricky to get used to, I think I made the right choice. I hope the reasons why are clear by the time I finish my overview of the experience.

The Old Course

Getting to the course has its challenges4 and when you arrive the clubhouse at Musselburgh is very spartan. There isn’t much in the way of food or drink beyond a couple of vending machines. The fact that you’re at one of the most historic courses in existence would be lost on anyone who hadn’t been specifically told. There is no yardage book at the pro shop, but I took some notes and put them on the wiki, so that course guide is available to download for free. I will share the notes here as I discuss the course. I’ll include Darwin’s commentary for each hole, but note that the order of holes has all shifted since the book was written, so I’ll make edits so the hole numbers fit.

Hole 1: The Short Hole

Standing on the first tee, the hole is straightforward. Play up and over a ridge between two bunkers. With the hickory driver in my hands, I took my first strike… and poorly. I had played the ball well left, toward the ninth green. From there I played a wedge that maybe went half the distance I had in mind, putting me in a dreadful position behind a bunker. After an awkward pitch, I got to putting distance, and got down for double bogey. Not a great start.

Hole 2: The Graves

Hole 3: Barracks Entry

Hole 4: Mrs. Forman’s

The second, third, and fourth holes really start to show what the course has to offer: contours in the fairway, hidden bunkers, plenty of nuance, but very short length. This is a course that has been beaten by modern technology. Even for players of only moderate distances, most of the holes, even if not reachable off the tee, leave an approach at or shorter than a sand wedge. It quickly became clear that my choice of hickory clubs was the right one, even if I’d been unable to make decent contact up to this point.

It was on the fourth I first became really really impressed. The green complex allows for a run up to a dangerous, contoured green, but only if you’ve got ace precision. However, flying the ball to the green comes with its own dangers, as the green falls away from the line of play. This was where the course grabbed my attention.

Hole 5: The Sea Hole

Unfortunately, Mrs Forman’s pub closed in 2016, so making the turn at the fifth was bittersweet. However, it was here where my luck started to change. I finally got into a groove, and sent one pin high, even if it was pushed right of the green. The green here has similarly impressive contouring, and it was working against me, but I was able to play well for the first time. From there, we headed back into the racetrack.

Hole 6: The Table

The hole I was most impressed with was the sixth. Originally called “Pandy,” the hole was named for the Pandy bunker, since buried – the location of which is seemingly quite obvious – and has since been renamed “The Table.” The old name “Pandy” was short for the pandemonium that occurred if a player found themselves in the bunker.

Now, it seems pretty obvious that this Pandy bunker is a huge ditch clearly visible from the tee. Maybe it’s not, but it might as well be.

Here, though, the view is amazing. Looking out over the course with Arthur’s Seat in the distance, I realized that this course is really something special. I was somehow having fun despite my mediocre play, and this hole seemed super interesting. From the tee I could see the hole’s two main features: the deep trench players must traverse on their approach, and the elevated, two-tiered green that they must deal with afterward.

Just short of the trench, there is a fairway bunker that is easily within the range of a hickory driver (about 218 yards). Clearing the trench completely, however, will require a 255 yard carry, which is certainly possible for the longest hitters, but is obviously too much for most of us, especially if we’re playing with hickories. The front face of trench is rather intimidating:

Playing short of the trench leaves about 135 yards to the upper tier of the green, but playing into it leaves only a 100-yard approach. The trench itself pretty much eliminates the easy run up, but leaves room for a pitch and run shot. However, the two bunkers short of the green are ready to capture anything that ends up off line.

The green itself favors an approach from the left, but there are gorse bushes left of the fairway complicating that strategy. The two tiers of the green don’t photograph well, but the slope is severe. Putts that run off the big contour are likely to run off the front of the green (don’t ask me how I know).

The hole is a variation on a template I’ve known much of my life.8 The hole offers a layup short of a hazard off the tee, but you may want to press your luck to see how close you can get to that hazard. The green is difficult enough where you want to be as close as possible for the approach shot, but if you end up in the hazard it’s a disaster. I think this dynamic is especially interesting when the lofts are lower, because getting the ball to stop on the upper deck of the two tiered green is not so easy, and it encourages to run it up to the green, which will bring the greenside bunkers into play.

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The Pain Continues

Hole 7: The Bathing Coach

Darwin remained silent on the seventh hole, though I thought it was nice enough.

Hole 8: Hole Across

Immediately after I began to feel a real sense of the course, my play returned to the dumpster. On the seventh and eighth holes, I just couldn’t seem to get things working. These holes aren’t even particularly difficult, but I was unable to hit either a solid drive or get my approach to go where I wanted it too. It was a cruel reminder that playing with unfamiliar clubs, likely a necessity for most people to truly appreciate this course, will not leave them with the best round of golf they’re able to play.

Hole 9: The Gas

On the final hole, I somehow lost my ball immediately. It ended up somewhere in the rough short of the twin fairway bunkers, so I dropped in the fairway and played up but landed behind the green. I could really appreciate the nuance of the green complex from the tough position I left myself in. It’s probably the best green complex on the course. The central contour can direct a ball to the lower tier, no matter where the shot comes from. This means even from the back bunker you could make a dramatic recovery to an otherwise unreachable pin position. Really good stuff.

Thoughts on the Course

Musselburgh Links’s Old Course is first and foremost a piece of history. Unfortunately, being a part of history usually presents problems. Unless we are willing to learn to play with hickory clubs and suboptimal balls, nothing we do will come close to approximating the course in its era. This even extends to the cut of the greens with modern mowers. We just can’t go back in time, even if we’d like to. Yes, I really think the biggest problem this course faces is length. If you’re willing to play with persimmons or hickories regularly, and bring those clubs with you, then you’re likely to have the time of your life. Players could also choose to just take length out of the bag, play with a half set, and otherwise handicap themselves. That would also make playing the course worthwhile. At the end of the day, the wind still blows, the bunkers are still deep, and the contours are serious. There is a type of player who would love this, and another who would hate it. I just happen to be the former.

For me, realizing I’m having fun even when I’m playing miserably is the sign of a course I’d love to return to. This course kicked my butt, yet I was laughing the whole way through. Smashing hickories on tee shots always feels special. Greens that have me playing away from the hole to then kick back towards it make me smile. After finishing the round here I knew I had a spot to return to when flying into Edinburgh, even if to rest a bit and deal with jetlag before heading to more intensive courses. It left an impression, and it’s accessible and worthwhile.

4

A curious aside about Scotland travel: getting to Musselburgh from Gullane is a perfect example of how strange driving can be in the UK. The only direct parallel I can think of is driving on California’s seaside Highway 1. In the UK, however, this is basically the experience on every road that exists off a major motorway. The thing is, when you leave the city, you’ll encounter a sign for the “national speed limit.” Unfortunately, the sign does not inform drivers of what the speed limit is, because it is a different speed for different types of vehicles.

For much of the drive along the coast here the speed limit is 60mph; however, much like CA’s Pacific Coast Highway, traffic can crawl along at about 30mph. While there are a few safe passing zones where slower drivers can pull off, the drivers blissfully ignore the line of cars behind them, so there isn’t much to do. Now, I’m a safety-first in the car type of person, but wow. I don’t want to get too much into the weeds, but I’d strongly recommend taking the B1377 if you ever make the drive yourself. The good news is once you get to Musselburgh Links, you’ll immediately forget any troubles you had on the road.

Getting to North Berwick

I don’t see myself as much more than a regular old golf nerd who started a website, so when I ended up at an event in Scotland put on by members of the Golf Club Atlas forum,2 it really was a pretty surreal experience. There are often pre- and post-event invitations from other folks playing in the event, many of whom are members of local clubs. When someone offered a round at North Berwick West Links, I was instantly intrigued.

Now, North Berwick is open to the public. Before the trip, I had thought long and hard about potentially playing a round there on my own, but the current rate to play is £285, which was about $380 at the time. I just had to pass, preferring to spend my money playing multiple other courses instead. But with the gracious invitation to play at the member rate, I jumped at the opportunity. The one hiccup? The round would take place the day after the Golf Club Atlas tournament ended, which also happened to be the day I was due to return my rental car to the Edinburgh airport and meet up with my partner, who was flying in to meet me for an extended vacation. So I knew I’d be rushed squeezing in a round at North Berwick, but I also knew it would be well worth the effort.

I had been staying in Gullane, so on the morning of the round I left Gullane and made the short drive to North Berwick, leaving myself extra time to take it all in. Parking isn’t something I typically think about at a golf course, but North Berwick is one of the classic courses where cars somehow still park along the right side of the 18th fairway, striking fear into the heart of anyone who tends to miss right of the tee (and I am one of those people). Suffice it to say, I found street parking elsewhere despite the inconvenience.

I arrived early, so I had a bit of time to poke around. Naturally, I popped into the pro shop, which sits, adorably, sunken in the ground between the first tee and the 18th fairway. The prices for merchandise were steep, but I found a putter cover that was reasonable. At the same time, renting a push cart was somehow cheaper than my local muni. It seemed an odd contradiction.

After getting my clubs on the push cart, I met my playing partners and host.

An Unforgettable Round (Including the Parts I’d Like to Forget)

There’s nothing you can do to prepare yourself to play a course like North Berwick. Standing on the first tee, I had the same feeling as I’d had on the first tee at St Andrews 17 years earlier. Looking out over the first fairway feels surreal. I’ve seen it before in print and on YouTube probably at least a dozen times, but I’ve never seen it. This morning, however, the wind was whipping and there was a strong headwind. I’d not really had a chance to warm up, so I decided to play left. Everything in my brain was lighting up, everything felt extraordinary. I was awestruck by the moment, and I don’t play well when I get overwhelmed. Suffice it to say, I got through the first hole, Point Garry (Out), with a double bogey.

The hardship continued on the second hole, Sea. I knew this round was likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so I figured I might as well just go for it. I grabbed my driver and took an aggressive line. This is how I ended up on the beach:

I wish I could tell you I played out safe and finished with a bogey, but that morning was not nice to the scorecard. The front nine continued in the fierce winds. I noted my passing through the wall on the third as though it were some kind of religious rite, but there wasn’t much time to take it all in. The members play fast, and I was doing my best to keep up.

Through the rest of the front nine I improved a bit. I took a par on five (Bunkershill), and a dramatic par on six (Quarry), with more trouble after. But I finished the front with a birdie on Mizzentop. The back nine starts out with three wonderful holes: Eastward Ho!, Bos’ns Locker, and Bass, after which the final six holes are all legendary. But I’d been focused on one hole since the start of the round, and that was the Pit hole.

Pit

Pit is arguably my favorite par four in existence.5 I’ve created a version of it for a course I made on PGA Tour 2K. I’ve marked Bar Run on Google Maps for the next time I’m in Oregon to play their template. I came to North Berwick primarily focused on this hole, and the wall, and the moment where a shot would sail over it or end up leaving me up against it.

