I didn’t get a chance to play many new courses in 2024. Most of the new courses that I played were on a hiking trip that I took through Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee in November. Those courses—the Pfau Course at Indiana University, Ozarks National, and the Highland Course at Primland were probably half of the new courses that I played. The Pfau Course was the best new course that I played in 2024.

But I also had an open weekend to myself back in May and took the opportunity to head down to Williamsburg, Virginia to play two courses that had been on my radar for awhile: the Gold Course at Golden Horseshoe, a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design and Royal New Kent, a Mike Strantz design. Golden Horseshoe seems to have always been considered one of the best of Robert Trent Jones Sr.’s courses and while his style of design is definitely out-of-favor at the moment, I’ve written with admiration about some of his other highly regarded courses, namely the Heather Course at Boyne Highlands and the Dunes in Myrtle Beach. These are two stern, solid tests of golf which good ball strikers will appreciate. They’re well-routed, with very short green-to-tee walks and only one poor hole between them (18 at Boyne Highlands), although there also aren’t too many great ones (13 at the Dunes is a very notable exception).

While it shares some of the strengths of those courses, Golden Horseshoe has a different feel. It’s shorter, tighter, and club choice from the tee requires a lot of thought. That’s because the property here was, I think, much more challenging than what Jones had either at Boyne or the Dunes. Both of those courses wander around broad properties over modest terrain. This property is narrow (the widest part is 400 yards but most is around 250), long, and bisected by a ravine/lake, the sides of which are too steep to route anything but a par 3. The result is a set of ravine/lake-hopping par 3s for which the course is famous, but also several short, doglegging par 4s and a few awkward par 5s.

That may not sound like the most appealing description. But like Boyne and the Dunes, there’s a lot to appreciate here. Courses that either take driver out of your hands or make you think twice before hitting it are not in favor today, but this one illustrates why it’s not always a bad thing. There are several short par 4s here where if you can just temper your ego and go no further than 200-215 yards, you can save yourself a lot of trouble. On some of these, there’s a reasonable option to hit it a bit further, but you’ll have to shape your drive. Trees (also out-of-favor to an excessive degree), doglegs, and, to a lesser extent, fairway slope affect play off the tee here significantly. Very rarely can you stand on a tee and confidently bomb away. You can still probably hit driver on most longer holes but on almost every one of them, you should look around, check some yardages, and think before you do. I found myself having to think more standing on the tee here than usual, even more than some of our modern courses so highly touted for their strategic nature.


The ~400 yard first hole is a good example of this, although, perhaps appropriately so, to a lesser degree given that it’s the first hole. It doglegs right well short of 300 yards and there appears to be junk up the left side of the fairway. Indeed there is—it was probably only about 275 to reach it from where I played. Not a hard driving hole, but one where you need to be careful.

There’s a tee right behind the first green that plays over a valley to a very narrow fairway. This is not the second hole. It’s the eleventh hole. Like I would do at the Pfau Course later in the year, I accidentally hit a drive here (although didn’t play two holes like I did there) before realizing it. This tee is so close to the first green and the second tee is so close to the tenth green however that I think once upon a time, this was the sequence of holes. This course is very tightly routed and this is the only clunky spot, which makes me think it wasn’t Jones’s idea.

The (current) actual second is a very short par 5, maybe 480 and all downhill after the drive. But it’s a very tough drive. The fairway gradually turns left around a bunker and if you pull it left of the pine tree in the distance at all, you’ll probably run into the trees on the left. If there were ever a par 5 where you might want to club down off the tee, it’s this one.

If you pull off a good drive, you should be able to reach the green in two and it’s a very dramatic shot if so—over a pond to a shallow green with bunkers at its flanks. It’s about as exacting an approach into a par 5 as I can think of, although it’s fair given how short the hole is. The pond starts maybe 75 yards from the green and the ground slopes toward it so if you’re laying up, lay well back.

It’s a steep but short uphill climb to the first of four noteworthy par 3s. This is the only one that doesn’t play across the ravine/lake that we crossed to get to the second green, but it does play over a small pond (which shouldn’t be in play). The green sits in an amphitheater and angles from front-left to back-right. You don’t want to miss left here.

