A guide to some of America’s best golf in a US Open year

If it has been a decade since you’ve been to Pinehurst, it’s time to go – much has changed. There are several additions to the scene, and most of the major courses have undergone serious transformations. Although Pinehurst (and neighbouring Southern Pines) is still Pinehurst, a quaint, historic village that’s not like anywhere else in golf – or even like anything outside its small geographic radius – the overall environment of the golf, resorts, lodging and restaurants is more evolved than it was 10 years ago, the last time the resort hosted the US Open. 

What hasn’t changed is the difficulty of selecting where to play. Choosing how to divide your rounds in such a target-rich environment can tie visitors in knots. These are my top choices to help guide where you should be playing. 

ONE (Featured image)

Pinehurst No.2
No.29 America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses
No.6 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses
No.1 Best in State

No.2, host of this year’s US Open, would be the top selection on nearly any list, no matter where it was located. Already one of the four or five most original designs in the United States, the re-establishment of the original sand and wiregrass borders in 2010 by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw has given the course the aesthetic punch it previously lacked. Playing here is, in equal proportions, a deeply cerebral and emotional experience. Everything else in Pinehurst plays off the No.2 course in one way or another. 

TWO

Tobacco Road Golf Club SANFORD
No.45 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses 
No.12 Best in State

Tobacco Road might not be the clear second-best course in the Pinehurst region, but it’s one that should not be missed when anywhere near it. The design was the apotheosis of late architect Mike Strantz’s unique take on risk-reward golf and visual agitation. Beautiful and bewildering, this is funhouse golf full of greens stretched into silly putty shapes, vast chasms of sand to play over and around and numerous blind shots that ask you to hit and hope and hold your breath. 

THREE

Pinehurst No.10

Several holes of this Tom Doak design, which opened in April 2024, plunge through old sand quarries, including the turbulent eighth where players will want to pop Dramamine before tackling fairway swells you could surf across. No.10 feels like a world apart from the resort’s tight cluster of primary courses and symbiotic surrounding village. The grandeur of the isolated holes roller coasting through quiet sand barrens five kilometres to the south creates tension between the sublimity of the environment and the heroism of the architecture, demonstrated most intensely in the uninhibited green shapes, many of which are bowl-shaped and heavily segmented. 

FOUR

Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club SOUTHERN PINES
No.86 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses
No.24 Best in State

Located in Southern Pines, Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club, designed by Donald Ross in 1921, is pure elegance and beauty. The routing is spellbinding, with holes that stretch into corners at the property’s high points, then fall back down to intersect at junctions across the calmer interior. Kyle Franz’s 2013 work expanding greens and restoring the perimeter sandscapes has greatly enhanced one of Pinehurst’s most refined golf presentations. 

FIVE

Pinehurst No.4
No.171 America’s Second 100 Greatest Golf Courses 
No.28 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses
No.9 Best in State

Like a football team searching for the right coach, the resort could never settle on the right identity for the No.4 course despite a series of major alterations by different architects. It found its match when it hired Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to carry out a full-scale blow-up and rebuild in 2018 that brought back the sweeping sand and pine character we identify with Pinehurst while initiating a style of shaping in the greens and bunkers that’s confident and distinctly its own. 

SIX

Pinehurst No.3

Don’t overlook little No.3, which many Pinehurst guests probably do once they note the course plays to a maximum distance of less than 4,750 metres. You’d never know it. This is serious golf, pound for pound the toughest course on property and a scaled-down version of No.2. The greens are dazzling with the same crowned edges as big brother, and recently revived bunkers and perimeter barrens that match. It’s also the resort’s best walk. 

SEVEN

Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club SOUTHERN PINES
No.63 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses 
No.15 Best in State 

Pine Needles used to lurk quietly in the Pinehurst background before the USGA chose to put it in their regular women’s championship rotation. It got another big boost in 2017 after Kyle Franz reworked portions of the course, putting the Pinehurst touch on the borders, cross hazards and bunkers. Although it lacks the intimacy and connectivity of its sister course, Mid Pines, with holes that wander further afield because of being part of a 1920s residential development, it has grown into a big, championship-worthy course with arguably the most sublime set of greens after No.2. 

The Cradle

You wouldn’t want to skip any of these other courses just to play the Cradle, mainly because you shouldn’t have to – you can fit it in at twilight or between resort rounds (though that can be a challenge based on high demand). But it’s hard to beat the little one-shot, nine-hole course on the thrills-per-minute meter. Located just off the Pinehurst clubhouse, it’s a golf-and-social scene as all age groups play with a handful of clubs across a field of wild tees and greens as music pumps through speakers. It even has a halfway house, so you’re never more than a few dozen steps from provisions. 

NINE

Pinehurst No.8
No.100 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses 
No.26 Best in State

Cut from a nature preserve with no surrounding development, No.8, designed by Tom Fazio in 1994, is one of the most serene experiences in the area. Fittingly, there’s a wild element to the course as the holes move in unexpected directions towards racy greens that change style from scene to scene. The modernness of the design cuts against the genteel Pinehurst aesthetic, and there’s not a lot of routing cohesion, but it’s a fast-moving train that’s worth the ride. Fazio’s team returned in 2022 for touch-ups and to restore the fast and firm playing surfaces. 

