The post Go inside Riviera Country Club, the most exclusive clubhouse in golf appeared first on Golf.

The post Go inside Riviera Country Club, the most exclusive clubhouse in golf appeared first on Golf.

Riviera is a Golden Age design with the golden glow of Hollywood about it. Walt Disney, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart were members, just as Larry David, Owen Wilson and Mark Wahlberg are today.

Yet for all the public figures who have walked its grounds — and for all the prominent tournaments it has hosted — the club protects itself from prying eyes.

Beyond its gated entrance in Pacific Palisades, a circular drive leads to an expansive Spanish Revival-style clubhouse that Riviera’s ownership regards as sacred. Cameras are forbidden, with rare exceptions.

One of those occasions came in the run-up to this week’s U.S. Women’s Open, when the club gave GOLF.com permission to film inside.

The guided tour — led by longtime Riviera member Michael Robin, with input from director of golf Todd Yoshitake and other veteran staffers — offered an intimate look at a stately space most golfers never get to see, steeped in history and filled with priceless memorabilia. Arched doorways open to a grand hall, with soaring ceilings and windows that peer out across the storied course. An adjacent room shimmers with glassed-in displays that make up a newly installed exhibition to commemorate the centennial that Riviera marks this year. From a patio outside, the view extends over the 18th hole and its famous amphitheater green to take in the Pacific in the near distance. Ocean breezes are a constant at Riviera, rippling the palm trees and complicating shots.

Downstairs, at ground level on the sloping property, is the terrace dining room and a corridor that leads to the locker room, its walls mounted with portraits of the greats who have won at Riviera, from Hal Sutton and Fred Couples to Phil Mickelson and Sam Snead. No name, though, looms larger at Riviera than Ben Hogan, who captured three titles (two L.A. Opens and the 1948 U.S. Open) in the span of 18 months — a feat that inspired Los Angeles Times columnist and Riviera member Jim Murray to nickname the course “Hogan’s Alley.”

“If you listen carefully and dream a little bit, you can feel the big galas from the Roaring Twenties and you can feel the giant events from the last 100 years here,” Robin told us.

The stories, though, are better heard in person. Watch the video above or below and get them straight from the source.

The post Go inside Riviera Country Club, the most exclusive clubhouse in golf appeared first on Golf.

The post Why London deserves consideration as the world’s greatest golf city appeared first on Golf.

The post Why London deserves consideration as the world’s greatest golf city appeared first on Golf.

Scotland and Ireland own the conversation, and for good reason. St. Andrews, Muirfield, Royal County Down, Royal Portrush and Ballybunion are as good as advertised — possibly better. The difficulty is that everyone knows it. Tee times open 18 months in advance, and the most coveted are gone within hours. A trip that once felt like a rite of passage now requires the planning of a military operation.

The answer is hiding in plain sight. England. Crazy? Stay with me.

London may be the greatest golf city in the world. Melbourne is in the conversation, but no other city comes close. Within 45 minutes of Heathrow are four courses on GOLF’s World Top 100 list, and unlike New York, Chicago or San Fran, where golf of this caliber sits behind private gates, every one is open to the visiting golfer.

Travel

6 best golf resorts in Scotland, England and Wales | GOLF Top 100 Resorts

By: GOLF Editors

On the outskirts of the capital, the Surrey Sandbelt takes five days to play. Settle in and the courses — Sunningdale Old and New, St. George’s Hill, Swinley Forest — are 30 minutes apart. The least celebrated of those is ranked No. 57 on our World list. Walton Heath (Old) sits within an hour, and its sibling New Course rewards those who squeeze it into their itinerary. Six world-class rounds, well within reach of the airport. For the golfer with time to spare, the three W’s —Worplesdon, Woking and West Hill — are must-plays too.

For those traveling as a couple, Central London has it all. The hotels are among the finest anywhere. The restaurant scene has long since earned its place among the world’s best. Globally renowned art galleries, shopping, theater and live sports abound. A non-golfing partner will not be kept wanting while you play England’s best.