Four is a longer (~420 yards) par 4 in the broader back part of the property. Although it feels like there’s more room here, the bunker on the right probably takes 250 to carry and it’s possible to run into trees on the left. This hole also turns right and the green is well-defended by two bunkers, with back-left pins (like ours!) especially tough to reach. A very good Trent Jones Sr. longer par 4.

Five is the first of three short par 4s at the end of the front nine, all of which require you to be very careful with your drive. This one probably presents the greatest opportunity of the three because it’s straight away. But the landing area is also blind from the tee and you can’t tell what’s short and left of the green. It looks like you might run out of space there.

If you’re a straight driver, it’s probably worth taking driver here. But there isn’t that much room to miss, especially up the left. The green, moreover, is narrow but deep. So it rewards a shot coming from the middle of the hole.

If there’s one hole I didn’t care for at Golden Horseshoe, it’s the par 5 sixth. It’s an even shorter par 5 than two, but also narrower and much more awkward. You drive over the crest of a hill that’s only about 230 out and then the hole turns right. Unless you hit a very accurate, gentle fade, it’s easy to run into junk left of the fairway. And the right side runs off into the woods. So yes, it’s a par 5. But again, if there were ever a par 5 where you might want to club down off the tee, it’s this one.

Seven is the next par 3, which means we’re crossing the lake again. The green is well up the hill and there’s no danger of getting wet, but it’s about 200 yards and a very tough target. There really isn’t any good place to miss around this green so hopefully you’re hitting your long irons or hybrids well.

Eight is another short par 4, doglegging sharply to the left around some large trees and with bunker up the right starting at 215. If there were ever a par 4 to just go straight to your 5-iron, it’s this one. There’s no reason to get aggressive here. There simply isn’t enough room.

Nine is another narrow, doglegging par 4, a bit longer than the previous two at about 370. Again, driver is a very poor choice here with bunkers starting on the right at 230 and thick trees (but not forest—you can find your ball here) up the left. I don’t think you should lay back as far here as on eight—220-230 is better here to shorten the approach.

​While I’d recommend laying up on all the short par 4s on the front, you might end up choosing three different clubs to do so because the bunkers start and/or holes turn at different distances. I haven’t seen a course that makes me think so much about how to lay up off the tee in a while. It’s actually a very good way to combat distance off the tee yet still keep interest in the tee shots.

One thing that’s been missing so far is a tough long par 4. Well, we get that on ten. At 465 yards, this is one of the toughest par 4s that I’ve played, primarily because of how difficult the drive is. The hole turns gently right around some pretty large trees and again, if you go up the left side, your drive can run straight into the trees with a drive of about 230 yards. You almost have to hit a fade here.

The (real) eleventh hole is very intimidating off the tee, with trees encroaching from the right and poor visibility (but more trees) up the left. It’s clear by this point that the principal difficulty with this course is driving. But this green is elevated, well-protected by bunkers, and runs off hard at the left and back. So unless you’ve hit a good drive, the approach to this mid-length par 4 isn’t easy either.

Twelve may not be as famous as the final par 3, but it might be the most demanding of the set. It’s about 160 downhill and the wind can wreak havoc on your shot (as I know all too well). The green has pretty good back-left to front-right slope, so the safer you play away from the water, the tougher your next shot will be.

Thirteen brings us back to the broader part of the property. The drive is a bit awkward again, with the fairway mostly hidden from view and turning left (there’s more room right than you think). The approach is one of the best-looking on the course, to a green surrounded by well-sculpted bunkers.

Fourteen is the second long par 4 and is probably the easiest drive so far, doglegging right around a bunker that takes 250-260 to carry. These bunker distances off the tee seem very 1960 but for most of us, they still work well! Bombers could carry all of them easily…the only problem with that being that the holes almost all also turn around trees and unless you pick just the right line, you’d bomb it into trees on one side or the other.

I’d challenge any of today’s 340 yard driving kids to hit driver off every tee here. They’d shoot a worse score than I did!

One hole that distancewise would still stand up to the kids is the fifteenth, a par 5 that takes up about 10% of the course’s total yardage. From the tips, this hole is 635 and not much wider than most of what we’ve seen so far, with bunkers up both sides of the fairway to about 280 and the forest encroaching past that on the left.