If I was nervous on the first tee, I was completely starstruck as I set up to take my first shot here. The wind was now a tailwind, and it was still blowing. I played the tee shot straight at the bunkers on the right side with a hybrid, but pushed it right. I was safe. I struck my second shot, trying to play it shorter than it looked and let the wind take it… it worked perfectly. I took a hop on the green and just rolled off the back, not too far from the back pin. Two putts and a par. I couldn’t have hoped for a better experience. The wind, the high scores – they all washed away. I’d had the singular experience I’d come to North Berwick for, and it couldn’t have gone better.

Perfection, Redan, Gate, Point Garry (In), Home

I took my moments where I could. The last five holes were rough: way right at Perfection, bunkered at Redan, out-of-bounds on Gate, bunkered at Point Garry (In), and out of position on Home. But none of that mattered: I’d already had my moment, and I wasn’t about to let a card and pencil bring me down.

After the round, I unfortunately couldn’t join my host at the club. I had to get back to the Edinburgh airport, and Google Maps was telling me that traffic was heavy and getting worse. My playing partners asked what I thought about the course, and I could barely form a coherent statement beyond the fact that everyone dreams of playing here, and they should. I was feeling rushed trying to get back to Edinburgh in time, and it was a shame that in my harried state I was unable to communicate how the course had affected me. I wanted to stay, talk, and share a beer in one of the most historic clubs in the world, but it just wasn’t possible. Even if I had to leave, though, I would not let this one lapse bring me down.

Thoughts on the Course

North Berwick is tough to form an objective opinion on, because it’s such a legendary course. It’s obvious, almost cliche, to call it a great course. Playing here is like being invited to an extremely exclusive place, or meeting a celebrity: unless the experience is completely in conflict with your expectations, it’s difficult to know whether the place or the idea of the place has more influence on any judgement about the experience. What is clear is that the course clearly plays like a member club, and I like that. There is nuance everywhere, and much of it I only understood because so many people have written so much about the course. The short game dominates, and being the longest off the tee gives the long hitter little advantage. Achieving that in a course is rare and commendable.

It was a wonderful experience even though I played exceptionally poorly: another sign of a great course. I wish I’d had a second chance on the first tee and also on the last five holes. I wish I’d gotten to experience the course in more moderately windy conditions. If it weren’t so prohibitively expensive, I’d fly out again and play there every day for a week. Maybe I will return one day. If I do, I’ll make sure to budget as much time as possible for this course.

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More to see in Scotland

In the end, the traffic was rough, and I saw a couple of near-collisions along the way. When I got to the airport, it took me a while just to find the rental car return location, but I got there just in time for the return. I met my partner there, as she’d just flown in. She asked me “how the round was at that famous course you played” and I had to gush for a bit. I’d come to Scotland to play great courses and it was undeniable that I had.

There are many more courses to discuss, and lots of updates to make to the wiki from my notes.

Researching historic golf photography is one of my hobbies, so when a friend recently reached out about contributing to a new public golf magazine, I was happy to help.

It was a fun project and we’ve already got some ideas for the next issue. Here, though, I want briefly add more context to the research. I’ll use vector graphics below to show the primary differences that have occurred on this hole over the years.

The changes here are subtle – aside from the classic “beautification” era trend of lining all fairways with trees – but generally speaking, the most important change is shifting the tee box leftward, putting it against the road, which is out-of-bounds. This small change alters the hole pretty significantly.

Before this change in the tee’s angle, the player could easily fade the ball into the fairway. A fade with a driver is a fairly low-risk shot and is especially helpful with beginner right-handed players who tend to slice the ball.

The current setup, however, with bushes on the left combine with the overhanging tree short of the green, requires players to draw the ball left, towards the out-of-bounds. This is the first hole. Making players’ first shot extremely difficult creates a significantly different experience than the “firm handshake” most courses attempt to start with.

Another subtle change here is that the new tee’s angle sends a beginners’ standard slice into the 13th fairway. This still leaves a reasonable shot in, despite the safety concerns involved with putting another fairway in play.

I think it is super interesting that such a small change, one that most people wouldn’t even notice when looking at the aerials, will completely change the experience for most players.

More Stuff I’m Working On

I’ve been working on a kind of course diary for my recent trip to Scotland. Two of the course entries have already been written, but I’m taking a bit more time to edit them. Ideally, I’ll be doing write ups for the following courses: Gullane 1, 2, & 3, Musselburgh Links Old Course, North Berwick, Dunaverty, Machrihanish GC, and Iona. I might even add entries for the Bruntsfield Links and walking the Old Course at St Andrews. Until then, keep an eye on these courses on the wiki, as I’ll be adding my course notes as I go.

As a quick follow up to my posts about the relationships between golf media and exclusive golf clubs, I felt I should briefly discuss the recent coverage of Cypress Point Club. Leading up to this year’s Walker Cup, I’m disheartened at potential self-censorship in golf media regarding any discussion of the twenty-year period where the club chose to withdraw from professional events rather than admit any members of color. Nobody can know what was in the hearts and minds of the membership during this period. At the time, the club insisted this was simply due to an existing waiting list and not a policy on race or minority status.1 When Condoleezza Rice quietly received membership in the club around 2010, the issue was settled.2

I am a bit confused as to why I have not seen any brief acknowledgement of this period as we approach the tournament. True, we have no direct evidence that the club was acting in bad faith. True, it’s been 15 years. True, I know it would be considered rude by many to bring it up at all. However, this is the highest profile event that Cypress Point Club has hosted since 1990, when the club decided they would not come into compliance with the PGA Tour’s anti-discrimination policy.3 I think it is clearly both relevant and newsworthy.

I worry that the lack of any mention of the period is evidence of the types of chilling effects I have discussed in my previous few articles. I also worry that golf culture damages itself by repeatedly failing to acknowledge our past. I don’t think we need to make a big show of it, but the complete omission of this period feels deliberate.

Criticism Seems Lopsided

Top-rated private courses tend to be exclusive, and are rarely criticized.

The top three courses on almost every list generally include Pine Valley, Cypress Point, and Augusta. These courses are rarely criticized in public, a fact that you could easily gloss over as logical: if they really are the best, there must simply be nothing to criticize about them. But scratch the surface, and you do have to wonder if it’s really these courses’ actual merits that keep their names wholly untarnished. Case in point: even the slightest criticism about one of these courses can make headlines. We saw this when Jordan Spieth made news for discussing mud balls at this year's Masters tournament.1 While he only criticized a couple of landing zones, much of the story focused on the taboo of criticizing anything at all about Augusta. More damningly, while tiny criticisms about top-rated courses end up on the front page simply for their audacity, more serious concerns about these clubs are so rarely discussed it can seem surprising.

Top-rated public courses regularly get criticized.

When I started writing this article, I was planning to reference Pebble Beach as the near top-10 course that is regularly criticized publicly. It seems now that it’s not exactly a constant top 10’er, and can be found anywhere from the top 10 to the top 50 on many lists. However, I don’t think the point is lost: from Bandon to the Old Course, even the most highly respected public courses can often receive regular architectural criticism in a way that high-end private clubs do not.

Pebble Beach has been criticized by well respected outlets for everything from price to the mow lines.2 Bandon has been criticized for the poa annua issues they’ve faced recently, as well as some internal arguments over the merits of their flagship course.3 St Andrews Old Course was criticized before it was cool, but even now people regularly make public criticisms of the course, and it regularly is criticized for changes, even to the point of having them reversed.4

This suggests a chilling effect on criticism

My point here isn’t to say that the criticisms are unjustified. On the contrary, I actually agree with the majority of criticism of Pebble and Bandon, and I often overlap with folks who don’t worship the Old Course. Instead, my goal here is to call attention to how odd it is that we never see the same level of criticism when it comes to highly rated private clubs..

I have some theories that might explain this.

1. Prestige Effects: the Tail Wagging the Dog

The most obvious explanation is simple prestige bias. Simply put, access to exclusive places just feels good for whoever’s getting it.5 It shouldn’t be surprising if being granted access to these exclusive goods shapes the recipient’s opinion of those goods. Some people literally pay for the privilege of being a rater (and the access that provides).6

Maybe this isn't the case with everyone. Maybe those raters who already have significant status are unswayed by access, since they are already incredibly well connected. Still, I’m skeptical that it has no effect on anyone. Here, if exclusiveness is putting upward pressure on ratings, it could help explain a positive feedback loop in exclusive courses in course ratings.

2. Frictional Effects: the Velvet Rope

Media outlets may have some control over who they want to review a course on their behalf, but when it comes to exclusive clubs they likely have little control over who actually gets an invite. This poses a problem. Some raters for outlets are very important, connecting people with access to these courses, but others just might be regular folks. It’s hard for regular people to review the Augustas and Cypress Points of the world, because it’s hard to even get invited. However, if a prestegious reviewer has a relationship with the course architect, it’s much more likely they can get access.

This is why most outlets have to aggregate their reviews. Perhaps only a small percentage of reviewers have access to exclusive courses. This means some reviews will be the result of only a few opinions, while others will include dozens of perspectives. To complicate things even further, these reviews often need to occur after major changes at the clubs, so these few reviewers will likely need to get a return invite. This need for an invite and the difficulty of returning will affect who ends up in that small percentage of reviewers who end up even writing a review.

Invite Friction

To explain invite friction, let’s say Jay Blasi opens a new course in my area. I’ve played a few of his courses, and I’m a big fan. Suppose he opens a new public course, no problem. I’ll grab a tee time as soon as I can. Get some of my golf nerd friends, and we’ll all go play together. If I were writing a review, I could then send it off to my publisher to have it compiled with other reviews of the course.

If the course is exclusive, however, there will be some hurdles. I may have to make some phone calls, see if my publisher can get me on, I might even have to send a physical letter. All of that is a big hurdle to actually getting on the course and playing.

Here, I’m a fan of Blasi’s work. I’d be happy to search around my desk, find a stamp, sit down and hand-write a letter, and then go find a postbox and mail it. I’m willing to put out the effort because I’m already a fan. I’m very likely to enjoy the new course, so I’m motivated to put forward the effort to get on.

Now imagine the same exclusive course was designed by some architect that I don’t like. Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that I don’t really like Tiger Woods’ designs (note: I’ve never actually played any of his designs).7 As a casual course reviewer, do I really want to call in a favor to get access? Probably not. Sure, I’d probably make time to see it if it were public and work paid for it, but I’m definitely not going to write a letter or expend a bunch of effort and social capital when I know it’s probably not going to be my favorite. All that effort just to write a bad review that will be received poorly probably doesn’t seem worth it. In fact, the whole thing sounds exhausting.

Here, because of the friction that exists to gain to access this new course, my (likely) positive review of Blasi’s new exclusive course gets published, but my (likely) negative review of Woods’ course never gets written at all. In contrast, there will be other reviewers who will want to visit that new Tiger Woods course! Those reviewers will probably be fans of Woods’ designs, and their reviews will probably be positive for the very same reasons.