Two hours from London, the Southeast coast will reset your preconceptions about English golf. Royal St. George’s, Royal Cinque Ports and Prince’s sit side by side on linksland that belongs in the same conversation as any in the British Isles. Add Rye and, for many, the Southeast becomes the whole reason for the trip.

The South may have the glamour, but it doesn’t have all the golf. Four hours north of London, Royal Liverpool, Royal Lytham and Royal Birkdale need no introduction. Hillside, Wallasey and Formby complete a stretch that would be celebrated the world over were it located almost anywhere else.

The tee sheets are open, the courses are in magnificent shape and the golfer who makes the trip to England leaves asking the same question: What took me so long?

Book your 2027 (and beyond) dream trip with 8AM Golf by contacting discovery@8amtravel.com.

The post Why London deserves consideration as the world’s greatest golf city appeared first on Golf.

The post Inside 1 man’s quest to play the country’s Top 100 public courses in a year appeared first on Golf.

The post Inside 1 man’s quest to play the country’s Top 100 public courses in a year appeared first on Golf.

For as long as this sport has existed, golfers have chased daylight. And for as long as there have been lists, golfers have chased those, too.

The latest adventurer on such a quest is Daniel Belk, a 32-year-old Denver-based entrepreneur who recently sold two companies, leaving him with free time and money in the bank.

“Everyone kept asking me, ‘Daniel, what’s next?'” Belk says. “I was like, Y’all gotta stop asking me what’s next. It’s starting to stress me out. Let me just take a week to play some golf.”

A week turned into two weeks, which gave rise to an idea: play GOLF’s Top 100 Courses You Can Play in less than a year.

“I’ve always been someone who has loved to travel, and golf courses are epic destinations. It’s a super-fun way to see many parts of the country,” Belk says.

Easier said than done.

It is, for starters, an expensive project; Belk has budgeted $85,000 for it. It also requires planning. Tee sheets get crowded. Weather turns sour. Belk began his odyssey in April and, as of this writing, has knocked off 12 courses. Only 88 to go.

His schedule is shaped by the seasons. Springtime has found him in the Southeast. Summer will take him through the Midwest — he and his friends have a Ryder Cup-style match slated for Sand Valley. Come winter, he figures to make his way through California and Hawaii.

Belk has a few things working in his favor. His brother has a pilot’s license and access to a plane, which allows for some surgical strikes. And despite the name, the Top 100 isn’t spread evenly across the map. More than half the courses on the list are concentrated in just seven states: California, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Then there’s this advantage.

“I’m in the perfect spot in life where I don’t have kids and I don’t have a job, clearly,” Belk says. “Instead of waiting until I’m 60, let me shoot a couple of sub-80 scores, have some fun and do it while I’m young.”

Not a bad reason to chase a list.

To learn more about Belk’s journey, watch the video above.

The post Inside 1 man’s quest to play the country’s Top 100 public courses in a year appeared first on Golf.

The post How a past champion put a personal stamp on Byron Nelson host course appeared first on Golf.

The post How a past champion put a personal stamp on Byron Nelson host course appeared first on Golf.

When Lanny Wadkins won the Byron Nelson Classic in 1973, he earned a $35,000 paycheck and a handsome trophy, presented in person by the tournament’s namesake.

Wadkins was 23, at the dawn of his career. Nelson was 61 and long retired from competition. The two became friends and fellow World Golf Hall of Famers. Their connection would not end there.

Through the decades, Wadkins watched as the Byron Nelson moved from venue to venue, leaving its home at Preston Trail Golf Club for other Dallas-area courses. Nelson remained its official host until his death in 2006, and his name has followed the event ever since. Wadkins, meanwhile, has forged a new tie to it as the architect of sweeping renovations to TPC Craig Ranch, which hosts this week’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson.