The second is pretty simple but beware of a small bunker about 90 yards short of the green on the right. Apart from that, the rest of the hole is pretty simple.

If there’s one hole at Golden Horseshoe that’s well-known, it’s the par 3 sixteenth, which plays to a very wide island green. Actually it isn’t much of an island, with plenty of space around the margins and just a few feet of marsh at the back side before you return to dry land. But it is a very pretty hole and an interesting one tee. The green is large but the green is shallow at the sides, giving reason for pause on shots to most pins…except perhaps those in the middle of the green like ours (but don’t go long!).

Seventeen is another narrow, longer par 4 but it doesn’t play quite as narrow as it looks because a miss right will kick off a hill back into the fairway. This hole is more notable for the approach, which is one of the toughest on the course—about 30 feet uphill to a tabletop green that’s narrow in front and flanked by bunkers. There’s significant danger in going at any front pins because the green has a pretty good false front and the bunkers are deep.

Eighteen is the classic tough par 4 finishing hole. I hit an excellent drive, my best drive of the day…which was really unfortunate because the right fairway bunker is about 300 yards from the tee and I reached it after thinking I couldn’t. But you still need a long drive here because the hole doglegs pretty far out from the tee and if you’re up the left side and not at least 275, you might still be blocked. It’s better to play up the right, but the tree line also encroaches on this side. Despite the yardage (~445), it might be best to club down or at least gear down your driver here.

I really enjoyed Golden Horseshoe. It’s a very good test of golf and poses a greater variety of challenges off the tee than most courses I’ve seen. It’s a type of test of golf that we really don’t see anymore. And that’s in large part because new courses eschew lines and clumps of trees as valued elements of a golf course. Yet these create situations that can’t be easily replicated without them. Nothing requires you to shape the ball and control the trajectory of your shots like trees. The professed alternatives—firm ground, heavy contour—make you consider what the ball will do when it hits the ground, but they don’t place as great a demand on shaping and trajectory. Adding wind to the mix gets closer, but it can’t knock your ball straight to the ground, off into the woods…or maybe back into the fairway. And the narrowness that trees can create adds an intimidation factor that as a playing golfer I hate, but as a judge of golf and golf courses cannot deny is an good testing element of the game, at least when used in moderation.

What makes Golden Horseshoe such a good test of driving is the way that it mixes elements. Some holes are narrow. Some fairways are flat, but some slope left and some slope right. Several holes dogleg, but at different distances and in different directions. The bunkers are placed at different distances off the tee. All of this creates a course that pushes you toward hitting a greater variety of clubs and shots off the tee than just about any other that I’ve seen. And Jones Sr. managed to get this variety while still creating a very tightly routed and walkable course. That’s an impressive accomplishment, especially given the challenging nature of the property.

So this is one of my favorite public courses then, right? Well, not quite. I’ve said a lot about this course as a test of driving, but not so much about the approach shots or the greens. And that’s because there’s less interest here. I liked the look of the green side bunkering, but there isn’t a lot of creativity in the placement. The green contours are solid, but nothing special. I do think that there’s a nice mix of green sites and shapes. Some are on flatter ground, some are built into hills. Some are deep and narrow, some are wide and shallow. Some are in between. So I think that there’s very good variety in the approach play required here, but less in the short game.

All of that adds up to a lot. It adds up to more than the overall vibes I got from the course, which is that it’s very good, but not a top 100 public course. To be honest, while I probably wouldn’t vote for it for such a list (although maybe I’m convincing myself as I type…), I’m not sure that I can come up with a good enough set of reasons not to. Yeah maybe I’d like a little more short grass around some of the greens, more variety in the green side bunkering, and some more interesting green contours. But if the driving and variety of green sizes and shapes is so good, isn’t that enough? Maybe it is. Plus, I like the par 3s. And it’s well-routed under challenging circumstances.

So maybe this course is better than my gut feeling about it. After all, my gut feeling has been developed from 25 years of reading Tom Doak and 20 years of reading Golf Club Atlas, so the current ‘approved’ style of golf architecture is completely engrained in me. And this isn’t it. But there’s also been pushback against elements of this school recently, which my review echoes and tries to expand on. And the one thing that’s novel about this course, how it makes you constantly shift gears off the tee, is a good antidote to the modern game and a welcome change of pace from modern courses, where there isn’t enough disincentive to bombing away off the tee. As I tell my students, it’s always worth thinking hard about the gut feeling that you have. And when you do, you often find that it's missing something.