TEN

Southern Pines Golf Club 
No.72 America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses 
No.17 Best in State 

Southern Pines used to be a course that only locals and architectural bookworms played. Designed in the early 1900s by Donald Ross, the affordable public course occupied a wonderful, bucolic piece of land that seemed to have buried treasure underneath. After a change in ownership and a major 2021 renovation by Kyle Franz that added plenty of razzle-dazzle to the design in the form of new greens and plenty of attractive sand barrens, the secret is out, and Southern Pines has now become a Pinehurst darling and one of North Carolina’s better courses.

ELEVEN

Pinehurst No.6

Many would put the sexier Jack Nicklaus-designed No.9 in this spot, but No.6’s simple logic is more appealing to me. It was designed and built in the dark ages of the 1970s by George and Tom Fazio and is one of the sleepier courses in the area. But don’t be too judgmental – with all the sandy pyrotechnics happening around the neighbourhood, No.6 chugs along with quiet grace, presenting traditional hole after traditional hole of smart, effective bunkering through a property that rolls high and low through lovely stands of pines. There’s a lot to be said for this kind of maturity.  

The post 2024 US Open Preview: My favourite Pinehurst-area courses, ranked appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

In our latest installment of “Ask an Architect”, in which we bring a topic in the world of course design to an architect, Drew Rogers fields our questions on the value of bunker liners.

Rogers worked with the late Arthur Hills for 18 years, and since 2010 has consulted with dozens of clubs across the United States on their renovations. Various makes of bunker liners have also become prevalent on Australia courses.

Ask A Super: Why are you coring our greens when they’re in perfect shape?

Question: Drew, bunker liners – barriers made of polymers, concrete or other materials that protectively seal bunker sand from the underlying soils – have become widely used during the past decade but can add major cost to construction budgets, perhaps $250,000 to $1 million depending on the product and course’s overall size of bunkers. What do you tell clubs about the value of bunker liners?

Rogers: The short answer is that bunker liners are just another tool in our arsenal. At best, they can potentially solve a variety of maintenance and architectural issues. The first liners were developed several decades ago to help manage bunker drainage and to prevent contamination when underlying soils leech into the sand, which is going to happen at some point. When this happens, you eventually need to replace the bunker sand.

I try to explain to clubs what liners do and how they can be helpful. First, many clubs spend an enormous amount of money on specialty bunker sand that needs to be transported in, often from long distances. Liners can protect this investment by keeping the underlying soils from infiltrating the sand. Second, they help with erosion and irrigation. The premium liners we use now allow water to pass through the sand without destabilising it, and this can save countless hours of labour that would otherwise be spent pushing and raking the sand back up into faces after heavy rains. Third, because of their unique properties, they allow architects to do more with our bunker shapes. We can design bunkers with the sand flashed high on the face for added visibility and aesthetics. We can get a little more creative without worrying about washouts or collapsing faces, which in the past would have been a concern on certain sites.

I really fought bunker liners for a long time. The old versions weren’t as effective and had shorter lifespans, and I didn’t feel like I could trust them. But they’ve come a long way in the past 10 or 15 years, and now they’re just damn effective.

For clubs that are willing to invest in these expensive products, will they see a return on their investment?

In most cases I believe so, but it also depends on the existing conditions and other factors like the number of bunkers a course has, the type of soils, the style of the bunkers and the amount of precipitation the course typically receives.

They’re not right for every site. If a course has sandy or free draining soils, liners are probably not worth it. A dry climate without a lot of rain isn’t going to be committing major hours of labour repairing bunkers after weather events, and courses with flat-bottomed bunkers with grass faces probably won’t benefit from them either, though they will help with contamination.

In other places, the benefit of keeping sand stabilised on the bunker face after downpours can save a course a tremendous amount of money. Bunkers have become probably the most expensive and most labour-intensive part of golf-course maintenance. Superintendents do the cost-benefit analysis: some estimate they can save up to 70 percent of their budget by eliminating the need to devote significant labour to bunker repair. I’ve got to think after four or five years the bunker liner investment is paid off in those situations.

One downside, other than the initial investment, is the cost to tear them out and replace the liners when that time comes, which will happen at some point. [Note: Most liner warranties are for 10 years.] What is the cost and scope of the deconstruction process? We haven’t gotten far enough in their lifecycles yet to know what that looks like, but overall I’ve come around to believing liners are a welcome tool that gives architects and clubs options they didn’t previously have.

The post Why some courses invest up to $1 million in this sneaky genius bunker feature appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Glyn Kirk]

It might approaching winter in Australia, but it’s a question that lingers for many golfers during all parts of the year – because it seems to happen each year: just as they reach their peak and the greens are starting to roll well, they get cored.

The ensuing days and weeks are the most frustrating of the year. Surely there must be a reason why our golf course superintendents wait until the greens are in good shape to aerate, right?