“Oh, I’ll be out there watching,” Wadkins said by phone. “I want to see how those guys take it on.”

Wadkins is 76, but he’s no old dog learning new tricks. He’s been involved in course design for decades, collecting credits that include Blackjack’s Crossing in Lajitas, Texas, and TPC Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. After his playing days, he climbed the broadcast tower and spent 18 years as a TV commentator. Now that that chapter is closed too, he’s turned his full attention to design. “I really don’t like to do something unless I can go all in,” he said.

His work at TPC Craig Ranch was the lynchpin to a $25 million overhaul carried out by club owner, Invited Clubs. The work began as soon as last year’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson wrapped up, with Scottie Scheffler running away with the title by eight shots at 31-under par. The course, a Tom Weiskopf design that opened in 2004, had never been touched. Now it has been.

Wadkins’ mandate was familiar in the modern era: stiffen defenses against the game’s best players while keeping the course playable for everyone else. One of the layout’s strengths, he said, was its flexible tee options, crucial in Texas, where the wind holds near-constant sway. He leaned into that, stretching several holes that play with a favoring prevailing wind. He also repositioned and deepened bunkers and tweaked angles on several holes. The 9th green now sits closer to a creek, for instance, while the 11th green — a bunker-less complex with false fronts that Wadkins described as reminiscent of the 14th at Augusta National — wraps closer to a lake.

“That’s one way to defend these days,” he said. “I try to put the driver back into play as an important club.”

On the greens, Wadkins and his team went with bentgrass, a receptive turf that allowed them to create challenging contours. Hole locations sit in relatively flat areas, so players will be rewarded for precise approaches. But sloppy shots stand to be punished, leaving players with long, bending putts or testy recoveries from run-off areas.

“Without stellar iron play, it’s going to take some real imagination to play well,” Wadkins said.

Growing up in Virginia, Wadkins cut his teeth on Golden Age designs, including a pair of William Flynn courses. Those experiences stuck.

“I did well enough in my career that I got to play a lot of really great courses,” he said. “But always really liked the old stuff.”

At Wake Forest, his home course was Old Town Club, a Perry Maxwell design, and he credits Maxwell’s wrinkled, contoured greens as an influence in his own work.

Some of that old-school sensibility shows up at Craig Ranch. The par-3 4th now features a Biarritz green, a classic design element, with a deep swale bisecting the putting surface. The 11th green, with no bunkers and a series of false fronts funneling wayward approaches away from the hole, is reminiscent of the 14th at Augusta. On the 6th hole, Wadkins and his team added a fronting lion’s mouth bunker, stiffening the demands of a short par 4 that Wadkins watched players carve up last year. They also stretched the tournament tee back to the fence line and installed crossing bunkers at 320 yards, forcing players to decide whether to lay up safely to a ticklish distance, or challenge the sand.

How hard will the course play? Wadkins isn’t sure. A lot depends on setup, which he does not control. He planned to play a practice round with his sons to get a feel for things — though he’s quick to note his game is no barometer of elite golf. “I hit it so short, I can hear it land,” he said.

If he had his way, the rough would be thick and the greens lightning-paced. “I think they could play them at 13,” he said, “though I don’t think the Tour would want to play them quite that quick.”

Hard to know what the winning number will be. The purse, though, will be dramatically different than it was when Wadkins won. The total payout tops $10 million, with the winner taking home $1.8 million.

The post How a past champion put a personal stamp on Byron Nelson host course appeared first on Golf.

The post Next challenge for Michelle Wie West? Designing a golf course appeared first on Golf.

The post Next challenge for Michelle Wie West? Designing a golf course appeared first on Golf.

With her recent return to competitive golf, Michelle Wie West has revived her old career. At the same time, she has embarked on a new one: golf course architecture.

Wie West has signed on to design her first layout, a par-3 course at Candyroot, a destination resort-in-the-making in South Carolina about an hour from Columbia and Charlotte. The course, called Sweet Tooth, will sit on the same sandy belt that stretches across the Carolinas into Pinehurst, where Wie West won the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open. Construction is slated to begin late next year.

