Imagine building 26 golf courses at the height of the golf development bubble, with nine figures in public pension money — in an effort that now loses money year after year. Welcome to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.
In theory, 12-hole designs should be cheaper to play, build, and maintain. But in the staid industry of golf course development, there’s been no rush to test the theory. The minds behind Sweetens Cove are ready to change that.
Tobacco Road Golf Club, near Pinehurst, N.C., is a paradox: a wild adventure among manmade features, through rugged conditions laced with sand and brush.
On an afternoon at the site of the 2022 PGA Championship, thoughts about the sorts of souvenirs you can toss in your golf bag — and the sorts you can’t.
If the Augusta National Women’s Amateur is an important golf tournament, then Champions Retreat is an important golf course — to the tournament’s players, and to the fans who watch the tournament. That’s a heavy expectation to bear. But Champions Retreat vindicates that importance.
Like the resort that the course calls home, El Camaleón is beautiful, well kept, and gives away all its inauthenticities at the slightest examination. It is enjoyable, most of all with suspended disbelief.
Pine Needles feels like a step back in time, but four U.S. Women’s Opens in 25 years prove that it still offers all the challenges that the modern golfer can handle.
Pinehurst No. 2 is golf’s equivalent of Level 20 on “Dr. Mario” — it moves quickly, and it brings certain doom, but in the end you limp away convinced that all you need is one more chance.