However anyone, including myself, would rate Golden Horseshoe or place it on a list, it’s certainly a course worth playing if you’re anywhere near Williamsburg, Virginia.

I have some time on my hands, so it’s time to dip into my back catalogue of courses that I’ve photographed, but never written about. I’m not going to do all of them—there are at least half-a-dozen courses in the UK and just as many in Michigan for which I have pictures but have never done a write-up. I probably won’t do any of those because I’m just not that enthusiastic about them. Some of them, like Hindhead and Hankley Common in England are considered by many to be in or at least near the top tier of London heathland courses. I wouldn’t agree with that and since it’s been 7 or 8 years since I’ve seen them (and Hankley Common has undergone significant changes since then), I won’t bother, even though they are very worthwhile and certainly the equal of several courses that I have written about.

But I also have pictures of several courses in the DC area and a few from further south in Virginia. I wouldn’t say that any of them is truly outstanding, but a few are noteworthy and have gotten a lot of attention either from the rankings or architecture enthusiasts, so they’re probably worth writing about.

One of these is Bulle Rock, Pete Dye’s upscale public course on the far northeastern outskirts of Baltimore. I’ve played this course twice, once in 2021 and a second time in 2023. It has always been rated as Maryland’s top public course and used to be pretty highly ranked on both Golf Digest and Golf Magazine’s top 100 public courses lists. It hosted the LPGA Championship several times in the 00s. With so many good new courses opening and so many good older ones getting restorations in recent years, I don’t think it has been on either list in a few years. But it’s still the top ranked public course in Maryland and, having played several of its competitors, I doubt that there’s one better. It’s also very likely the best public course within 100 miles of Washington DC.

Probably a more interesting discussion however is where Bulle Rock ranks among Pete Dye courses. Now I haven’t played a lot of his best, like TPC Sawgrass or Harbor Town, but I’m probably up to around 10 total and can definitely comment on Bulle Rock’s positives and negatives compared to other Dye courses. And I think it has several of both.

First, this is a much better piece of land than most of the other Dye courses that I’ve seen; nice, rolling farmland, mostly open but with forests at the edge. It’s never too hilly for golf, but always provides enough terrain for holes to be interesting without the architect having to do too much. And there lies one of Bulle Rock’s strengths—while this is clearly a Pete Dye course, he didn’t impose his style too much on the land. Most of the bunkers, while in his style, aren’t too deep. There aren’t a lot of superfluous mounds (and no volcano bunkers) scattered about the course. Aesthetically, the course blends in well with its surroundings.

But in turning down the style, Dye might have also turned down the interest. There aren’t a lot of standout holes here, which is unusual for him. I get the impression that the developer didn’t want him to build something too difficult because most of the playing corridors are fairly generous. There’s a general lack of crossing hazards and several holes lack tee-to-green interest. The greens are nice, but not too difficult. And as is often the case for Dye, there are a few clunker pond holes. Probably one of the reasons that I haven’t written about Bulle Rock until now is that there aren’t a lot of holes that excite me and make me enthusiastic about writing. But there are several good ones and the whole of the course is quite pleasant and interesting. It’s also an almost-ideal walk, challenging but not too difficult, with short distances from green-to-tee.


The short par 4 first sets the tone for the course well. There’s enough room off the tee, but you can run out of it if you get aggressive and wayward, with the bunker on the right only 230 out from the  6900 yard gold tees. The green angles toward the right side of the fairway and has soft, but interesting interior contours.

The 550 yard par 5 second is not only one of the toughest holes at Bulle Rock, it’s one of the toughest par 5s that I’ve ever played. It’s a very unnerving drive, with woods starting on the left at about 230 and at most 50 yards between here and the drop off on the right.

The rest of the hole is kind of puzzling. A creek crosses the fairway about 100 yards short of the green and while you can go a bit further if you play out to the left, the lay up zone narrows between the creek and woods here. It’s probably best to play well back. And the green is also a bit of a puzzle, fairly shallow and running from short-left to long-right. It’s probably best to approach this green from the left side of the fairway because it was difficult to get the distance on the uphill shot correct from the right side.