“Public courses are really interesting to me because that’s what I grew up playing,” Wie West said of her childhood in Hawaii. “I’m also drawn to shorter-form courses because golf can be so intimidating to people just starting out. This helps lower the barrier to entry.”

Though the routing has not been finalized — the length and number of holes will depend on what the land allows — the broader concept, Wie West said, is already taking shape. Spread across roughly 25 acres on Candyroot’s 1,210-acre property, Sweet Tooth is intended to be both flexible and social, with holes that can vary in length and strategy depending on the setup. Better players chasing birdies will be asked to carry hazards to small landing areas, while beginners, juniors and shorter hitters will have safer layup options on holes that can be played as par-4s and par-5s.

To underscore that point, Sweet Tooth will feature alternate scorecards.

“Technically, it’s a par-3 course,” Wie West said. “But I also want it to be configured so kids and beginners can play it as a par-72.”

The course will also be lighted for night play, with holes designed to crisscross and converge to foster a communal atmosphere.

“I want it to be a fun, unique design,” Wie West said. “Kind of a ‘choose your own adventure.'”

Wie West’s collaborator is Mike Koprowski, a former Washington, D.C., policy analyst turned golf architect who earned praise for his work at nearby Broomsedge Golf Club. Koprowski is also leading the design of Candyroot’s first full-length 18-hole course, which is scheduled for preview play this fall and is one of four planned 18-hole layouts at the resort.

The Sweet Tooth announcement comes at a transitional moment for Wie West, who bid an emotional farewell to competitive golf at the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach before returning early this month on a sponsor’s exemption at the LPGA’s Mizuho Americas Open in New Jersey. She struggled there but said that she enjoyed “feeling the nerves in all the worst ways.” She’ll experience them again next month at the U.S. Women’s Open at Riviera.

Wie West married Jonnie West, the son of late NBA legend Jerry West, in 2019, and the couple have two children. One of the pleasures of returning to competition, Wie West said, is that her 5-year-old daughter is now old enough to follow along more fully with her journey.

At Sweet Tooth, presumably, mother and daughter will have a place to play together.

The post Next challenge for Michelle Wie West? Designing a golf course appeared first on Golf.

The post Go inside Desert Mountain’s sublime clubhouse, an understated desert spectacle appeared first on Golf.

The post Go inside Desert Mountain’s sublime clubhouse, an understated desert spectacle appeared first on Golf.

Mention modern minimalism and most golfers know what you’re getting at. The term describes light-on-the-land designs that move with the terrain rather than riding roughshod over it. It’s been the dominant aesthetic in golf course architecture for decades. But it’s also evident in clubhouse design.

Consider Desert Mountain Club.

The North Scottsdale landmark, hosting this week’s U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, has seven clubhouses, one for each of its courses. But its signature structure — and the central stitch in the club’s social fabric — is the Cochise-Geronimo clubhouse: a 72,000-square-foot space that is as subtle as it is sublime.

On a recent visit, GOLF.com received a guided tour from architect Bob Bacon, who set out to create something functional, enduring, and understated. In his view, the desert is “a visually fragile environment” where trees top out around 20 feet. “If you’re not careful,” Bacon said, “buildings can overwhelm it instantly.” So he designed a structure that doesn’t jump out of the mountain. It grows out of it. Walls reach into the landscape, anchoring the building to the earth, transitioning from the ground rather than leaping up from it.

“It looks like it belongs there,” Bacon said.

The stonework deepens that sense of rootedness. Bacon described the materials as an homage to the Anasazi ruins at Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in New Mexico. That’s a cultural reference as much as an aesthetic one, lending the building “a timeless anchor.”

“This is the southwest,” Bacon said. “It needs to be durable. It needs to look like it’s been here forever.”