Coring greens, as explained by a top course superintendent

That’s the question I asked Mike Dachowski, the superintendent at Shelter Harbor Golf Club, an exclusive private club in Charlestown, Rhode Island, ranked on our latest America’s Second 100 Greatest Courses list. Under Dachowski’s leadership, the course is among the top-conditioned courses in the New England region of the USA, according the Golf Digest ranking panel.

Golf Digest: Mike, many of the courses I play start to roll really well by mid to late spring, but then all of a sudden they are aerated. Is that timing intentional?

Mike Dachowski: Yes, the timing of aeration is very important. If you aerate before the grass wakes up and reaches an appropriate growth potential, then the grass isn’t going to heal. It might take weeks for aeration holes to fill in because the grass just isn’t growing.

That’s why we aerate a few weeks into the [spring] and not right at the beginning. We have to wait for the grass to wake up and start growing in. That’s frustrating for a lot of golfers, to have us aerate the greens just as they get nice, but trust me, they are going to heal way faster than if we aerated earlier.

You mention an interesting term: growth potential. What’s that all about?

Growth potential is how quickly the grass is able to grow given the temperature. In the middle of the summer, our growth potential in coastal Rhode Island is nearly 100 percent, but in the winter months, that number is far lower. For example, in December through February, our growth potential at Shelter Harbor is zero. The grass is completely dormant.

Should you repair pitch marks on cored greens? We asked a superintendent

What growth potential are you looking for to be able to aerate greens?

We like to have the growth potential reach 50 percent. That’s when we feel comfortable that the grass will recover after aeration. Where we are in Rhode Island, it takes a few months to reach that threshold – usually about mid-May. In April, the growth potential is only about 10 percent, so if we were to aerate then, then the grass wouldn’t grow back in very well.

Of course, it’s worth mentioning that growth potential varies across grass types and location. For courses south of us, they might hit that 50 percent growth potential in April. It’s all about knowing your climate and adjusting your schedules accordingly.

When do you core again after that?

We aerate again on the day after Labour Day (early September in the US). Just like in the spring, it’s essential to time it right. If you aerate too late in the [autumn], when the grass has stopped growing and the growth potential is low, then the greens won’t recover before the winter. That’s a disaster. On the coast in Rhode Island, our growth potential nosedives in October, so it’s key for us to aerify and have the greens grow back in before October hits.

For any golfers frustrated about aeration, I get it, but if we don’t do it, the greens will really suffer. For us to get the greens in the best shape for the longest time, we need to do it a few times a year.

Ask A Super: We all want fast greens, why can’t you just cut them shorter?

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What’s the value of a brand? That’s an interesting question when it comes to Greg Norman – who has mixed an undeniably successful business career with a more controversial turn as the in-your-face face of LIV.

Norman has designed more than 100 golf courses around the world, from The National’s Moonah course and Brookwater here in Australia to Tiburon and ChampionsGate in Florida and the Fire course at Jumeirah in the United Arab Emirates. Less famous (and less successful) is his signature course outside Los Angeles, the former Golf Club of Vellano.

Designed as a part of a luxury condo and villa development, it struggled financially since its inception in 2006 and finally shut down in 2018. Now, the ghostly remnants of the 6,300-metre (6,900-yard) course and the 109 hectares (269 acres) it occupies are up for sale.

Fancy yourself a turnaround specialist? You’re going to need some serious cash and a lot of mowers to get the course back in shape for play. The property is offered at $US17.5 million for the course and 4,180-square-metre (45,000-square-foot) clubhouse – which has a wedding-venue tenant in place. Or, if the Tuscan-meets-Vegas-style architecture isn’t to your taste, the course and maintenance buildings are being offered alone for $US10 million. The question? Do you buff up the Norman design and wear the shark badge proudly or retool the layout within the constraints of a routing dictated by existing home sites?

Whatever a new buyer decides, the owners of the 175 homes surrounding the overgrown property will undoubtedly be thrilled. A 930-square-metre home within the course’s gated community is currently for sale for $US5.5 million, and empty lots are being offered for $US1 million.

Chino Hills is located about 80 kilometres east of LAX, on the border of Orange and San Bernardino counties. The population is 75,000 – and notably doesn’t include inmates at the California Institution for Men, the medium-security state prison located in neighbouring Chino.

The post This abandoned Greg Norman-designed course can be yours, but you’d better bring a mower appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Gary Kellner/PGA of America via Getty Images]

A decade has passed since Valhalla Golf Club last hosted the PGA Championship, where Rory McIlroy held off Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy in 2014. The club in Louisville, Kentucky returns to host its fourth PGA Championship, and if the finish at this year’s PGA is like either of the past two contested at Valhalla (Tiger Woods defeated Bob May in a thrilling playoff in 2000), then we’re in for an exciting week.

In the next decade, the PGA will continue to return to familiar host sites – notably Quail Hollow in 2025, Baltusrol in 2029 and Kiawah Island’s Ocean course in 2031 – but also will visit courses last seen on the men’s side when they hosted the US Open, including San Francisco’s Olympic Club and Congressional, located just outside Washington, DC.