This exaggerates the point, but in our hypothetical there are 100% positive reviews if the courses are exclusive, but only 50% positive reviews written if they are easy to access. Here, something as simple as friction of access can significantly skew reviews of exclusive courses.

Return Friction

The same principle should be expected when it comes to follow-up reviews if the publication has any requirement that course ratings remain current. Fans of a course will be more likely to push through the friction in setting up a return trip than folks who do not like the course in the first place. Again, this should create a positive skew in ratings the more exclusive a course is.

Many publications attempt to mitigate this issue by requiring a minimum number of raters to visit a course before it can be included in rankings, and while we should expect this to reduce the potential positive skew, the effect likely should remain as long as the entire population of raters aren’t required to visit. Whether or not this skew is significant enough to affect the ratings is a different question, but it should be something we’re concerned with.

3. Chilling Effects: Curated Objectivity

The discussion above is valid even without clubs putting any thumb on the scale. While I don’t think every top-tier club cares about their reviews, I think it’s fair to say that many clubs do.

Invites to Reviewers Who Will Give Positive Reviews

Suppose that one reviewer really, really, publicly likes a particular architect. It stands to reason that a club with a course built by that architect should invite this cheerleader critic to their course. Here, however, the opposite sentiment is also true. If a reviewer publicly criticizes that architect, then the club may not exactly extend as warm a welcome for a contrarian reviewer to come play.

Public courses have some ability to create incentives for friendly reviewers to visit, but they don’t have the ability to keep the contrarians out. There is simply less control. Any attempts to invite friendly reviewers to influence overall perceptions will be less effective, since tougher critics will still be able to bring down the averages with their lower ratings.

There isn’t anything nefarious going on here besides a club acting in its own best interest. However, we can see a chilling effect on criticism start to form even before courses start extending invites. By publishing any review, positive or negative, the reviewer knows that they very well could be affecting their ability to access other courses in the future. Like it or not, we should expect the maxim, “If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all” to hold true.

To illustrate this concern, imagine a Hollywood reporter publishes a story about Brad Pitt and mentions in the story that the actor was actually kind of a jerk. This article would make Tom Cruise much less likely to agree to do an interview with that particular reporter, simply because of the negative personal details. In contrast, imagine a writer who always publishes thoughtful, glowing profiles of celebrities (regardless of whether the profile is entirely accurate). Every publicist is going to try to get that friendly interviewer for their client. The same should be true for new golf courses who care about their ratings.

Now, in a world where everyone gives positive reviews to everything, the audience’s credulity is (or should be) strained. As much as I love the We Rate Dogs methodology (where all dogs are rated higher than 10 out of 10), I’m not sure it transfers well to golf courses. My real worry here is that, when there are potential consequences for reviewing a private course poorly (or even just less positively than a club would like), reviewers may, consciously or not, reserve their more critical opinions for public courses. Even if it’s just slight differences, if most raters are doing it, we should expect it to materially affect the ratings of different types of courses.

Anonymity seems to be the obvious solution, but I think this would be a less effective strategy than many might believe. Firstly, even getting on exclusive courses likely requires most raters to reveal their status as a writer for a publication. Here, any club that cares about their ratings can keep track of the “anonymous” raters who visit their course and they can make sure those raters have the best experience possible. Beyond that, however, expecting raters to have no relationship whatsoever with these clubs seems naive. Given the interconnected relationships between people in clubs, it’s difficult to expect that anyone’s rating is truly, truly private.

Access Journalism

Providing a glimpse behind the curtain into exclusive clubs is genuinely part of the business model for many golf media outlets. Logically, this asymmetric relationship leaves publications with a classic principal-agent problem when it comes to journalistic integrity: if they make their money by covering clubs most of their readers will never actually get to play, is it really worth biting the hand that feeds them? When we look at it this way, it’s easy to see how clubs would be able to exercise some unofficial editorial control over the outlets they actually allow to cover them. This type of positive coverage in exchange for continued access would again give exclusive clubs a positive skew in ratings.

4. Rating Capture: When Reviewers are Compromised

So far, I’ve only discussed topics where nobody is actually compromising their values in writing these reviews. I just think that we shouldn’t be so optimistic about objectivity when so much money is on the line, both for the clubs and for the publications. Let me indulge, then, some ethical concerns we should have when we think about course ratings.

Relationships of Access

The relationship between the rater and the club is an obvious concern. In a world of exclusive clubs, just having access is a benefit to the rater, and that means it’s in the rater’s best interest to be friendly to the club’s members. I find it entirely plausible that raters might be very, very wary of offending these members who’ve been so kind as to allow them onto their exclusive course. This puts the rater in a very difficult position. For this reason, I could easily see a rater leaving out some of their more nitpicking criticisms of an exclusive club even when they might leave those same types of criticisms in when reviewing, say, a high-end resort course. If the ethos of the club being rated is perfection, anything less than perfection may be a perceived slight. And in the world of exclusive clubs, there may be no way to get back into good graces once the damage is done. The takeaway lesson here when reviewing exclusive courses would be, “if you’re going to err, err on the side of praise - or else you may not get a second chance.”

Financial Relationships

Obviously we should be concerned if the publications ranking golf courses, or at least the raters, have direct financial interests in the courses they are rating. In late 2023, Darius Oliver of Planet Golf wrote a piece suggesting just this. Prompted by another article written by David Jones, Oliver’s post suggests that GOLF Magazine panelists’ financial interests in Cabot, as well as its relationships with architects, might be compromising the outlet’s ratings. Garrett Morrison did a nice write up about the row, discussing David Jones’ initial article that led to the ruckus:8

Jones, who operates a UK-based golf-travel outfit, also wrote a lengthy and insightful analysis of the ranking… He comments skeptically on the high ratings of some very new courses, including the not-yet-open Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot St. Lucia. Finally, he laments the descent of Cape Wickham Golf Links, which appeared at No. 70 in Golf‘s last world ranking but has now dropped out of the top 100.

The latter two points apparently resonated with Darius Oliver, a golf-travel writer and co-designer of Cape Wickham. In a scorched-earth blog post on his Planet Golf website, Oliver describes Golf‘s list as “the magazine ranking with the most professionally, and personally, conflicted panelists.” He mentions that Ran Morrissett, the head of the ranking panel, was an “initial investor in the Cabot business” and is a “consultant on one of their projects in Florida.” (Cabot is the development company behind Point Hardy as well as Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links, Nos. 52 and 79, respectively.) Oliver also asserts that Morrissett is a “cheerleader (or promoter)” for the architect Tom Doak, who helmed the Golf ranking in the 1980s and 90s, currently serves as a panelist, and has eight designs in the top 75.

Ironically, here, this type of potential corruption would lend itself toward inflating the rankings of public courses. When it comes to the epistemology of golf course rankings, the scandal suggests that there is justification for cynicism after all.

This concern should be more relevant going forward as publications have started programs that provide some access to private clubs that are otherwise inaccessible.9 This should provide both the club and the publication a monetary benefit, and thus a financial relationship. This would again lend itself to skewing more toward some public and private clubs ratings being inflated, depending on the relationship. Again, I actually really appreciate that more golf outlets are providing access to private golf clubs. This is a huge benefit to people who appreciate architecture everywhere. It doesn’t mean anything nefarious is going on, it only means it’s worth keeping an eye on.

5. Secondhand Insights: Literature Bias and First Impressions

Most raters are probably amazing at rating resort courses. These courses are often designed to be accessible the first – and likely only – time visitors play. There isn’t much point to hidden depth at these courses. I’d even say it’s arguable that any hidden strategy at these courses is bad design. One of the most interesting resort courses I’ve played is Talking Stick’s O'odhom Course. The course, as I experienced it, had a significant amount of elegant strategy. Looking at the yardage book however, it was pretty obvious what was happening. With hole names like “Left is Right – O:gig o sape” and “Left is safe – O:gig o ma sape” the course is clearly signaling the strategic elements. This makes for a course that’s easy to understand, and easy to rate.

The opposite is typically true for member clubs. Member clubs are courses designed to be played over a lifetime. They shouldn’t be obvious. They should have the depth and complexity to generate new interest even after 100 rounds. These courses should have nuance, and much of that nuance needs to be in the form of heroic recovery shots, contours that are only useful from certain angles. A truly great members’ course has experts discovering new strategies just by watching the members reveal these tactics. My favorite example is this discussion of Corner of the Dyke from Alister MacKenzie:10

Twenty years ago I described the 16th at St. Andrews…

‘As in the majority of good holes, it is the subtlety of the slopes that makes it so. The green is tilted up slightly from right to left… the approach from the right is easy, as all the slopes assist the players, and the approach from the left is exceedingly difficult. The point about the hole is that it is so difficult to get into the best position to approach the green because of the proximity of the Principal’s Nose bunker to the railway… there is a perfectly easy route free from all risk to the left… but the player in all probability will lose a stroke by taking it.’

This description of the 16th was entirely wrong…

Ted Blackwell is a man of action, but few words… I watched him play the hole… and noticed that when he placed his drive [10 yards left of the Deacon Sime bunker], he played a run up approach so near the flag that he not infrequently got a three. I then discovered that he took advantage of a small valley (which I had previously overlooked) in the bank of the green leading up to the place where the hole is usually cut on medal days.

If the tee shot is placed ten yards to the left… or right, the advantage of this valley is lost.

Is there any course in the world that presents such subtle strategic problems?

That’s quite an endorsement! But how can new courses be rewarded for this type of complex depth when even the best reviewers won’t notice much of these nuances for years? Honestly, most of this nuance in these old courses is “noticed” simply because it’s written about at length in the canon of literature. The reason why C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor’s template courses are so celebrated is exactly that they have all that subtle nuance built in, and well-read players can understand these nuances long before ever playing.

Raters will understand the nuances of a historic course because researching and reading about those nuances is part of the job. Without the ability for significant, repeat play for modern courses, raters won’t have the opportunity to notice or discover, let alone appreciate, these nuances. I would even suggest it’s an intractable problem. Without many plays under their belts, raters likely have limited knowledge of potential pin locations, pairings of pin locations and tee boxes, differing conditions, seasonal winds, seasonal conditions, etc.

Yes, experts are supposed to infer this stuff during their visit, but do we really think that even the best raters are able to consistently account for this sort of thing? If they cannot, or if even a subset cannot, is it unreasonable to expect reputation to influence rating? When new courses are rated on a single play, or at most a handful of plays, the lack of literature about the nuance and complexity of the design will likely put downward pressure on their rating. Until those subtleties enter the canon (which, for most courses, might be never) the ratings will simply be favoring the old, established clubs simply because they’re old and established.

6. Hidden Costs: Price Bias in Ratings

One of the most obvious biases I see is the disconnect between ticket price and total cost. This is most overt when it comes to comparing high-end public clubs to high-end private clubs. Because most private golf clubs are nonprofit entities, we can actually look at this using public data. If we look at Pine Valley, we can see that their revenues from golf fees are only a small proportion of revenue when compared to membership dues.11 This delta would suggest that the total costs of private courses feel lower to outsiders, simply because they don’t show up in the green fees. In contrast, for-profit golf courses will feel more expensive, because everything shows up on the receipt. While this might seem insignificant, I only really see “value for money” discussions appear on public course reviews. More importantly, when the course is high-profile, they are always meantioned as a downside.