The features of the building are both hard-lined and fluid. The interior gives way seamlessly to the exterior, allowing for an interplay that Bacon said is only possible in the southwest. Even the views are carefully managed: the clubhouse offers 360-degree sightlines across desert and peaks, but Bacon resisted the temptation of unframed panoramas, which he believes are almost numbing in their lack of nuance. So he designed columns and rooflines to frame the vistas, re-proportioning sky and ground to keep the emphasis on the horizon while creating multiple intriguing views instead of a single, uninterrupted vista.

He wasn’t chasing any particular architectural style, he said. The goal was something functional, beautiful and unobtrusive. Which is to say, both simple and complex.

Minimalist? Sounds about right. You can watch the entire clubhouse tour below.

The post Go inside Desert Mountain’s sublime clubhouse, an understated desert spectacle appeared first on Golf.

The post Old Petty opens for play at gateway to the Scottish Highlands appeared first on Golf.

The post Old Petty opens for play at gateway to the Scottish Highlands appeared first on Golf.

Golf course development would never be mistaken for Hollywood filmmaking. But the two industries do share one trait: both know how to stage a rollout. Movies get premieres and advance screenings. New courses get preview play.

Nothing, though, compares to opening night.

Or, in this case, opening day.

That moment arrived Friday in Scotland, where Cabot Highlands held an official ribbon cutting for Old Petty, the second course at the resort formerly known as Castle Stuart.

Adding a second course was part of the plan when Cabot acquired Castle Stuart in 2022. Tom Doak was enlisted as the architect, with his longtime associate, Clyde Johnson, overseeing matters on the ground. Together, they shaped a layout across rumpled terrain beside the Moray Firth, routing holes around tidal inlets and alongside 400-year-old Castle Stuart.

The course itself was named for another nearby structure, Old Petty Church, which stands sentinel to the right of the 2nd hole. Among the routing’s other many memorable features are crossing fairways on the 1st and 18th holes and coastal vistas that emerge at different points throughout the round, only to disappear behind dunes. Those fleeting glimpses are something of a metaphor for the marketing of the course itself, which held limited preview play last year. A sneak peek prior to the main event.

For Cabot, the opening marks another milestone in the transformation of the property into a luxury golf destination anchored by two marquee courses. Gil Hanse and the late Mark Parsinen designed Castle Stuart, which already ranks among GOLF’s Top 100 courses in the World. Old Petty shares the same firm-and-fast DNA, but no one would mistake the two layouts for twins.

“It was important to build something that would fit naturally with the great courses in the area while still having its own identity,” Doak said in a release announcing the opening.

The timing is fitting, as the 2026 golf season gets into swing in Scotland. The location is apt, too, with Old Petty positioned at the start of the Highlands, close to Inverness airport — the gateway for excursions farther north to such popular courses as Royal Dornoch Golf Club, Nairn Golf Club and Brora Golf Club.

The post Old Petty opens for play at gateway to the Scottish Highlands appeared first on Golf.

The post Who killed this 100-year-old golf course tree? A $2,000 reward for answers appeared first on Golf.

The post Who killed this 100-year-old golf course tree? A $2,000 reward for answers appeared first on Golf.

Tree removal is all the rage in golf these days. It opens up turf to air and sunlight, restores classic sightlines and gives courses a cleaner look. But there’s a right way to do it. And then there’s what happened at Cokato Town & Country Club.

Sometime in the wee hours of Thursday morning, a vandal (or was it vandals?) trespassed onto the modest nine-hole course in Cokato, Minn. — about an hour west of Minneapolis — and chopped down a 70-foot Douglas fir believed to be nearly 100 years old. The tree had stood in a strategic position at the bend of the par-4 7th hole, a dogleg right.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing a silver-and-white pickup truck near the course around 2 a.m., and someone making their way across the darkened grounds toward the 7th hole.