Also slated to host the championship in 2027 and 2034 is the Omni PGA Frisco Resort, the new headquarters of the PGA of America that features two new courses designed by Gil Hanse and Beau Welling.

Scroll on to see every course that is scheduled to host the PGA Championship:

2025: Quail Hollow Club, Charlotte, North Carolina

Few golf-course projects had more national attention in recent years than Quail Hollow, mainly because its front nine was redesigned just a year before it hosted the 2017 PGA Championship, won by Justin Thomas. The par-4 first and par-3 second holes were completely torn up, replaced by a new, long, dogleg-right, par-4 opening hole. Several hectares of pines to the left of the fifth tee were removed to make room for a new par-3 fourth. (With its knobby green fronted by three traps, it proved to be the most frustrating hole for pros in the 2017 PGA.) More pines were removed to the left of the par-4 11th, replaced by bunkers, and even more trees chopped down on a hill left of the par-4 18th to make room for money-making hospitality boxes. There’s no question that this latest remodelling, rushed though it was, improved the course. The course was also rerouted for the 2022 Presidents Cup.

2026: Aronimink Golf Club, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

Aronimink is an object lesson in architectural evolution. After Donald Ross completed his design in 1928, he proclaimed, “I intended to make this my masterpiece.” That didn’t keep club members from bringing in William Gordon in the 1950s to eliminate out-of-play fairway bunkers and move other bunkers closer to greens. The course was later revamped by Dick Wilson, George Fazio and Robert Trent Jones. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Ron Prichard, one of the profession’s original restoration specialists, began returning Aronimink back to Ross’s conception based on the architect’s drawings and field diagrams. But there was always a discrepancy between what Ross drew in plans and what was actually built in 1928. A more recent renovation by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, who live nearby, has put the course’s architecture more in line with what aerial photographs depict of the early design, particularly the bunkering that might have been imagined as larger in scale but built in smaller, more scatter-shot formations.

2027: PGA Frisco, Fields Ranch East, Texas The East course at the Omni PGA Frisco is one of two courses to open at the new Fields Ranch Golf Club. Alongside the Beau Welling-designed West course is the East, built by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, which measures more than 7,800 yards (7,130 metres) from the championship tees and puts a greater emphasis on driving than the West, demanding length, accuracy and the courage to take on cross-bunkers and central hazards. The greens, perched above bunkers and chipping runoffs, are smaller and require controlled approaches, and the holes of the second nine prowl the basin of Panther Creek. Both courses opened in May 2023, and the East has already hosted the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship. It is set to host a number of other prestigious events, including the PGA Championship (2027, 2034), the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship (2025, 2031) and the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship again in 2029.

2028: The Olympic Club (Lake), San Francisco, California

It seems fitting that, in a town where every house is a cliffhanger, every US Open played at Olympic has been one, too. For decades, the Lake course was a severe test of golf. Once it was a heavily forested course with canted fairways hampered by just a single fairway bunker. By 2009, the forest had been considerably cleared away, leaving only the occasional bowlegged cypress with knobby knees, the seventh and 18th greens were redesigned and a new par-3 eighth added. Despite those changes, the 2012 US Open stuck to the usual script: a ball got stuck in a tree, slow-play warnings were given, a leader snap-hooked a drive on 16 in the final round, and a guy name Simpson won. If the past was predictable, the future of the Lake course more mysterious. The holes are being remodelled in 2023 by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner in preparation for the 2028 PGA Championship, and it remains to be seen what version of the Lake course will ultimately emerge.

2029: Baltusrol Golf Club (Lower), Springfield, New Jersey

Jack Nicklaus won two US Opens on Baltusrol’s Lower course, setting a tournament record each time. Phil Mickelson and Jimmy Walker won PGAs on it. But the Lower’s most historic event was the ace by architect Robert Trent Jones in 1954 on the par-3 fourth, instantly squelching complaints of critical club members who felt Trent’s redesign made it too hard. Trent’s younger son, Rees, an avowed A.W. Tillinghast fan, lightly retouched the Lower’s design for the 2016 PGA Championship. But there has been another changing of the guard at Baltusrol, as architect Gil Hanse and his team took over as the club’s new consulting architects, and re-opened the restored Lower course – after carefully examining Tillie’s old plans and reclaiming green size and rebuilding bunkers – in May 2021.

2030: Congressional Country Club, Bethesda, Maryland

Congressional’s Blue course had been an icon of traditional American parkland golf since the 1964 US Open. Prior to that event, Robert Trent Jones combined nine remodelled Devereux Emmet holes with nine new ones of his own to create the modern Blue, and those holes were remodelled and reshaped several times by son Rees Jones for the 1997 and 2011 US Opens. All the while, the trees around them matured, creating dense, shadowy corridors of wood. Drainage issues and declining course conditions motivated the membership to consider a major overhaul in 2020, and that’s what they received when architect Andrew Green reimagined the course as something that Emmet might have originally designed, denuding the property of its forests and creating broad, rollicking fairways that tumble through meadows of long fescue punctuated by fearsome bunkers and bold, segmented greens. Parkland golf Congressional is no more, and the remodel, which included a new, drop-shot, par-3 10th hole, earned the course US Golf Digest‘s Best Transformation award for 2021.