If raters aren’t actually paying for their rounds, fair enough, but when they are, that price bias may make people think “is this really worth that much?” It’s a selection bias in which the apparent downside will only show up for one type of course, and should materially affect ratings.

Solipsism and Scope: How Flexible Frameworks Adapt

Most golf course architect fans I know generally turn to Tom Doak’s Confidential Guide when they talk about golf course rankings.12 Why? I think epistemological concerns and his credibility have a lot to do with it. First, Doak’s ratings are published in book form, not in a kind of repeat, periodical form. Next, Doak publicly published the book after he’d already established himself as a well respected voice in golf with access to the kinds of courses most people will likely never visit. The book takes real shots at some well respected courses and highly praises some courses that are relatively little known. Finally, the framework Doak uses clearly states that his ratings are only his opinions. All of this points away from the kinds of frictional chilling effects discussed earlier in this post.

Note, however, some scores have changed a bit in later editions, which could still point to some epistemological problems. When Doak’s ratings change, those changes could be due to any of the topics discussed above, but they could also simply be due to the course changing over time. Still, when a rating is framed as a specific opinion given at a specific time these changes aren’t a problem for the framework.

Next, I’m a skeptical guy by nature, but I think there are plenty of good reasons to think twice about why certain types of courses get the rankings and ratings they do. The golf industry is tough, there is a lot of marketing out there, and even though most of it may be perfectly fine, the incentive structure is so wild that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have a bit of skepticism.

Finally, this article comes as a “part two” to my previous article, From Doak to Digest: Golf Rankings Are Built on Assumptions No One Talks About, exactly because the scope of Doak’s rating framework really eases concerns about most of these potential shortcomings. A rating framework that’s effectively just one person’s impression has space to get some things wrong, miss nuance, and allow in some biases without giving a misleading impression about a course. Whereas any rating framework that suggests itself as an authority suffers pretty significantly here.

In the end, for the vast majority of us, none of this really matters. Golf course ratings are meant to be a fun exercise that gets clicks. Do I think the way they are structured is bad for golf culture? Absolutely. The manufactured drama of who’s up, who’s down, who is worthy and who isn’t… it's a kind of sensationalism, and that’s what sells. But it’s too bad how easy it is for the whole system to end up rewarding the status quo while at best ignoring, and at worst disproportionately disparaging, more interesting, newer, scrappier, and usually more accessible courses. When we sit down to read a course review or profile, we’re not often thinking of all the politics and business incentives involved in that review being written. This is why I will always recommend finding publications who use frameworks that share your values, and reviewers you can trust.

I know most of the folks who read this blog are already familiar with Fried Egg Golf, and many are even subscribers, including me. Still, they put out so much content it can be easy to miss. I think this one is worth a listen, especially in between posts about the frameworks and reliability of course ratings:

If you thought that was interesting, the last thing I went out of my way to share was my review of When Revelation Comes, by Jim Hartsell, so check that out too.

In my ongoing mission to write about philosophy under the guise of writing about golf, I’ll discuss some of the assumptions behind these different ranking systems. Even if most rankings are meant to be fun, the frameworks behind them reveal a lot: what these institutions value, the influence these values exert, and the changes to golf culture that might result. I’ll leave my personal thoughts on aesthetic frameworks in the footnotes,1 but in this article I’ll be discussing the axioms — the foundational assumptions — that are required to construct an aesthetic framework.

Part 1: Let’s Talk About Axioms

For those without a background in math or logic, an axiom is just a starting point — something a framework takes as given. Axioms aren’t always obvious. They’re the rules that govern how someone thinks about things. When I’m making some decision, I need rules on how to decide. I know that is all a bit meta, but I hope it makes sense once we get into the specifics. This discussion will be about rating golf courses, but it’s really applicable to any theory of aesthetics. Below, I want to look at four different different choices we must consider when we decide what makes a course good:

1. Objective vs Subjective Perspectives

This is probably the most obvious distinction, and it has serious implications.2 When I say a course is the best, do I mean it’s the best period, or am I just saying that the course is my favorite?

An objective perspective means that I’m saying it’s the best course, period, based on some provable fulfillment of universally agreed upon criteria. This is not just personal preference. You might argue that you prefer a different course, but under an objective framework, you’d be wrong in your assessment.

In contrast, a subjective perspective begins with the idea that aesthetic judgments are personal. A golf course rating system with a subjective perspective doesn’t try to claim that any course is the best in some general sense — just that someone (or some group) prefers it. These systems are less about laying down universal standards and more about mapping clusters of preference.

The biggest criticism of a subjective perspective is that there are experts who just have a more informed perspective than most other people, and their judgements should be considered more valuable than a layperson’s.3 This is the basis for the vast majority of golf course rating schemes: get a bunch of experts together and then aggregate their opinions to achieve a more “correct” list. This should lead, albeit awkwardly, to concocting an “objective” perspective that no individuals actually fully agree with.

On the other hand, subjective perspectives are also fraught. Publications still typically gather experts to rate courses, but those experts don’t really attach much beyond their name and reputations to the ratings. Whether this is a good system really just depends on whether readers actually benefit from these expert opinions. If your local paper’s film critic keeps recommending art films when you only like big budget blockbusters, there isn’t really a reason to read those reviews.

2. One Score or Multiple Metrics to Consider

Another key distinction to consider is whether our framework gives us a single score or lets us know all the factors that it considered. A one-dimensional score is like a letter grade. If something gets an “A” we know it is good, and that’s easy to understand. Multi-dimensional scores grade something on different metrics. Suppose a course scores 95% on design, 98% on beauty, and 55% on accessibility. Thus, a multi-dimensional score communicates much more information, but isn’t as easy to understand.

Tom Doak’s Confidential Guide is a clean example of a single score.4 In reviewing each course the authors simply give a score from 0 to 10. That’s it. The simplicity is part of the appeal.

Golf Digest, by contrast, asks raters to score aesthetics, challenge, character, conditioning, fun, layout variety, and shot options.5 They then average these scores into a composite ranking, but you can still see the individual parts. The upside of this is transparency: if you care more about fun than challenge, you can reweigh the scores accordingly. The downside is that it assumes those variables can be separated cleanly, which isn’t always obvious.

Some systems split the difference.678 They might use multiple input variables but still produce a single overall score. For clarity, I’m calling a framework multi-dimensional only if the final output shows multiple dimensions to the audience.

3. Impartiality vs Context

This one’s subtle, but important. Should a course be judged in a vacuum, or should context count?

Most people I talk to claim to prefer impartiality. They say they want to know about the course, and just the course. You’re not supposed to consider the setting or story. But when I ask whether a perfect replica of the Old Course would deserve the same score as the course in St Andrews, nearly everyone hesitates. History, atmosphere, location — these things seem to matter, even if we pretend they don’t.

As far as I know, no major publication openly embraces contextualism in its general rankings. The practical reason for this is that few people have actually played enough courses to be able to create a full ranking from a single perspective. Since so many outlets must aggregate opinions, the only way to allow any context is to just create lists with limited context. You will see lists of the best public courses, resort courses, or links courses, for example.

This is helpful, but it won’t provide the type of perspective that a single rater can give about an overall experience that extends beyond just the physical course itself. Does travel time to a course matter? If so, how much? Should raters consider whether it’s worth going to if they’re already in the area? Systems that allow context can answer different types of questions than impartial ratings systems can. One very specific type of context that can be considered leads to another axiom for frameworks: whether or not to consider the price of the experience and the course’s value.

4. Excellence vs Value

Value isn’t really a foundational axiom in the way the others are. It acts as a sort of meta analysis we can make after we decide how much we like a course. Most high-profile rankings ignore value altogether. This can be for practical reasons: for most club courses, the cost to play varies between members, guests, and visitors. Trying to square that difference is as challenging as it is gauche. Value is also different depending on different budgets. A billionaire could trivially fly across the world just to visit a single resort course, at a cost that might be completely unaffordable for someone with a median income. Still, while accounting for value may be impractical, it seems odd to completely ignore it.9

Mixing & Matching Axioms:

Combining different axioms creates different types of rating systems. Here are a few common frameworks:

Objective, One-Dimensional, Impartial, Excellence Rating:

• Golf Magazine10

• Golf World/Today’s Golfer1112

• Golfweek (hybrid)13

Objective, Multi-Dimensional, Impartial, Excellence Rating:

• Golf Digest14

• Golfweek (hybrid)

Subjective, One-Dimensional, Impartial, Excellence Rating:

• Fried Egg Golf15

Subjective, One-Dimensional, Contextual, Excellence Rating:

• The Confidential Guide16

• Golf Course Architecture: Architects Choice17

Part 2: Some Thoughts on Prevailing Frameworks

Shifting Values is a Problem for Objectivity

Changes in course ratings over time present real problems for objective frameworks of golf aesthetics. I’ve always been a bit amused by the idea that there are new rankings published every year, where the clubs move up and down, despite whether anything has actually changed. In fact, there have been entire golf course architecture movements that have upended the way we think about what makes a course good. When golf technology began to make some courses too easy, the culture started to value more challenging courses. When golf course development was dominated by real estate developments, the culture started to place a premium on width. While it’s perfectly natural for us to look for what is missing from our current golf paradigm, we end up valuing different things at different times.

An Argument for Contextualism

The strongest argument for contextualism is its existing use in other art forms. In film we have strong genres that create a mood for different kinds of films. We have drama and comedy, but we also have more niche categories like action, horror, fantasy, or documentary. These films all serve different purposes. So, while a documentary will likely never win a Best Picture Oscar, most people, most of the time, don’t even want to sit down to watch a Best Picture winner. They want a film that suits their mood at the exact time they’re sitting down to watch a movie.

The same should apply to golf courses. We have championship courses designed to test. We have anti-penal resort courses designed to make sure everyone shoots a fantastic score. We have match play courses designed to encourage risk-taking. We have historic courses designed to be played with historic equipment. We have scruffy munis designed for players on a budget.

That isn’t to say nobody is making lists and ranking these genres. They are.18 It’s mostly that I don’t experience people framing their tastes around courses in this way. The conversation is usually about how this course is good and that course is bad. Courses are good and bad – I’m not arguing there – but they should be good or bad because they do or don’t serve a function. If we start directly comparing a Broadway show to a school play, we are forgetting that the school play entertains the parents in the audience in a very different way.

Why Golf Needs Genres: an Argument for Embracing Fashion

Where I think contextualism becomes incredibly helpful isn’t just when we break down golf courses into genres, but when we break them down into eras. That is to say, when we break golf into eras, we can appreciate being able to experience an era of golf as a whole. We may prefer minimalism to technical and narrow courses built in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but if we were to grab a set of persimmons, we might be able to appreciate just feeling what it was like to be in an era, regardless of whether it’s not our favorite.