Cokato board member Adam Tabberson told GOLF.com on Thursday that the club was operating under the assumption that the culprit had played the course and had a score to settle with the conifer.

“Depending on your game, it could definitely be a problem,” Tabberson said. “You had a good chance of hitting it if you sliced.”

That wasn’t always the case. Cokato first opened for play in 1929, but was rejiggered in the late 1950s. As part of a rerouting, the fir went from factoring on the 5th hole (it was, of course, much smaller then) to its position on the 7th. That bit of history is now gone, and unlike a stolen flagstick or a damaged bunker, it can’t be replaced or repaired quickly.

“We’d have to plant something much smaller and wait for it to grow,” Tabberson said.

The cleanup is no gimme, either.

Tabberson said that chopping up and clearing the toppled tree will cost more than $5,000, a hefty bill for a facility that charges $15 for walkers and $25 to loop it twice. Still, the club is willing to spend to address the matter. It is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the responsible party.

On Thursday, play went on as usual at Cokato, as the tree fell away from the playing corridors and did not damage the course — the one silver lining in an otherwise dark situation.

“Running a golf course is tough enough as it is,” Tabberson said. “Something like this, it’s just a bummer.”

The post Who killed this 100-year-old golf course tree? A $2,000 reward for answers appeared first on Golf.

The post 12 things I learned at golf architecture bootcamp appeared first on Golf.

The post 12 things I learned at golf architecture bootcamp appeared first on Golf.

What can the average recreational golfer learn from a five-day, in-depth seminar on golf course design taught by prominent architects? Plenty. Provided they’re willing to nerd out on the nitty gritty and get their boots dirty in the field.

For the second time, the American Society of Golf Course Architects hosted Design Boot Camp, drawing 15 students to work in a team-training environment to develop their own designs guided by leading figures in the field. The inaugural session in 2024 took place at Erin Hills outside Milwaukee in advance of the 2025 Women’s U.S. Open. This year’s camp was held at historic Pinehurst, locking in on the principles behind its legendary No. 2 course and using No. 11 — a Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw design set to open in fall 2027 — as a hands-on educational aide.

Attendees paid $20,000 tuition, with $15,000 of that earmarked for ASGCA’s philanthropic efforts to support public course development and to fund the recruitment and education of the next generation of designers. This year’s instructors included ASGCA members Jan Bel Jan, Jeff Blume, Jeff Brauer, Bruce Charlton, Steve Forrest, Mike Hurdzan, Tom Marzolf and Damian Pascuzzo. Coore also led students on a walking tour of his course-in-the-making at Pinehurst No. 11.

That’s who did the teaching. But what did they teach? Here are 12 key lessons from the camp.

1. There’s so much more to the work than meets the eye

Most golfers have little concept of the amount of time and effort that goes into creating a single golf hole, let alone an entire 18. Planning and construction can take years, requiring close attention to a dizzying array of details that the average player takes for granted — from topography, drainage and irrigation to cart paths, grass varietals, soil types, ADA accessibility and more. Greg Norman once said that “nothing is easier than designing a difficult golf course.” But designing a compelling course that gets built on time and on budget with all the nuances dialed in? That’s a tall task.

2. In a digital era, it still calls for analog skills

While AI will undoubtedly transform the field, and design software like AutoCAD is already creeping into related tasks, designing a course is still an artisan trade. The sketching of contours and careful color-coding of hazards remains a hands-on skill. Once the ink and graphite are laid down, designers physically lower their faces to the desk, sighting down the direction of play on the paper roll as though standing at the tee. For now, the human eye is the final judge.

3. It takes a village

A course is envisioned by an owner, planned by a designer and built by extensive construction crews. Keeping all of them aligned requires meticulous planning. Since a designer can’t always be on site for a day’s digging or grading, detailed plans are essential to keep everyone on the same page. That’s especially true on international projects where languages differ. Inches, feet and yards need no translation.