2031: The Ocean Course, Kiawah Island, South Carolina

Often considered to be the first course designed for a specific event – the 1991 Ryder Cup – this manufactured linksland-meets-lagoons layout might well be Pete Dye’s most diabolical creation. Every hole is edged by sawgrass, every green has tricky slopes, every bunker merges into bordering sand dunes. Strung along nearly five kilometres of ocean coast, Dye took his wife’s advice and perched fairways and greens so golfers can actually view the Atlantic surf. That also exposes shots and putts to ever-present and sometimes fierce coastal winds. The Ocean course will forever be linked with Phil Mickelson and his improbable victory at the 2021 PGA Championship.

2034: PGA Frisco, Fields Ranch East, Texas Same as the 2027 championship, above.

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Quail Hollow Club opened in the early 1960s and was very much a product of its times. The George Cobb design was built across rolling, open pasture south of Charlotte just as the North Carolina city was expanding into suburbs, as most cities were. The holes were long and full of strong doglegs that played into large greens protected by two, three or even four bunkers.

By the 1990s, with trees matured, greens shrunken and bunkers redesigned, the course was very different. That’s when Quail Hollow began working with Tom Fazio, who embarked on a significant remodel program that turned the course into the current version made popular through the broadcast of the Wells Fargo Championship, played there for the first time in 2003. One of the more impactful changes he made was to the lakeside 14th, a hole that has quietly become one of the most exciting short par 4s on the PGA Tour.

Here’s why Quail Hollow’s 14th hole made our ranking of the most underrated holes on tour:

The hole

Quail Hollow’s 14th has always been a short par 4 measuring about 350 yards (320 metres) in length, though during the Wells Fargo the tees are adjusted some days all the way down to 301 yards (during one round of the 2017 PGA Championship they were set at 289 yards).

The hole begins in the trees and plays slightly downhill to a fairway sloped right-to-left towards a lake that starts to come into play 225 yards from the tee, then bends left, hugging the water. Two bunkers sit on the high side of the fairway and catch tee shots aimed too far away from trouble. Two split bunkers guard the front left and right side of a narrow green that’s 50 yards deep and pushed flush against the lake.

A closer look at the green

In 1997, Fazio moved the green down to the water’s edge from where it was previously, 25 yards to the right and 15 yards up on the hillside. This made the hole much more strategically engaging. Previously, players could drive up as close to the green as possible with little fear, and big hitters could occasionally reach the bunkers in front of the putting surface.

Now if they want to attempt to drive the green they have to assess the risk of finding the water or the right-hand bunker, which leaves a precarious sand shot down the hill to a shallow green running away with the lake lurking long. Anything creeping off the left edge of the green is gone, taking the plunge. Even lay-ups have added challenge as second shots must play slightly across the axis of the green towards the water, and drives that miss the fairway in the rough or bunkers result in difficult-to-control approaches to a firm green.

Stats

Driveable par 4s used to be those between 275 and 300 yards, often with contours that helped balls bounce onto greens if played correctly. On the PGA Tour, that paradigm is extended nearly 100 yards, though when the tees are set at 340 yards and longer, with hazards lurking, the hole is long enough to create indecision for many. Since 2015, including the 2017 PGA Championship, 56 percent of the field have attempted to go for the green, though only 11 percent (169 drives) have found the putting surface. Watching where balls land and where they drift off to is one of the most entertaining sights on the course.

The pin position is equally critical. When the flag is placed on the front of the green, this is a birdie hole whether played with a driver or for position to set up a short wedge approach, as slopes help move the ball towards the hole. When the flag is all the way back almost no one challenges it, but that leaves long putts that, in some cases, must crest over a ridge and fight the strong right-to-left pull of gravity. When the hole is back, there will be three-putts.

[Green-reading map: courtesy of StrackaLine]

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Sweetens Cove Golf Club, the nine-hole course in South Pittsburg, Tenn., beloved by a devoted group of golf adventurists, announced that it will be closing for three months at the end of May to repair turf damage suffered over the winter.

A stretch of severe weather destroyed grass on the course’s fairways and greens. The club attempted to work around the damage early in the season but a decision was reached to shut down the course for a more comprehensive rehabilitation.

“We were dealt an incredibly difficult hand this winter,” says Rob Collins, the architect who designed the course with partner Tad King and who is also part of the ownership group. “I was speaking to a meteorologist, and he thinks there was an abnormal microclimate around Sweetens Cove that caused the temperatures to get down to negative ten for several days, or maybe lower. We had ice on the turf for over a week.”

“It’s definitely the worst stretch of weather I’ve seen at the course in the 14 years I’ve been working on it.”