Now, I’m probably not going to make any fans for revivals of different golf eras by pointing to the swing dancing revival of the ‘90s or the various incarnations of ska music that seem to recur every generation. However, I think there is something valuable here that demonstrates how aesthetic judgements can be influenced almost arbitrarily. We can appreciate a genre and an era independent of whether or not it exists in the current paradigm. When we are not concerned with objective aesthetics and we’re fine with framing our judgements in a context, we can really see how fashion can, seemingly arbitrarily, ebb and flow through a culture. The same could be said for golf.

Conclusion

All of this is meant as an argument for a wider breadth of architectural appreciation. I may dislike one course when playing with modern clubs, but appreciate it with hickories. I might really enjoy getting psyched up for the challenge of a championship course, but maybe not on a day I’m just trying to hang out with friends. I really appreciate playing an expensive, once-in-a-lifetime, resort course when I’m on vacation, but playing that same course every Wednesday would be financially unfeasible. Different courses are enjoyable for different reasons, at different times, and have significantly different replay value. Almost none of the current rating systems that major publications use account for any of this. This is exactly why I understand how different rating systems create different incentives is so useful. If I’m looking for a specific experience, I’m more likely to find it when I’m looking at the right kind of system.

I completely understand how impractical any of this is for publications. The origin of publications ranking courses likely started out just being something fun to do. I honestly think it’s a worthwhile endeavor if it really is just for fun. Unfortunately, ratings and rankings are now a very serious part of the industry. I’ve found the amount of courses that publish their rankings pretty shocking. I visit a lot of courses’ websites as I work to build the wiki and these rankings seem to be the most prominent signaling mechanism for courses. I honestly worry that the prominence of these ratings and interests of the people who create them aren’t always aligned with the readership. I will follow this article with one that explores these concerns and how we might adjust ratings for different potential biases.

When it comes to short par fours, I usually find them a bit boring. Yes, I might be more likely to get a birdie, and sure, getting birdies is fun. Still, when you’re expected to be on the fringe or better off the tee, do we really feel like birdie is an achievement?

I say forget par and think of each hole as if you’re playing a match. Am I debating whether to be aggressive or conservative? If I do attack the hole, is there enough advantage to make a difference? If I fail, do I still have a chance? When a short par four leaves me making different decisions on different days, then it’s dynamic, and that makes golf exciting.

Here I want to look at four attributes make the ninth at Soule Park great:

1. Optionality

The most obvious thing when I look at this hole is the number of realistic landing zones. As I see it, the central hazard creates at least four distinct targets for me off the tee, and a fifth if I have the wind helping me.

1. The most obvious landing zone is the right side. This screams safety, as it takes the crossing hazard mostly out of play. However, it also adds a non-trivial amount of distance to the approach.

2. The more aggressive layup is short left of the crossing hazard. This position significantly reduces the length of the needed drive compared to having a similar approach distance.

3. A conservative carry over the hazard, right of center.

4. An aggressive carry over the hazard, left of center.

5. Finally, there is a full layup short of the hazard. This layup is complicated by a large bump in the fairway, but players who want to avoid as much risk as possible should still play in this area.

Most importantly, however, is the ever present out-of-bounds on the left side. Playing left is never without risk, and while the out-of-bounds is not immediately in play, the aggressive line, left of center, will always be a bit more risky.

2. Temptation

The most obvious temptation on this hole is trying to carry the hazard. The reward is obvious, an incredibly short approach to the green. Successfully carrying the hazard on an aggressive line could even leave players considering a putter. Here, taking on the crossing hazard means playing for birdie instead of grinding out a par. The tradeoffs here are ideal for a finishing hole in a match, and placing it as the ninth serves this function for nine-hole games. (Edit: upon finding some research, the ninth hole was originally the 18th hole as designed by Hanse and Wagner, the course has since rerouted the course. This makes sense from a design perspective exactly for the match play ramifications. It’s a shame that the designed routing was altered.)

On the tee most players will be deciding whether to take on the centerline hazard. While the temptation is to just swing as hard as possible, it is important to remember too much distance is risky, too. Trees behind the fairway could block out players who completely carry the landing zone or miss right.

What really makes the hole tempting is the ability to recover. Ending up in the hazard might mean disaster, but more often than not, it just leaves players with a much more difficult, but makeable shot.

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3. Recovery

What I find most fascinating about this hole is that it doesn’t over-punish aggression. Ending up in the fairway bunkers is a setback, but the hazard is close enough that reaching the green it is usually reasonable to recover. The hazard is deep enough to cause worry on the tee, but given the angle to the green, it’s more likely than not that players will be able to hit a full wedge cleanly, with enough loft to get over the lip. With any luck, a heroic recovery is possible. Ending up in the bunker should be a roll of the dice, not guaranteed disaster. Recovery should always be more challenging than playing from the fairway, but should only occasionally be disastrous.

What I find most interesting about the recovery dynamic here is that the hole actually rewards players for being more aggressive. With more aggressive tee shots, even if the player ends up in the hazard, they are still significantly closer to the green than they would have been with a conservative tee shot that is misplayed. The more conservative player will be punished more for the same mistake. Here, fortune favors the bold!

4. Variability

We run into a problem, however, if one of the options that a hole provides is always the best choice. If there are too many benefits to being aggressive, we might always swing for the fences, or if the hazards are too dangerous, we may always lay up. To hold interest, it’s useful for changes in some of the variables on the hole to significantly change the way the hole plays. Here, there are two major variables that affect which path one might choose.

Wind

The most common wind pattern here is from the north. This brings uncertainty to how far right the ball may get pushed on the tee shot. This adds risk to playing aggressively and favors a layup, or at least a more conservative play to the right side of the fairway.

The second-most-common wind pattern is from the west. This is a tailwind, which incentivizes an aggressive shot to carry the hazard.

It’s also nice to see that other wind patterns show up in different seasons: an easterly headwind is fairly common in the winter, and in the late summer, wind from the south can push players toward the out-of-bounds.

Dynamic Hole Locations

One of the most important aspects that makes the hole interesting are the large green contours. These contours can definitely bring three-putts into play if the approach misses significantly. The contours aren’t random though. Depending on the angle, they can threaten to push the ball into the greenside bunker. Approaching from the left layup will significantly shorten the distance to the green, but hole locations that are near the bunker will be much more dangerous to attack.

However, when the hole location is in the front (like pins 1 and 2 in the illustrations), it might be worth trying to carry the hazard off the tee. A successful tee shot over the hazard will leave players within 50 yards of the hole, and a good chance at birdie. At the same time, the layup left is also a good option for folks who prefer hitting a full wedge in, because the greenside bunker is completely out of play.

Hole position 3 in the illustration is much more dangerous to approach from the left side. Since everything will kick toward the greenside bunker, laying up to the right side of the fairway has some advantage in allowing an angle that plays against the green contours instead of with them. Here players can use the contours on the green to get it close without risking running off the green.

Finally, there is hole position 4 toward the back of the green. This location will likely require the player to fly it in to get close, but again, there are parts of the green that run away from the shot. This could easily justify trying to carry the central bunker to get as close as possible to get a tight wedge in, but as far right in relation to the green as possible. Here, ending up out-of-bounds is the worst case. After that, ending up too far right, then running off the back. No matter what, it’s going to be very difficult to get close safely.

Short Par Four Done Right

I really think there is a type of successful short par four that is focused on fun. Since the difficulty of distance is missing, players can think about their options, and take the chances they want to take. That doesn’t mean short par fours can’t succeed by being more penal, like the tenth at Riv, just that there is a type of fun par four that offers options and strategy.

When short par fours are simple, they can feel like “must birdie” holes, where it’s more of a par three-and-a-half than a par four. But on the 9th at Soule Park, par is not a given, nor is birdie expected. I think this is where the design of Hanse & Wagner shines, because with all the risk the bunkers and contours present, a birdie must be earned. What the short design does do is compress higher scores: easy bogey, straightforward par, challenging birdie.

Mostly what I like about it, though, is that while advantages can be gained on each shot, you could never concede the hole early. A player in the bunker could easily get on the green, and perhaps in a better position than a player who has an ideal approach. It’s a high variance hole, but with a low skill threshold to compete. It invites people to take a risk, in a game where playing it safe is far too common.

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The Basics: Consistent Green Speeds

To start, I'm assuming we all agree that consistency is paramount, so when we are talking about green behavior, we assume it's consistent across an entire course. This should be obvious, so it’s hardly worth discussing.

Penal Design: a Source of Conflict

Of the widely accepted schools of golf design, I sit squarely in the strategic school. Thus, I should address the inherent conflict that exists between the strategic school and penal school. However, I want to give credit where credit is due. From a penal school perspective, I think there will be a much stronger argument for a consistent “faster is better” philosophy.

When looking at a golf course from the penal perspective, we should expect the greens to be mostly flat.1 When dealing with mostly flat greens, there is some difficulty in making them challenging. An ideal solution to this is increasing green speed. In maximizing green speeds, you maximize the penalty for a player's incorrect speed or line. From this penal perspective, it’s easy to see why you would advocate faster greens. On intentionally flat greens, faster is better.

Strategic Design: Playable Area and Strategic Elements

From a strategic perspective, however, green complexes are as good a tool as any in golf design for offering both optionality and risk-reward strategy. There are plenty of strategic green complexes that have become templates for exactly these reasons, but my focus here is how strategy is affected by green speeds.

An important effect that green speeds have on green design is how the green speeds interact with pinnable areas. I’ve heard designers talk about this as a constraint to calculate away, where the contouring depth is adjusted to the green. This works because as the friction goes down, you can effectively create the same motion by reducing the height of contours.2 However, when contouring is reduced in height to adjust for the coefficient of friction it has a dramatic impact on approach shots.

Rollout as Strategy

While large contours can provide interesting challenges on a green, their real strategic value is in their relation to approach shots. Fallaway greens are a perfect example of this. A standard, back-to-front receptive green will “receive” different types of shots. Fallaway greens, however, will allow high shots to hold, while longer shots that usually have a lower trajectory will run off the back of the green. Using a fallway green, like the one pictured above, allows a course designer to add more interest to reachable par fives by giving players a reason to lay up.

Here, however, we are using contours to reject running approach shots while accepting shots coming in from steeper angles that are able to stop shorter. What happens if we want to do the opposite? How could we design a green that is more receptive to running shots, while being more risky to shots coming in at steeper angles?

One way we can favor lower trajectory shots is with big, steep contours butted up against each other. Alister MacKenzie’s famous 12th green at Sitwell Park is a good example of this.

Here we can see that a running shot, whether it’s just right, too strong, or far too strong, can still hold the green.

Only a shot that is exactly on target will hold the green here if it’s coming in from a steep angle.

Here we can see that the range of acceptable error for lower shots is larger than that for higher shots.