4. Good design keeps the round moving

A well-designed course doesn’t just challenge players. It maximizes their time. According to bootcamp instructor Jan Bel Jan, pace of play should be as central a concern as shot difficulty: “Being able to maintain pace of play is important for the enjoyment of a round. The design should reflect enough of a challenge while allowing the competent player to maintain pace of play.”

5. Maintenance matters more than you think

Designers were emphatic on this point throughout the week: over the long haul, upkeep is more important than the original design. A brilliantly conceived layout can deteriorate quickly if maintenance lags — and much of that burden falls on proper drainage. Students got a vivid demonstration when they played Pinehurst No. 2 following a morning of intense thunderstorms. By noon, the course showed almost no trace of rain beyond slightly slower greens and some packed sand in the bunkers. That speaks to world-class maintenance and infrastructure. It’s also evidence of great design.

6. The golfer is always the end user

Just as automakers envision their typical buyer when designing a car, course architects must keep their audience in mind at every turn. The difference is, there’s no single “average golfer” to design for. The goal, then, is to design an experience that works for 99% of players. Golf courses are businesses, and no business wants to send its customers home frustrated.

7. Great holes offer options for every skill level

While it’s not true for every hole — especially par 3s intended for target golf that leave no choice but to bomb it at the flagstick or aim for the center of the green — most good hole locations allow an escape route for the higher handicapper while still rewarding the player willing to take risks.

8. Width is a weapon — and designers know how to wield it

Every course starts wide and gets narrowed down through revisions, and those width decisions are central to how difficult a course ultimately plays. Pinehurst No. 2 was a vivid illustration: even a modest hook or slice sent balls into hard-packed sandy waste areas thick with scrub and wiregrass. It’s a course owner’s call — and a designer’s mission — to determine the width and length of a course in relation to its level of difficulty.

9. The best designers need room to experiment

Bill Coore’s walking tour of the in-progress Pinehurst No. 11 was a highlight of the week, offering a ground-level look at how a course takes shape before a single blade of grass is planted. Along the way, between lessons on using recycled debris to create hills and insights into the earth “work as artwork,” Coore credited the clients who give him and partner Ben Crenshaw the latitude to try things: “We love it when we’ve got ‘weird owners’ who let us try things along the way. We understand experimenting affects budget, but this is a creative process.”

10. Sustainability isn’t optional anymore

The industry has moved decisively toward environmentally sensitive design. While some projects still involve clearing land down to bare dirt, the stronger trend is to preserve as much existing terrain, vegetation and native species as possible. With golf under occasional fire from environmentalists, working with the natural landscape — rather than against it — has become both a design principle and a practical defense.

11. It can be a family business

Davis Love III arrived at Boot Camp in a dual role — part instructor, part supportive parent — accompanying his son Dru (officially Davis Love IV) through the program. Love III is no stranger to design, having recently overseen the revitalization of Harbour Town at Sea Pines, but he made time before heading to TPC at Sawgrass to watch his son work through the process firsthand. “It was my son who told me about the Boot Camp, and he brought me into it,” Love said. “It was great being here and watching him work through the design process in real time.”

12. Events like this can spark the next generation

Mara King, a freshman on the Penn State women’s golf team, stumbled across the Boot Camp when her squad was in town for an NCAA event. Instructor Jan Bel Jan invited her to sit in on a morning session, and it planted a seed. “The idea of designing golf courses is a career option that hadn’t occurred to me before,” King said, “but seeing everything that goes into it is really interesting. I think it might be something I want to study after college and after my playing career is over.”

The post 12 things I learned at golf architecture bootcamp appeared first on Golf.

The post America’s best college golf course returns after high-profile redo appeared first on Golf.

The post America’s best college golf course returns after high-profile redo appeared first on Golf.

The college golf rankings are always in flux. But college golf course rankings? Not so much. With all due respect to fine layouts at Stanford, Williams, Ohio State, Oklahoma State and others, one campus course has long been consensus No. 1.

When it’s actually open, that is.