Overall, I’d say that this is a good hole and pretty original among the Dye holes that I’ve played, which is refreshing (he does a lot of his own templates and we'll see some here later on). But it’s not one that I really like. Both times I played it, I was pretty uncomfortable the whole way.

The mid-length par 3 third is very Pete Dye and in a good way. The green is built up heavily on the left side, with cascading tiers of bunkers. The long grass and the tree right are good framing. Accuracy is paramount.

The 380 yard par 4 fourth brings us out into the open middle of the property, where we’ll spend much of the next nine holes. The drive is testing, but not too demanding, with about 40 yards between the fairway bunkers that start about 240 out. This is another deep but narrow green and the angle opens to the left side of the fairway.

Five is a very tough long par 4, almost 50 feet uphill and about 450 yards. It’s also a very good driving hole, with ample safe space to the right, but a lot of challenge up the left in the form of trees and a bunker that you’ll need almost 250 to carry. If you want to have a reasonable shot at the green in two, it’s imperative that you either carry or stay close to it. It’s a bit tough to tell what’s going on with the approach but the main there is just not to spray. It’s a fairly simple pitch from short of the green.

Six is about 385, but plays the same 50 feet back down the hill, so it plays quite short. Nevertheless, it’s a tricky drive; the fairway is at most 30 yards wide and jogs left, making it easy to run out of room on the right. It’s best to lay back a bit here. The approach is to an ample green that angles to the back-right. It’s also got good back-to-front pitch, so it’s best to hedge short and left.

The next two holes are a decent uphill par 3 and an uninteresting par 5. The latter is wide-open and could use some kind of angling or crossing hazard, although I guess it’s also ok to have an easy hole once in awhile.

Nine is a very different story. Back when people paid more attention to this course, I think this is the hole that got a lot of it. At about 420 from the gold tees, only the right most bunker is a challenge to carry (about 240). But you’ll either want to take on some of the carry or hit a fade because the fairway turns right and you can both run through it and leave a very long approach if you don’t try to cut something off.

The attention-grabbing element of this hole is the narrow slice of fairway over the right corner of the pond. It’s about a 260 carry and significantly shortens the hole. Unless you can make that carry easily (but then you should be playing the tips), I don’t see the point; if you can maybe make that carry, you can definitely go right of the main fairway bunkers and leave a short enough approach. I see a lot of risk and not much reward in this play, although I guess it’s fun to try.

Ten is a shorter par 4 that is, I think, one of the Dye templates—fairway runs to the right and turns left near the green with a waste bunker or cluster of bunkers up the left. You can challenge the left side for a shot at the green or at least a shorter approach shorter approach, or play out to the right for safety, but a worse angle the further you go. In this case, you’d better not play too far right because the fairway runs off into the junk. But there’s plenty enough room. I like the template and I like this hole.

At 625 yards even from the golds, eleven is one of the longest par 5s you’ll ever see. And it’s very Pete Dye, with bunkers and mounds everywhere.

Still, I liked this hole. There’s a lot of room between the two bunkers on the right and it takes a 300+ yard poke to reach the second one, so you should feel free to swing away. The approach is a tougher call because there are bunkers everywhere up the right side and the visibility is not great. In reality, the bunkers right are pretty deceptive; they end probably 170 yards short of the green so unless you’ve hit a weak drive, you should be able to get past them.

After that, the fairway widens again and the green is open from the front left. I could do without the mounds/bunkers short-left of the green but otherwise, this hole looks good and plays well. If you hit the ball solidly, you should be fine.

Twelve is the pond par 3 that is obligatory on seemingly every Dye course.

Thirteen, another very long (460 yards) par 4, is very much not a standard Pete Dye hole. The drive is blind over a ridge and the bunker on the right that you can see is not an issue. It is a cue for trouble though; carry it and you’ll go down in a ditch that contains the foundation for an old building!

The trouble with this hole is that in addition to being long, the fairway tilts pretty good in the landing area and the approach is uphill, meaning that you’ll likely have a hybrid or fairway wood off an awkward lie for your approach. And this green is narrow and well-defended on the low, right side.