The two-dimensional example above, however, is an oversimplification. I don’t want to get too technical, but the main point is that the directional vectors of a ball landing from above, at speed, will impart more velocity on the upper section of downslope than a ball released from a completely stopped position. When the shot has higher spin, this kinetic energy is converted into more velocity, sending the ball downhill. The difference in the velocity of a ball at rest to that of a ball coming in from a high angle can mean the difference between holding the green’s tier or running off.

All this is well and good, but it only provides for a small difference in outcomes. However, when we move the example into three dimensions it becomes much clearer how to illustrate how exceptionally large contours can incentivize different kinds of shots.

Deflection as Defense

In three dimensions, a running shot can change directions on a green so that it can approach a hole from a completely different direction than an aerial approach:

On this green, from this angle, we can see a running shot bend up and onto a fallaway green when approaching from the opposite direction.

Here the same area of the green can be held with a high spin shot from the opposite angle, but there is much, much less room for error. A shot that is too long or too short will be in danger, but the player also needs to worry about whether a shot to the correct distance can even hold the green. The dangers of the high shot are less severe from the opposite angle, but the green is still a fallaway green without the bend in the running approach.

There is a similar result for approaching the center of the green:

Ideally, the green is not so severe that a shot that runs on won’t roll back off. This allows the player to get close, if imperfect, shots up to the edge of the plateau without too much danger.

In contrast, the extra energy from a high-flighted shot should cause a slight miss left to run off the green.

Even a shot with a bit of spin that misses long should spin off the green. Again, once the ball gets up to speed here, it should run off the left side, but it should remain stopped if it comes to a stop on this section.

Only an extremely well struck and highly spun shot should be able to hold from the same angle as the run up. This approach leaves little room for error, and even then, the player must putt back toward the dangerous slope, whereas the runup should stop and leave an uphill putt.

Here approaching the green from the right is much more dangerous than approaching the green from the left side, but even then, it gives players optionality in approaching on the ground, and that may even provide an advantage.

Slower Greens, More Deflection

The reason why green speeds are the linchpin here is that they control the amount of fall in the fallaway green. If we want to make the approach from the right very dangerous, we need to make it nearly impossible to hold the green, even with a wedge. Looking at the previous green from different approach angles, we see how the risk increases.

The more the shots kick toward the back bunker, the more risk is added to shots from the right side. However, the angle of the green can only be pitched so far until the green becomes unpinnable at high green speeds. This means as green speeds go down, the riskier the shots can be made when approaching from the right side.

Here we can finally see the inverse relationship between green speeds and contours. The faster the green speeds, the smaller the contours must be to make the green playable, so the less deflection we can add to threaten higher lofted shots. The inverse is that the slower the green speed, the larger the contours can be, and the more complex deflections we could impose on higher lofted shots.

This Doesn’t Mean Making Greens as Slow as Possible!

Threatening contours are a tool, just like any other tool in the architect's toolbox. If the architect wants to design strategic contours that reward the ground game while increasing risk for the aerial game, that should be an option, but how often and how much is completely discretionary.3 Every single green will be different, and the vast majority will likely not want to favor one style of play over another.

However, if we want to give architects the tools to reward different shot types and test different skills, we ought to defer to the same architects on what the green speeds should be. As long as green speeds are treated as faster-is-better, we will be tacitly endorsing flatter greens with inherent advantages for the aerial game over a ground game. Once all the greens are set with any intended deflection in mind, it’s worthwhile to then go back and find out the green speed that maximizes playability and fun on all the greens with all the angles in mind.

Here we ought to design the green speeds to suit the greens, not the greens to suit a desired green speed. This is important enough to reiterate. Green speeds are ideal, not because they are fast, but because they maximize the fun and challenges of the greens themselves. Courses with flatter penal greens should be faster, and courses with strategically contoured greens should be slower, but those green speeds need to be consistent from start to finish. Greens interact with approach shots as much as they interact with putts, and when green speeds are viewed as only serving players once they are already on the putting surface, then we’ve already created severe limitations on how the green complexes can influence the game.

City Budgets Matter

The last year for me was exceedingly Cassandra-esque. As someone who is interested in and concerned about municipal finance, the warnings were about as subtle as a flashing neon sign:

• SF Standard: San Francisco in a ‘tough spot’ as $1.4B budget deficit looms

• SF Chronicle: ‘Misery loves company’: Both S.F. and Oakland more likely to close schools as budget outlook worsens

• SF Examiner: San Francisco's budget paints a 'grim' picture for The City

The irony of the situation is that the most prominent mayoral debate that was held during last year’s election barely mentioned the looming budget crisis, focusing instead on more visible crises the city is facing: fentanyl, homelessness, and a shortage of housing. Watching that debate, I could only shake my head knowing the only thing people would be talking about after the election would be the brutal budget cuts the city will need to start implementing, and will likely have to accelerate over the next couple years.

Well, the election is over, the budget cuts are here and it’s basically the only thing people are talking about now. This led to muni golf becoming notable within the Rec and Park’s section of budget cuts.

After a significant amount of letter writing, our Gleneagles SF club president actually went to a club meeting to plead with city leaders about these cuts. This caught the attention of San Francisco Chronicle reporter Sam Whiting, who came to the course to interview some of the folks at the club. I attended this interview, but had little to no input. The reporter and photographer were very nice, and I see the article, Golfers grumble about S.F. plan to eliminate city subsidy for public golf courses, as an accurate description of the sentiments of most of the folks there.

Golf is Dispensable

I had a different take than the golfers and operators in the article, that we are at this unfortunate political crossroads because of the choices we’ve made. I’ve very constantly argued that golf courses need to serve more than golfers. I’ve argued that public golf, but more specifically municipal golf, needs to make itself indispensable to the community. This is the focus and the point of all of my posts in the Golf for Non-Golfers series:

• Nobody Is Having Dinner at the Golf Course. Golf for non-golfers: hidden clubhouses, closing at sunset, all while leaving money and influence on the table.

• Golf for Non-Golfers: Golf Courses Can Assist the Migratory Monarch Butterfly Facing Extinction. Golf courses should be islands of native plant species in our cities.

• Golf for Non-Golfers: Getting from Zero to Golf Should be Fun. Courting beginners means offering a playable game without expecting them to learn first and play later.

• Why I Am Still Concerned About Municipal Courses During this Golf Boom. The thesis that worries me and that I hope I’m wrong about.

There is a concerning lack of good will for golf in modern politics. Much of this animosity is misplaced, but a lot of it is not. American urban areas are facing various crises and in all of them, golf courses are a relatively easy target. The water crisis in the American West has already claimed many courses, and will likely only get worse as climate change and groundwater depletion continue unabated. But most importantly, as I wrote in a previous article, as long as there are folks desperately trying to afford a place to live, and as long as existing residents are not willing to upzone existing neighborhoods to meet that demand, golf courses will be targeted. It’s hard to even argue against these demands when most towns and cities are entirely belligerent toward the needs of these young people. We have not yet seriously addressed the housing crisis at all.

This isn’t just hypothetical. NYC Mayoral longshot Brad Lander is campaigning on converting municipal courses into urban greenfield developments.

At every point along this political timeline, individual golf courses have the opportunity to make a statement by remaining committed to the greater community. Using native areas between fairways as actual native flora and fauna habitats provides an environmental benefit to the community, which is a positive benefit that can exist for such large areas that are used by so few people. Setting up the clubhouse, restaurant, and bar as meeting places for the community gives people a reason to care about the course even if they don’t play there. Integrating walking trails through the course allows the natural beauty and isolation of the course to be shared instead of kept private. It’s all straightforward stuff, but it matters exactly when it’s politically expedient to ditch golf for alternatives with better PR.

Golf Should Almost Always Pay for Itself

What really stunned me about the situation in SF was learning that the municipal golf courses get non-trivial amounts of subsidies from the city. Now, my point here is not to say that golf should never get subsidies — that really depends on the goals of the city. Free public golf courses, like Buhl Park in Pennsylvania and the Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh, Scotland, are obvious examples of how subsidies can make the game more accessible.

However, I see the function of subsidized golf being maximally impactful insofar as it makes golf accessible to non-golfers. That is, it should focus, like the Bruntsfield Links does, on creating a stepping stone to full-length courses, where there isn’t a real business model. Even with the subsidized land, many municipal courses struggle to turn much profit at all. We’re kidding ourselves if we think that we can create these welcoming, beginner-first golf environments without some kind of subsidy.

Golf can also be expensive, so means testing should obviously be a consideration. People who don’t have the money to play can be helped, but most of the people on these municipal courses do not need subsidies, especially in a budget crisis.

That said, my main worry is that when times are tough, having full-sized municipal courses be dependent on subsidies is a recipe for disaster. As long as golf is politically problematic, fairly or not, golf will be the target of budget cuts. This will mean that the business model for operators will be up in the air. There should be subsidies for folks who need subsidies, but it’s difficult for me to argue that I need a subsidy to play a muni course that’s cheaper than most of the courses in smaller towns outside of the city (even without a resident card).

I know this will be unsatisfying to many who read it, but I don’t think many folks realize how tenuous a situation urban municipal golf is in. Once the land is redeveloped, it’s no longer available for golf, ever. Talk of using public golf courses for housing means that any policy mistakes will be permanent policy mistakes, and muni regulars need to understand the gravity of these bad decisions.

Golf Will Always Get Picked On

Finally, I want to push back on the concern about the “unfairness” of singling out golf. Here we need to be honest with ourselves. Golf does use more resources than other sports. It has a larger footprint. It’s impossible to scale. In an urban setting, it is simply impossible for golf to be accessible to everyone in the city because there simply is not enough space. It’s a tough thing to accept, but that’s why golf is always, always, always going to be the target of budget cuts first, even when no other sports programs have any cuts at all.

That’s okay though, and it’s why I constantly argue that golf needs to make itself indispensable in ways that other sports can’t. A tennis court cannot act as an animal habitat. A football stadium can’t host a native pollinator apiary. All the basketball courts the city can build won’t do anything for migratory species. They don’t host wedding receptions at soccer fields. Golf courses that can do double duty in these ways can make themselves indispensable to the city by being a net benefit to all residents, not just residents who play golf.

Share

I want to discuss here what we mean by links golf, and how the perennial fight about the term’s use impacts the greater golf community. Most folk anticipating another article confirming their priors—that it’s obvious what a links golf is—probably aren’t going to like this one. My background in language has left me perpetually frustrated with this debate, and so I thought it was worth exploring.2

But it is obvious.

Yes, the obvious answer to what we mean by “links golf” is golf on linksland. And I understand why some might respond to me like I’m an imbecile3 for questioning it. Yes, If you want to define it that way, more power to you, but this simply pushes the question to what we mean by “linksland.” Here are some of the reasons this gets complicated:

• Do we mean only places historically referred to as “linksland”?

• If we define linksland geologically, how wide a net do we cast?

• How much construction is allowed before the linksland stops being linksland?

• What if a place was once linksland, but then was, say, mined for sand?