More from Golf Digest Courses Landmand is golf’s hottest new course, built by Sweetens Cove’s designers, and we got a first look

Sweetens Cove operates on a unique model. Instead of offering tee times as do most public courses, it sells all-day passes and themed “experiences.” Players from around the country visit and spend a day, often several days, playing the nine holes repeatedly. The design is known for its large and wildly contoured greens that are cut with two or three hole locations so approach and short game shots vary round to round, creating courses within the course.

Passes for the year typically sell out shortly after they’re released.

Public Sweetens Cove Golf Club South Pittsburg, TN The nine-holer just 30 miles west of Chattanooga is probably the buzziest nine-hole course in the U.S. Designed by King-Collins and now with financial backing by prominent golfers such as Peyton Manning, Sweetens Cove offers numerous alternative routings, allowing the course to be played several ways. The laidback atmosphere defies country-club tradition and encourages players to wear whatever they want—even allowing golfers to bring their dog along for the round. The course itself features generous fairways and massive, undulating greens that reward imagination and creativity. View Course

Collins says they will be refunding those who purchased passes for this summer (he expects the course to reopen in September). Those who have had their reservations cancelled will get first-look opportunities for 2025 passes, along with a discount.

“I feel terrible for the pass holders we had to cancel on, as well as our operations and maintenance staff,” Collins says. “All they want to do is show people a good time, and that’s on hold. It’s tough for them.”

The closure will allow Sweetens to repair the turf and also attend to deferred maintenance projects that wouldn’t otherwise be possible while the course is open. In the fairways they’ll employ a novel devise called a Fraze mower that scalps the old 419 Bermuda down to the roots, removing years of thatch buildup, before planting new Northridge Bermuda, a cousin of 419. The grass on the greens is also being replaced with new MiniVerde Bermuda. Once established, the new turf should make the course play firmer than before.

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Collins may also use the opportunity while the grass is scalped for minor architectural alterations, including possible modifications to the ninth green complex.

Sweetens Cove opened in 2014 on the site of the old Sequatchie Valley Golf & Country Club. Collins and King began remodeling it in 2010 for the previous owner before Collins purchased the lease when funds ran dry. Once in control, the design became an opportunity for King and Collins to create the kind of course they’d always wanted to build with massive fairways, heaving greens and swaths of exposed sand. Sweetens was them crashing the party with a kick-down-the-door architectural statement that would not have been possible with someone else calling the shots.

Despite the attraction of unbridled architecture, Sweetens Cove struggled financially for the first five years, constantly teetering on bankruptcy. A nine-hole course 30 minutes into the country from Chattanooga was not, apparently, a model destined to succeed. Slowly, however, word of mouth spread about this unique design, piquing the curiosity of onlookers as images and impassioned critiques proliferated on Twitter and blogs.

Sweetens Cove became the first golf course sensation of the social media age, and more and more people made the pilgrimage. The course’s charms, audacity and multiplicity turned them to acolytes, and there are enough of them to keep the course filled year-round.

In 2019, a team of investors including Peyton Manning and Andy Roddick partnered with Collins, putting the course at last on a solid financial foundation.

Collins views the latest setback as a chance to elevate the course to a level it’s not previously had the chance to attain.

“It stinks in the short term, but it’s a great opportunity to address some much needed projects. We will come out in September flying like a damn rocket ship,” he says. “Sweetens is a lot of things but above all else it is resilient.”

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If you have the means and the interest to build the ultimate Scottish golf Shangri La, the ideal property might have just come on the market. Sanda Island sits just off the Mull of Kintyre (you know, the one in the Paul McCartney song) in the North Channel separating Scotland from Northern Ireland. It’s 180 hectares (450 acres) of rolling pasture punctuated by craggy cliffs and show-stopping views of the distant Antrim Hills.

Building out a future World’s 100 Greatest golf course wouldn’t even require starting from scratch. The island already has seven cottages that have undergone various degrees of renovation, a fully functioning (but dormant) pub and a picturesque lighthouse. Access is by boat from Campbeltown in Scotland, 21 kilometres across the sea or by helicopter to the landing pad built near the road that connects the two groups of cottages.

For $A4.8 million, you would get Sanda (and its native herd of 55 sheep) along with the adjacent Sheep and Glunimore islands, which total an additional 14 hectares (35 acres). Just taking a trip to check it out would be a bucket-list holiday. Campbeltown is one of Scotland’s five core whisky regions, and its single malts are some of the world’s best. The airport is accessible by private jet or puddle-jumper connections through Glasgow, or you can take the ferry across from Ballycastle, Northern Ireland. The Old Tom Morris-designed Machrihanish and its modern David McLay Kidd-designed counterpart, Machrihanish Dunes, are just 24 kilometres as the crow flies from Sanda.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy privacy and the perfect palette to try to build it.

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Ohoopee Match Club is in rare air among modern courses. Only five new designs have debuted higher on our America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking over the past 30 years, putting the Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner design in the same conversation as some of the highest-ranking courses of the modern era, such as Sand Hills and Friar’s Club. (Sand Hills debuted at No. 31 in 1999 and Friar’s Club was 34th in 2011.) Both clubs are perennially inside our top 15, and Sand Hills has been inside our top 10 in our past two editions.