For Yale Golf Course, a celebrated Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor design, that’s been hit or miss in recent years. After shutting down at the end of the 2019 season, the course slumbered on through 2020, beset by maintenance problems that deepened during the pandemic. In late 2023, it shuttered again, this time for a full-scale renovation that rates among the most notable public-access redos in recent memory. That work consumed 2024 and 2025, but it’s now complete, and the scheduling could hardly be better-synced.

On April 28, just ahead of its centennial, Yale GC will be back in business, following a Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner-led renovation aimed at honoring Macdonald and Raynor’s original 1926 vision. Greens, tees, bunkers and fairways have been expanded to their historic dimensions. The iconic double punch bowl on No. 3 has been revived. The rare inverted bunkers on No. 6 are back. New championship tees push the layout past 7,000 yards, and every green has been rebuilt to USGA specs, a first in course history.

Yale once ranked as high as 71st on GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World list, but dropped off the last three editions, a rare — and glaring — shift in the college course hierarchy. It’s hard to imagine that the course won’t be in the mix next time ballots are submitted.

But never mind rankings. Let’s talk recreational play. Unlike many elite collegiate layouts, you don’t need a diploma — or an acceptance letter — to book a time at Yale. Green fees for non-affiliates run $350, which isn’t cheap but about what you’d expect for a course of this pedigree. Getting out on Yale, in other words, is much easier than getting in.

3 things I’m thinking

Philadelphia story: Another Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner project — the full restoration of Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia — is still roughly a year from completion. But an important phase crossed the finish line this week with the grand opening of Lincoln Financial Center at Cobbs Creek. A name like that makes the place sound like a baseball stadium. In fact, the center is a three-story building that houses a restaurant, pro shop and double-decker driving range with Toptracer technology, all good to go for the start of the 2026 season. As with other recent marquee muni revivals, including the Patch, the Park and Golden Gate Par 3, work at Cobbs Creek has been propelled by deep-pocketed private investment. And the benefits are already showing, though the big biggest payoff won’t come until 2027, when the updated Olde Course at Cobbs Creek (the original was designed by Hugh Wilson of nearby Merion fame) opens for play.

Whale of a change: The humpbacks will be back in Kapalua, but it’s hard to know what else might change now that the PGA Tour won’t be returning. You probably heard the news. The Tour has done away with its Hawaii Swing — both the Sony Open on Oahu, and The Sentry, the traditional season-opener at the Plantation Course in Kapalua on Maui. It’s no secret that Kapalua has been through the wringer in recent years, ravaged by drought and devastated by deadly wildfires in nearby Lahaina. Now comes the end of a 25-plus-year-old tournament that accounted for an estimated $50 million in annual economic activity for the island. Kapalua’s other course — the Bay Course — remains closed due to water issues. But the Plantation Course, which shuttered for three months last September, is up and running, which makes me wonder how it might be used in January, now that it won’t be hosting an tournament that it first staged in 1999. With the Tour pros absent, will that week revert to everyday resort play? Maybe. Maybe not. A well-placed source tells me that Kapalua is looking into welcoming another event during that same window, though what shape that might take is still TBD. 

Festive fundraiser? Possibly? More muni-related news, though it comes with a caveat. Registration is open for The Whole Hog, a daylong golf outing and barbecue fundraiser at East Potomac Golf Links in Washington D.C. It is scheduled for May 8 in support of National Links Trust — the same National Links Trust that was working to restore East Potomac when the federal government revoked its lease late last year. Though NLT still operates the course, that status is tenuous, a point underscored by the invitation to the event. The cost per player is $375, which includes 36 holes of golf, breakfast, lunch, dinner and tee prizes. But, the invitation notes, there’s “a chance that NLT will no longer be operating the course at the time of the event due to the actions of the Trump administration. If this occurs, we will refund the entry fee.”

The post America’s best college golf course returns after high-profile redo appeared first on Golf.