• Could former linksland be restored back to linksland?

• If former linksland can be restored, can non-linksland be converted?

• If we accept that geological processes define linksland, how much ecological diversity do we tolerate before we stop calling it linksland?

• What if we encounter linksland with trees, and the course on linksland ends up with tree-lined fairways?

The qualities of golf on traditional linksland are worth celebrating. Almost all of the questions posed here are focused on edge cases. A good parallel is looking at what we mean by “countries.” It’s easy to point to the U.S. or Germany as obvious examples of countries, but things get complicated when you look at edge cases like Taiwan. If all we care about are the obvious cases of linksland, we could just send people to St Andrews Links and call it a day.

If someone is more concerned with links golf as a style of golf—the way the ball dances on the first bounce, the beauty of the way the shadows fall in the evening, the ability to play the game on the ground—things start to get extremely complicated. The imitation “links style” courses you see in many areas of America are pretty much insulting to anyone who has played on fescue by the North Sea. Still, modern courses designed to honestly reproduce the style of golf at these historic venues are getting extremely good. Can we protect the specialness of traditional links courses while still offering an olive branch to those good-faith actors trying to offer the experience in places far removed from where linksland occurs naturally?

Links

This is generally the part of the essay where a writer might note, “Webster’s Dictionary defines…”, but that will not serve my purposes here.4 Even the etymology of the word is generally contested if you go back far enough: Old English’s hlinc is generally cited, but also the Proto-German ​​hlinen (some record lenk-en); still others have tied the word to Old English’s ling and Middle Engish’s linch.56 What people usually ignore here is that some of earliest references to the word tie it to both rivers and fertile soil, not just sandy coastal areas.7 None of that matters, though, when dealing with the semantics of how it is used in a modern context. I just think it’s worth pointing out so that people don’t start making historical arguments for some clear and singular definition.

Yes, all courses used to be called “links” even if they weren’t on linksland. No, that is not important for our purposes here.

Just to get it out of the way, yes, golf courses that weren’t on linksland have been called “links,” even as far back as 1712.8910 The term has been effectively used this way to the point at which our written records begin. The debate as to whether this term is or was “incorrectly” attributed to those courses is both difficult to address and is beside the point. We have multiple etymologies. The term was used to reference various courses and types of land that don’t comport with the current meaning. It is hard to argue that the term didn’t have a wider use than the one we currently maintain.11 Again, all of this is mostly irrelevant to my purposes here, but is also still worth illustrating.

Aside from casual slang, I do think we use the term now to refer to linksland, and especially golf courses on linksland, or at least it is used to imply or associate a golf course with an idea of linksland.

Linksland

I know it when I see it

The term linksland seems much more modern that the term links,12 but if we just mean linksland when we say links, then it’s still pretty simple, right? Well, again, this just punts the issue from one term to the other. Again, the idea of linksland is framed by what we mean when we say “linksland” and where we draw the boundaries of the term. The attributes that come to mind when we think of linksland are quite obvious. Foremost, there is the location; linksland sits on sandy dunes between the inland fertile areas and the beach. To many, that’s all we mean: a term defined simply by pointing at the things we mean — linksland there (St Andrews Links), and there (Yellowcraig), and there (The Links on Holy Island).1314 This is a very good way to frame a definition!15 Unfortunately, “I know it when I see it” types of definitions have trouble holding up to scrutiny. That only matters if we have strong feelings about our terms. This is semantics after all, but when we disagree about semantics, it’s generally a good idea if there is some mostly objective method to our taxonomy.

With linksland, we run into large differences in kind when we start looking at edge cases; e.g., are the mountains of sand in the Murlough Nature Reserve the same thing we mean when we talk about the subtle contours at Coul Links? How far inland is linkland allowed to be? What level of turf coverage is needed, or which species? What about areas in South England, France or the Netherlands? What about in America or Australia? Is there a point when linksland just becomes dunes?

Definitions in nature

To deal with the muddled approach of pointing at things, we usually turn to formalize concepts, but this is not without some difficulty.16 Here, thankfully we can simply point to natural systems to better define our terms. When we think of linksland, we need to think of rivers.17 Generally speaking, rivers feed the sand onto the beach, where the waves push the sand along, then wind blows the sand into coastal dunes. Now, coastal dune systems are complex, and linksland is a very general term, but if we are trying to find meaning for linksland based on natural processes, we should be able to conflate the two ideas.

Looking to coastal dune systems as a natural proxy for what we mean by linksland is fine, but it leads to more disagreement. Do we require grasses? Which types of grasses, and how much coverage do we require for the land to be considered linksland? Again, we get caught up in disagreements on the minutia, even when examples of linksland already in the accepted canon show the breadth of possible answers to these questions.18

Trouble Spots

Trees

Carnoustie

What about trees? We have some prominent links courses with some trees. Anyone can see the trees in some parts of Carnoustie. Do we concern ourselves with this? Coastal dune systems can support trees under certain situations, but I think most golfers would reject heavily forested areas as linksland, even if they are steps away from dunes like in the Gateway National Recreation Area. And Scotscraig—a course literally on a road called Linksfield—has too many trees to be considered a links by some.19

Dune structures

Bandon Dunes

Bandon acts as a shibboleth for where most traditionalists and modernists disagree. Whether all, or even some, of the courses at the Bandon resort count as links is up for debate.2021 Bandon Dunes sits on what are called Quadrinary Terraces (informally, raised beaches), atop cliffs above Whiskey Run Beach. When built, these dunes were extremely mature, and included a significant amount of tree cover. These are certainly not the same type of rolling grassy dunes found in a coastal dune system like Coul Links. But Bandon’s status as a links has faced less scrutiny than other courses, like Highland Links on more traditional linksland on Cape Cod.22 However, it is telling that while the term “links” does exist in Bandon’s marketing, they chose to use the less controversial term “dunes” in the name. As the fescue has been lost to poa, which tends to dominate other grasses in this region, some folks in the media have started to notice.23

Style

What about “parkland” courses that are steps away from beaches on dunes? This is an issue of the look and feel of a course on linksland not matching the expectations some have of a links course.

Golden Gate Park Golf Course

The most glaring example of this, to my mind, is Jay Blasi’s reworking of Golden Gate Park Golf Course on the west side of San Francisco, CA. Because the city is at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, the west side of San Francisco used to be almost entirely sand dunes. What exists there now, especially the parks, is almost all a complete conversion of nature to suit the residents' preferences.

Slowly those dunes were replaced by roads or buildings, or were converted to parks. The city wanted these parks to look and feel like more traditional parks in other parts of the country. So they capped the dunes with soil and manure to plant trees.24 However, as part of Blasi’s reworking of the Golden Gate Park course, he scraped off the top layer of soil to get down to the dunes below. Finally, the team seeded fescue on top and Golden Gate Park GC was reborn.

While there was obviously some earth moving done, the dune system is natural and it’s as “linksland” as one could ask. The ball there dances on the fescue just like at any other links course. The problem is that it doesn’t look like what people expect a links to look like.

Grasses

Wick

Even some traditional links courses, like Wick, are poo-pooed now as no longer being “proper” links, because the wrong kind of native grasses have encroached on the playing surface25 (even when traditional grasses extend beyond fescues26).

Sharp Park

Down the road from Golden Gate Park, we get to what is left of MacKenzie’s Sharp Park:

The original version of Sharp Park, especially west of the lagoon, was as “linksland” as one can get. Built into the dune system at Sharp Park Beach, the course would over time lose its most famous holes to winter storms, the same way many links courses do. At Sharp Park, the biggest problem with a “links” designation — apart from the complications from lost holes — is the grasses. Some folks object to the invasive Kikuyu because the ball won’t run as much.

Others

There is also the Links at Spanish Bay, originally linksland that was mined for sand, after which it was constructed and grassed with fescue (later lost to poa). Because the land was mined and the grass is non-traditional, the course is often not considered a links. There is Whistling Straits, which should hit all the key requirements of linksland except that it is on the coast of Lake Michigan rather than the ocean. There is a semi-links course in Kingsbarns, not considered a links by many because some of the course was built on linksland while other parts were not, and the shaping was wholly constructed. Juxtapose that to traditional links courses like Royal Liverpool, which can completely construct new holes without concern about any Ship of Theseus problems. Finally, there are courses literally steps away from beaches, like Silverknowes Golf Course – a course that almost nobody would insist was a links course, yet one that does sit steps away from a beach.

These are all contradictions that come up when describing linksland in terms of natural systems. I’ve even heard some try to deal with these frustrations by simply claiming that only linksland in Great Britain and Ireland should count. Reaching for easy boundaries is understandable, but completely overlooks the diversity of flora across the region, while at the same time ignoring the near-identical flora of some of those areas and their neighbors in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.27 Setting up an arbitrary distinction – say, a 475-mile radius from St Andrews to St Agnes – is just as arbitrary as “I know it when I see it.”

At the end of the day, I think the way we winnow the lists of links courses will simply differ from person to person, simply because the concept of linksland is more complex that we like to admit, and we are ultimately conflating a style of experience with complex natural processes.

One Solution: Appellations

A real testament of the vagueness of the terms “links” and “linksland” is the emergence of the term “true links”.28 Now, I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there trying to limit the term “linksland” to only the type of linksland that fits the ideas we have of links golf, and I completely understand that. The courses commonly associated with these terms are very special places, and most share extremely similar attributes. I think they are special enough to be protected, but I just think that these courses are a bit too diverse to be properly fit under one cohesive, single term.

I propose that we create well-defined appellations for all the areas that we think should qualify as linksland, and that all the courses in these regions of linksland must meet regional requirements to qualify for an official designation. The wine industry uses appellations to protect its regional wines, and so too, the golf industry could use this as a way to protect its golf regions. Assuming good-faith local control, courses like Wick could still qualify in their own region, even if their grasses vary from those on links courses in other appellations.

As an example, imagine the Tay Sandshed Links Region as an appellation. This would include all courses built on the linksland created by the sands from the River Tay. Here we could also include smaller sub-regions influenced by the River Eden’s sand.29 This Tay appellation could include courses from Arbroath to Crail, depending on the boundaries of the Tay sandshed. This is effectively a form of terroir. Beyond this sandshed, we would start to consider courses in the South Esk sandshed to the north, and the huge Forth sandshed to the south.

The benefits of having well defined links regions defined by sandsheds is that the regions could be directly associated with their unique sandscapes. The huge dunes of the Murlough Nature Reserve region would be able to market themselves specifically by their unique dune features, instead of being lumped in with the areas without as much grandiosity.

Also, in the same way we have highly respected California wine appellations, which are distinct from the more traditional French or Italian appellations, appellations for linksland in California can also flourish even with some non-traditional qualities to them. For example, these appellations could allow for intentional design to suit the dominant (if nonnative) grasses like poa, zoysia, or even kikuyu. All of the unique instances of linksland could be respected, and the different regions could vie for prominence based on their respective unique features and cultural history.