Ohoopee Match Club is unlike most new courses for a lot of reasons. Designed for match play as the name suggests, Hanse and Wagner were liberated from the constructs usually associated with laying out a course—focusing instead on utilizing the most heroic strategies that the gently rolling terrain called for. The bold features and unique greens follow the Ohoopee River about two hours from Atlanta in Cobbtown, Ga., nearby to Vidalia, which is famous for its onions and thus inspired the club’s onion logo. The sandy soil perfect for onion growth made for a great canvas for golf. Some of the vistas generate images of Pine Valley or Pinehurst, or as Hanse describes in the below video, perhaps even Australia with some of his bunker shaping.

The result is Hanse’s highest-ranked design—debuting on our rankings last year. It will be interesting to see if Ohoopee Match Club follows Sand Hills and Friar’s Head in our rankings and keeps getting higher. Or, in the case of others like Shadow Creek (debuted eighth in 1993, the highest-ever debut on our rankings) and The Alotian Club (14th, 2011), maybe it will continue falling. We wouldn’t bank on it. Ohoopee has already inspired other match-play focused layouts—and while the club wasn’t the first to use half-pars on its scorecard, we’d guess you’ll continue to see it used more as the influence of Ohoopee continues to grow.

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CARLSBAD, Calif. — Over nearly four decades on the PGA Tour, outside of the four major championships, the La Costa Resort & Spa was one of the most sought after destinations for every player. In the 1960s through 1990s, be you Palmer, Nicklaus, Watson or Woods, you could only reach San Diego’s northern coastal enclave by winning a title the previous year, getting you into the Tournament of Champions. Then, in 1999, the tour entrusted La Costa with the Match Play at the dawn of the World Golf Championships.

La Costa was big time, and if the two Dick Wilson-designed courses on the property—their holes combined into a championship composite course—didn’t exactly have Winged Foot or Shinnecock Hills’ pedigree, that hardly mattered when the golfers and their wives were pampered like movie stars—or, more infamously here, mob bosses—and could stroll from their rooms to the first tee.

Then, in 2007, the PGA Tour packed up and moved the Match Play to Arizona, and in the general public’s consciousness, La Costa has been something of a fondly remembered ghost ever since.

Until now.

In less than a month, the resort will be back on our televisions as the host of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Division I Golf Championships. Most of the game’s best amateurs will compete on a North Course that has been massively renovated at a cost of more than $20 million by one of the most revered design duos in the game, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. Several million more was spent on a expansive practice facility. And if all goes well in this audition, the long-term goals for La Costa are rather audacious.

In a movement led by University of Texas men’s golf coach John Fields, his athletic director, Chris Del Conte, retired Oklahoma State AD and legendary golf coach Mike Holder, and La Costa’s owners, Omni Hotels & Resorts, the goal is to have the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa go beyond hosting the NCAAs in the next three to five years and become the permanent site of the championships.

“That’s the dream,” Fields told a small gathering of Omni executives and media this past week as the team previewed the North Course layout that has yet to open to the public after months of frenetic effort to get it ready for the NCAAs. The women and men will compete in consecutive weeks starting May 17, and Golf Channel will have more than 50 hours of combined coverage.

An overhead view of the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa. The 18th hole in the center runs northwest and generally plays into the wind. The 16th and 15th greens are lower right. (Patrick Koenig photo)

To create what is being dubbed as the potential “Road to Omni La Costa” for decades to come, Fields also offered this piece of reality: “That golf course has to perform.”

That was the task handed to Hanse and Wagner, who likely would not have accepted the work without their relationship with Omni, whose resort is part of the PGA of America’s Frisco complex in Texas that will host numerous majors over the next decades, and the prospect for the NCAAs making La Costa their permanent home.

“College golf is a new frontier for television, and we’re hopeful that people will want to watch college golf and watch La Costa, and we’ll bring La Costa back to the limelight with more history,” Wagner said in an interview with Golf Digest.

“La Costa was a really good golf course and hosted big events,” Wagner added, “but it kind of lost its way a little. It just really became just an everyday member golf course. Cart paths everywhere; the bunkers got pulled pretty far away from the greens. The grass got tired; it looked worn out. We were able to bring it back to life.”

Previously known as the Champions Course, the North got a $10 million revamp by architect Damian Pascuzzo and Steve Pate, the former PGA Tour player, in 2011, but that was nip-and-tuck cosmetic stuff and to correct some drainage issues on a site that was notorious for flooding. La Costa did host a few significant events, including the LPGA as a one-off and a memorable 2014 California State Amateur in which current World No. 3 Xander Schauffele beat now fellow PGA Tour pro Beau Hossler.

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With the NCAA on board, Omni basically gave Hanse and Wagner carte blanche to completely redo La Costa with the same verve as their high-profile work at the likes of The Los Angeles Country Club and The Olympic Club. There also was the added element of making La Costa both playable for the public and presenting a stern and fair test to the best college players of both genders. Hanse was lauded for a similar undertaking for the Olympic Course in Rio that staged the return of golf to the Summer Games in 2016.

