Articles by Derek Duncan

December 22nd, 2024

A Coore and Crenshaw template, explained: 9 underrated holes that show off the designers’ strategic genius

Golf course architects strive to create variety in each of their designs, but even the best have favorite concepts and patterns they return to. If it works, why stop? The best example of an architect developing repeatable golf features is C.B. Macdonald, who built the country’s first 18-hole course for Chicago Golf Club in the Read more…

November 27th, 2024

The fascinating reason one of the world’s best oceanside holes was almost never built

Seventy years passed between the opening of Cypress Point, the Golden Age’s last great ocean bluff course design, and the debut of the first course at Bandon Dunes, where five holes touch the Pacific Ocean cliffs. But the wait was worth it, and the return to the ocean at Bandon is nothing short of spectacular. Read more…

November 20th, 2024

The world’s best course like you’ve never seen it: Our glorious drone tour of Royal County Down

What does it take to be considered the best golf course in the world? What mix of holes and thrills and vistas go into such a lofty assessment? This is the question that Royal County Down makes us consider. Sitting at No. 1 in Golf Digest’s ranking of the World’s 100 Greatest Courses, Royal County Read more…

November 8th, 2024

‘Sand Valley on steroids’: Bandon’s founders discuss why they’re excited about their new project in Florida

The prevailing wisdom of golf development in the U.S. has always been to build the courses where the golfers are. First this meant in or adjacent to the towns and cities; then in the suburbs and exurbs; and finally at the beaches, lakes and mountains where people were already traveling. That paradigm changed with the Read more…

October 7th, 2024

GrayBull is the newest course in Nebraska’s Sandhills. How does it stack up against its neighbors?

If you’ve never driven through the Sandhills region of Nebraska, you haven’t seen one of the world’s most extraordinary golf landscapes. It’s understandable if you haven’t. There’s little reason for anyone who isn’t a rancher or a golf pilgrim to delve into the 20,000-square miles of heaving, grass-covered dunes that cover the northwest and north-central Read more…

September 21st, 2024

Presidents Cup 2024: The three holes that will decide the match at Royal Montreal

Next week when the Presidents Cup returns to Canada for just the second time, the International team will be looking to put up a better fight than the 19½-14½ loss to the United States the last time the event was played at The Royal Montreal Golf Club’s Blue Course, in 2007. The Blue won’t offer Read more…

September 15th, 2024

‘It should be better’: Architect delivers sharp take on state of course design

Oklahoma-based architect Tripp Davis, whose background competing at the highest levels of amateur golf has influenced his outlook on constructing courses, tackles a question about the impact of premium conditioning on golf design. His original designs include The Tribute and Old American in Dallas along with prominent renovations of Preston Trail in Dallas, Oak Tree Read more…

September 10th, 2024

Solheim Cup 2024: 3 holes that could decide the matches at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club

Virginia’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Club wasn’t designed by its namesake purposefully for matchplay, but it assumed status as one of the USA’s premier team-competition venues.

September 9th, 2024

This is the world’s best remote course you’ve never heard of. Cabot is making it a global destination

These days, new golf courses—especially those that might chart high on national rankings—tend to burst onto the scene with great fanfare. There’s usually a press release announcing the plan to build the next sensational Gil Hanse, Tom Doak, Tom Fazio or Jack Nicklaus design, followed by updates of the construction progress all the way up Read more…

August 28th, 2024

Presidents Cup 2024: The Royal Treatment

The three holes that will decide the Presidents Cup.

August 23rd, 2024

Castle Pines: How the course’s 5 most interesting holes will decide the BMW Championship

When Castle Pines Golf Club hosts this week’s BMW Championship, it will look a lot different from the last time the PGA Tour visited the course in 2006, the last year of The International. Created by Castle Pines founder Jack Vickers, The International was one of the most unique events on the schedule. Held for Read more…

August 22nd, 2024

Golf’s fun revolution, explained by an important architect

Architect David McLay Kidd’s peer group of golf course designers, as least by his estimation, is small. It consists of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. This makes sense given that these four design/build operations have accounted for the majority of top ranked courses over the last 25 years, Read more…

August 20th, 2024

Our expert’s review of Cabot Citrus Farms reveals why the Karoo course is golf’s most unique new design

At first impression, the new Karoo Course at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida strikes chords of both familiarity and otherness. With its washes of sand, nibbled-on bunker edges and burbling swaths of turf it is of the moment in golf architecture, a clear branch off the tree of Sand Hills and Bandon Dunes, nurtured in Read more…

August 15th, 2024

Why the Tour Championship is going to look drastically different this year at East Lake

When the Tour Championship returns in two weeks to its familiar host venue, East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, it will look anything but familiar.

August 8th, 2024

Bandon Dunes’ architect reveals the secrets about making a great course

Architect David McLay Kidd is well-suited to take on our latest “Ask An Architect” question. The Scotsman burst into the profession when he built the first course at Bandon Dunes for developer Mike Keiser in the late 1990s. Over the course of his career he’s had his share of other great sites like Gamble Sands Read more…

July 30th, 2024

Cabot is set to revive an early Bill Coore solo design in France

When The Cabot Collection announced in 2022 that it had acquired Castle Stuart in Inverness, Scotland, rebranded Cabot Highlands with a second course by Tom Doak now under construction, it was the luxury resort developer’s first venture into Europe. Cabot has now purchased the Golf du Médoc in Bordeaux, France, marking an expansion into the Read more…

July 15th, 2024

Open Championship 2024: The fascinating origin of Royal Troon’s most famous hole

The par-3 eighth hole at Royal Troon Golf Club, site of this week’s Open Championship, is known as “the Postage Stamp,” and plays just 112 metres.

July 13th, 2024

As the U.S. Girls’ Junior celebrates a milestone, it’s got a course up for the challenge in California’s El Caballero

John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s Chief Championships Officer, has said the association is focused on taking the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens to the historic “cathedrals of the game.” The venues booked for most of the next 25 years support that assertion, including several mainstays among America’s 100 Greatest Courses in Shinnecock Hills, Oakmont, Merion, Pinehurst Read more…

July 10th, 2024

World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses

The most important development in golf-course architecture during the past 20 years is the elevation of sand-based sites. Encouraged by the success of destinations like Bandon Dunes, developers have spent this time scouring the globe for sandy, dunes-like properties on which to construct new courses and lure golfers, several of which make their debut on Read more…

July 6th, 2024

Learn to be a golf course architect with in-the-field training at Erin Hills

The first amateur golf design competition was likely held in 1914 when Country Life Magazine asked readers to submit suggestions for a theoretical hole. Actual architect C.B. Macdonald, one of the judges, liked the par 4 that Alister MacKenzie sketched so much (MacKenzie was still a doctor and not yet a practicing designer) that he Read more…

July 4th, 2024

Are all courses designed by great architects worthy of a faithful restoration?

Architect Jim Urbina answers our question about which courses are worthy of being restored to their original versions. Urbina began working for Pete Dye in the 1980s and joined with Tom Doak at Renaissance Golf Design in the 1990s to help create America’s 100 Greatest Courses representatives like Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald and Sebonack. He Read more…

June 30th, 2024

Bandon Dunes’ owners release details on new 36-hole destination in Texas

In just 14 months, Dream Golf, the upscale resort golf enterprise run by Michael and Chris Keiser, have announced the development of two 36-hole public golf properties. The first, last April, was Rodeo Dunes, set amid several thousand acres of choppy prairie dunes an hour northeast of Denver (preliminary construction on the first course, designed Read more…