How do we deal with the courses that misappropriate the term “links”?

Finally, we come to the heart of much of the animosity. Some accepted “links” courses do not even come close in approximating the characteristics that most links courses share. Nobody is ready to throw Bandon out of the links club, but there are plenty of courses that deserve to be.30 Ironically, some of the best homages to linksland in America are nowhere close to the ocean. The Nebraska Sandhills region, and the areas around it, are home to some of the most links-like courses that exist. Here there are rolling sand dunes, thick native grasses, and fine fescues that seem to tolerate the climate quite well.

If we’re honest about addressing genuine misappropriation, but we still want to allow some appreciation of courses that recreate the attributes well, we should spend a minute examining what we want from “links golf.” The general complaint about misappropriation is about courses that look the part, but do not play the same. Here, the attributes we should focus on are more functional than aesthetic. If we imagine Marvel’s Daredevil decided to take up the game of golf: what would he notice about links vs parkland golf?

What is essential to links golf?

Is an ocean/sea necessary to the links golf experience? Probably not.

The most obvious element of links golf courses is their proximity to a coastal body of water. Whether it’s the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the English Channel, or the Atlantic Ocean, many of the traditionalists insist this is essential. I would suggest that it is not. Many of the best and most historic links have large sections where the coast isn’t even visible. Yes there are elements of being on the coast that are extremely important to the links golf experience: dunes, wind, etc. But these elements can exist away from the coast. There may be some aspects of seaside courses that affect play (perhaps the relative humidity?), but for the most part things like the views, the sounds, or the smells aren’t particularly important to the golf.

Are strong winds necessary? Yes.

I see strong winds as the most impactful aspect of the links experience on play. It’s certainly essential. This is directly related to a general lack of trees on and surrounding the site. As trees can significantly reduce the amount of the wind in play.

Is a lack of trees necessary? Generally, yes.

Aside from aesthetics, trees can diminish the strong seaside winds associated with the traditional links golf. Even if they don’t significantly encumber prevailing winds, they can block out some shot angles that might be necessary in high winds. Thus, generally speaking, a general lack of trees should be associated with links golf, even if there is plenty of space for trees to exist in moderation.

Firm turf: is sand necessary? Generally, yes.

Sand allows for easy drainage, so the turf is generally firm, even in wet weather. It’s part of the reason the ball will bounce and run, and that’s closely associated with the links golf experience. So, is it necessary in creating the elements of links golf? I think usually, but not always.

When I was growing up in Texas, many courses would get so cooked under the summer sun each year that the ground would get hard as a rock, and bounce like concrete. This surface recreated much of the bounce and run that we expect from linksland. That said, this hardpan is a temporary condition. You might be able to replicate firm turf seasonally in some areas, but if you want it consistently you’re probably going to want to play on sand.

Another problem with hardpan is that it’s difficult to play from. Unlike in sand, chipping and pitching can be very difficult from hardpan, hence the adoption of the “Texas wedge”: playing a putter from hardpan in lieu of a tricky chip. Sand is simultaneously firm and soft. That is a unique surface, and that surface is probably essential.

Firm turf: are links grasses necessary? Probably not.

Links golf is generally associated with one grass type: fescues, particularly fine fescues. The grasses are known for allowing the ball to run without getting slowed significantly on the fairway. I’ve played on fescue at multiple courses and it certainly does cause the ball to run! However, to discuss whether this behavior exists on all types of links courses, we would need to look at all the native grasses associated with links courses: marram, sand ryegrass, fescue, and bentgrass. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to these grasses, and can’t really know whether or how much difference there is in how they behave. However, for the idea we have of links golf, I think it’s safe to say that fine fescues are probably fine as a baseline to judge the experience.

Here, however, I want to push back strongly against the perception that fairways must run extremely quickly and behave similarly to the current iteration of traditional links courses. The game has changed so much in the last 50 years that it’s hardly worth looking at the average runout on modern fairways and then pretending it needs to be maximized. First off, we have mowers and agronomy that make fairways far shorter than they ever grew when the grass was managed by sheep.31 This should lead us to believe that much of the bounce and zip of the ball are a more modern aspect of links courses than we probably realize. The other reason we tend to feel like links fairways run forever is simply that modern golf equipment helps enormously. Traditional hickory drivers had dramatically lower launch angles, which should make for dramatically more interaction with the ground off the tee.32

Thus, I think we should be very skeptical about how “poorly” non-traditional turfs behave when we are actively using equipment that largely changes the way the ball is interacting with the turf in the first place. This is especially true when the turf is cut optimally for rollout and the course has appropriate drainage. Still, this is not something I’m willing to fall on my sword over. I’ve played on fine fescues and the extra runout is non-trivial and unique, but I still think we can recreate much of that experience simply by using clubs with lower launch angles and less spin.

Irregular playing surfaces? Yes, to an extent.

Probably the most notable feature on a links course is the undulating terrain. The issue here is that the level of undulation is not really set in stone. There are links courses that are wild and links courses that are relatively flat. While not every course is the Himalayas, I think it’s fair to say that undulation is essential to the game.

Riveted bunkers? No.

The last stereotypical feature of a links course I think is worth discussing is the riveted bunkers. While they are closely associated with links golf, they are not essential, and traditional hazards were simple blowouts.33 The riveted aspect actually came about as a way to reinforce the bunkers, which could be unstable in areas that saw a significant amount of play.

If we recreate the essentials, are we recreating links golf?

So I’ve identified four essential qualities (wind, sand, grasses, and contours).34 Still, some would argue that it is simply impossible to recreate links golf. Robert Hunter writes:

The true links were moulded by divine hands. Links-land, the fine grasses, the wind-made bunkers that defy imagination, the exquisite contours that refuse to be sculptured by hand—all these were given lavishly by a divine dispensation to the British. These perfect models—not of their own making—were at hand for the British designers to study and praise.35

He continues:

When we build golf courses we are remodelling the face of nature, and it should be remembered that the greatest and fairest things are done by nature and the lesser by art, as Plato truly said.36

If there is a blasphemy I’ll speak here, it’s that I just plain disagree with Hunter. Perhaps it is that they were once limited by their technology, but architects have gotten obscenely good at recreating the contours of linksland. There is no doubt that courses like Bandon, while largely constructed, are still praised by most as “true links” courses. I think we can reproduce the essential elements of links courses, with rumples cut into sand or on sand-capped soil planted with fescues, and set in largely empty areas with strong prevailing winds. Not only do I think we can do that, but I think that to some extent we should do that where it is effective.

The question becomes, though, what do we call these “genuine” recreations? The current trend is to call them dunes courses, similar to “Something Dunes” or “Something Dunes Golf Club.” Here, we could create a brandy vs cognac distinction: all cognac is brandy, but not all brandy is cognac. In the same way, all links courses would be dunes courses, but not all dunes courses are links courses. I think if we choose to use the term “dunes,” we should use it in the same way we use “links.” That is, we should call a course “Placename Dunes” or “Placename Golf Dunes” like we call courses “Placename Links.” When you name a course something like “Sandy Dunes Golf Club” then referring to it as “Sandy Dunes Dunes” seems wrong. If we follow the traditional “Placename Dunes” we could create a suitable replacement for the unique “golf links” naming convention that differentiates the place from a generalized golf course, and communicates specific information to potential players.

I understand many will be hostile to the following statement, but I also think that it should be fine to call good-faith and high-effort linksland reproduction a “links” if it hits all the essential qualities and they are reproduced well. What we mean by “links golf” seem so deeply tied to the style of golf, and the term “links” is vague enough that the term “true links” has been adopted to refer to (mostly) natural linksland sites anyway. This especially would make sense if we had a formalized appellation system with rules where a kind of subordinate appellation could be applied to non-coastal sand sites.

Trouble still remains for terminology for not-quite-fully linksy sites. What do we do about Bandon with poa? What do we call Kingsbarns? What do we call NGLA? It is complicated. For the links-like courses built on dunes, the “dunes” moniker is perfect. However, we could again see a problem of non-linksy courses on dunes then using the term “dunes” in their names, which would perpetuate confusion.

Just spitballing here

I’ve thought of a bunch of terms to throw around. Some of them are legally different in the way that other technical substitutes often riff on the legal name:37

• “Landlinks,” “inland links,” or “inlinks”

• “Fieldlinks” or “field links”

• “Sandlinks” could be a good replacement for inland links-style courses on natural sand sites.

• “Beach.” I think the name “Beach” could be a good replacement for parkland courses on the coast; “Silverknowes Beach” has a nice ring to it, associating it with the winds of a coastal course without defining it as a links course.

Many of the courses that make the most egregious appropriations of the term “links” are simply trying to communicate that the course differs from traditional parkland in some way. Those courses should have a term that communicates that. The term “parkland” is just too vague to communicate anything. There are a few terms: “heathland,” “desert,” “mountain,” and occasional hybrids like the Melbourne “sandbelt” courses, but it’s still just too few! We should have regional terms for areas like the Long Island coast, Oregon coast, California canyons, Texas hill country, and other regions of unique landforms and flora.

Normalizing appellations or expanding our taxonomy for courses could allow for much more sustainable agronomy. Instead of planting fescues on the Oregon coast and waiting for the poa to take over, we could just design these courses with poa in mind, and make the contours more severe to create more of the movement we want on the ground. We can intentionally design inland links-like courses in Texas with an emphasis on playing them during the dry summer when the ball dances wildly on the hardpan and dormant bermuda. We don’t need to try to pretend we’re recreating Scottish linksland if we have naming conventions that communicate the style that is being created using the best regional means.

Conclusion

I wish I had a tidy solution like others have offered. I really do think the terms “links” and “linksland” just get extremely vague at the margins. The natural processes involved are not straightforward enough for a convenient definition. This vagueness does not mean just any course can be called a links, though.

A good parallel is to countries. We can all agree that France and Brazil are countries, and that California and Alberta aren’t. Anyone suggesting otherwise would be treated as crazy. Where it becomes vague is when we start talking about Kosovo, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Somaliland, or even Sealand. Even though it’s just semantics, a lot of people have strong opinions on the margins.

When people settle into a position of certainty, it’s often the result of drawing arbitrary lines. Obviously there is nothing wrong with deciding edge cases to suit one’s personal opinions, but these arbitrary distinctions lack the authority that the language police assert.

I’ve offered a few practical solutions to this problem. Primarily, I think the easiest and most thorough way to create precision is to adopt formal, regional appellations in golf. Appellations based on sandsheds and flora provide the precise expectations on the golf experience, while allowing enough variation in local ecological regions to remain distinct. They also provide more room for wider usage of general terms, such as inland links (or links-style) courses, because the lack of appellation status communicates lack of formal recognition.39

Courses that grew out of natural linksland and native grasses are certainly special, and are certainly worth recognizing, but anywhere the wind whips, the turf bounces, and the contours are unpredictable will always be a good place to have a match, regardless of whether that place is, as Peter Alliss would say, “in sight and sound of the sea.”