The result of Hanse Design’s La Costa redo is that those who know the course well will hardly recognize it, other than the basic flow, and fresh eyes will take in a layout with both the requirements of modern architecture and old-school quirks and challenges that include wide swaths of native areas and barrancas.

There are always two critical queries for new or renovated courses: What’s the length and how are the greens?

In this case, the most notable changes do come in the putting surfaces. Again, the team was tasked with creating playable public greens while thinking ahead to nearly exact pin placements that would force competitive golfers to consider every nuance. “We want to reward and challenge aggressive play and knowing that not everybody is going to hit every green, we wanted interesting recovery shots,” Wagner said.

The redsigned first hole of La Costa North is a prime example of the steep falloff areas around the greens. (Patrick Koenig photo)

Most of the North’s greens are hardly small, but their true sizes have been tightened by some sharp edges that fall off into tightly mown areas. There’s no better example than the 581-yard dogleg sixth, where the narrow green will repel anything short and right to force an extremely delicate next attempt. “Maybe you hit your shot into the face of the slope there, or maybe you flop it,” Wagner said. “We want the top players to think about that, to put some doubt in their mind.”

In this modern bombers’ age, when most courses have to be lengthened to remain relevant for top-level competition, La Costa had enough space for Hanse/Wagner to reframe the puzzle. Numerous tees were repositioned to places never before thought of, including the No. 1 ground that nearly abuts the practice putting green so that the hole could be extended to 402 yards.

And if you think that sounds a bit wimpy for the current game, consider that the par-5 No. 2 is 616 yards—one of two par 5s, at sea level, that begin with a “6.” The other is the 18th, which can play at 609 into a healthy afternoon breeze. Wagner swears he doesn’t know what the final length came out to be, but the newly printed scorecards peg the tips at 7,500 yards. The beauty of needing this to be a resort course is that there are six sets of tees, so the NCAA Committee can basically make it any kind of length test for the men and women.

One point Fields makes is that when the NCAAs were played the last three years at Grayhawk in Scottsdale, Ariz., the longest hitters could only use drivers on a few holes. “We’re putting the drivers back in their hands,” he said of the La Costa setup that offers ample space off the tee on the longest par 4s, including two that can play at more than 500 yards. (There also is a beast of a par 3, with the 12th playing into the wind at a potential—this isn’t a typo—282 yards.)

On the subject of par 3s, let’s not forget the most famous hole at La Costa. It’s the North’s 16th, where Tiger Woods striped an iron in the rain to kick-in range, beating Tom Lehman in a T of C playoff a couple of months before his watershed 1997 Masters victory. Here, Hanse sought to pay homage to Augusta National’s 12th, challenging the tee shot over the pond with two front bunkers while providing a new bailout area (instead of bunkers) on the right.

The trend at pro major championships also is to offer risk-reward par 4s, and La Costa has two of them in the 359-yard 11th and 365-yard 15th. The 15th is a remnant of Pascuzzo-Pate, though for anybody considering going for it now, Hanse stiffened the test with a centered fairway bunker at 300 yards and deep bunkers fronting the green at 350 yards.

The 11th is part of the most re-imagined section in the farthest reaches of the property, where the many tour events never venturd. The seventh through ninth holes were basically Resort Golf 101, with a downhill dogleg left, a flat par 3 over a pond and an uphill dogleg right par 4 wrapped around another pond.

A view from the par-4 seventh green, across the native area looking toward the par-3 eighth green that architect Gil Hanse has dubbed “Little Terror.” (Tod Leonard photo)

The changes are stunning. All of the water was eliminated and replaced by barranca and native vegetation that mimics the nearby hillsides. There are LACC North qualities, to be sure, with plenty of sand wash and native stuff. Hanse dubbed the par-3 eighth the “Little Terror” because it has a small green surrounded by trouble, though at 200 yards from the back it’s hardly “little.” The ninth should be entertaining for the NCAAs because, if players are to cut the corner, it requires a full 320-yard carry over the native area, with any wayward balls potentially being lost—a fate potentially worse than if water was there.

To Fields’ original point, the golf course needs to display its wares, but this inaugural college test will hardly be representative of what it will be like in a couple of years. Part of the course was sprigged with 419 Bermuda grass, not sodded, and because of a cool and rainy winter those fairways are still a bit thin. The same can be said for the rough. (And we should note that all of the bunker layered with deep and heavy sand.)

The balance is that the Pure Distinction bentgrass greens—with only a couple of dozen rounds ever played on them—will produce the truest roll possible. But—and this will be big—the newness makes them extremely firm and bouncy, so holding lengthy iron shots is going to be a true test.

The green speeds are expected to be slightly slower for the women, with the men facing possibly up to 12 on the Stimpmeter. As they conversed last week, Fields pressed La Costa Director of Agronomy David Smallwood, who’s done impressive work to get the course this far, to see if he could make them even quicker. Smallwood shook his head and said with a smile, “Those are my babies out there.”

And this is La Costa’s rebirth.

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