But you can also look it as an opportunity. On my first visit, I had about 220 off a downhill/sidehill lie and hit what was probably the shot of the year (in a year in which I broke 70 for the first time) with my 2-hybrid—a low slinging fade that landed about 20 yards short of the green and rolled up to within 20 feet. It may be the best shot I ever hit with that club in over 15 years of using it!

The short par 4 fourteenth is another awkward drive, but one that I like. You can tell that the green is down the hill to the right but there are bunkers up this entire side. The question is: how close to skirt them? I’d recommend clubbing down and playing out to the left because you’ll still probably have some kind of wedge into the green.

Fifteen is another Dye template, the par 5 where you drive up a right fairway then either have to lay up well back on the right or cross a hazard to get to a left fairway that leads into the green. Actually, this one doesn’t have the layup fairway to the right; all approaches either have to go for the green over the hazard or pick a line to the left where they can reach the fairway. This hole is only about 480 from the golds, so it’s feasible to reach the green in two. But it’s also uphill, so you’ll need two solid shots.

Sixteen is a very nice mid-length par 4, a bit more low key than several of the recent holes, with more minimalist shaping to the bunkering and a beautiful and simple green that runs away gently into the long grass and forest at the back. Dye’s crew could do some wonderfully subtle, naturalistic shaping when they tried and I think it’s too bad that they didn’t take this approach more often. Apparently The Golf Club in Columbus is full of this kind of shaping, but I’m not optimistic that I’ll ever get a chance to see it.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the par 3 seventeenth from the tee. Too bad—it was probably my favorite par 3 of the bunch, swinging gently around a large bunker and forest on the right. This stretch 13-17 was the best on the course and one of the better stretches of holes that I’ve seen on a Dye course.

More unfortunate is the eighteenth hole, which is a clunker of a finishing hole (but a difficult clunker) if there ever was one. This is another Dye template, the water-down-the-left long par 4 that provides a famous finish to the TPC at Sawgrass.

But it’s just so out-of-place in this landscape. Next to the landing area, the pond is probably raised 15 feet above the forest to its left, making it look completely artificial. To be fair, the pond is fine next to the green, where it blends nicely into the meadow at the left. But I cannot understand why they would extend it back down the fairway. Let the land keep its natural tilt toward the woods and maybe put a few bunkers there. It’d still be plenty enough of a challenge and would look a hell of a lot better.

So as you can see, Bulle Rock is a bit of a mixed bag. Actually, it’s mostly pretty good. The back nine is quite good apart from the two pond holes and the front nine has a few nice holes (3, 5, 6) as well, although several are pretty dull. Thirteen and fourteen are probably the standout holes, although I wouldn’t put either on any greatest holes list.

Still, I think this course to be roughly on par with, if not better than some of Dye’s other highly ranked public courses, like the Irish at Whistling Straits or Meadow Valleys at Blackwolf Run. The Irish is maximal Dye and is really just too much, an issue which Bulle Rock almost completely avoids, save for the eighteenth hole. A lot of the shaping here blends well into the surrounding landscape which I appreciated because the land is quite good and lends itself well to a more minimalist course. Both Meadow Valleys and Bulle Rock suffer from dull holes on their front nine, but Meadow Valleys also has several very awkward holes around the turn that really detract. It does have a better back nine, with several original holes around the river, but I think Bulle Rock’s back nine hangs in well. I prefer Bulle Rock to the Irish, although I’d probably take Meadow Valleys over Bulle Rock by a small margin.

People always complain about the rankings, but I think this is one course that they’ve probably gotten right over the years. I wouldn’t be surprised if, 25 years ago, this was the 50th or 60th best public course in the country. But so many great courses have been built since then and others, like Mid Pines and Pinehurst no. 4 have gotten top shelf makeovers. I can tell you first hand about Pinehurst no. 4 because I played the 90s Fazio version and the new Gil Hanse version. The Fazio version was at best on par with Bulle Rock. The Hanse version is much better. So I think its time on the lists has passed. ​

Still, while this course no longer belongs on a top 100 public courses list, if you’re in the DC—Baltimore area, can’t play Congressional or Baltimore Country Club, and don’t mind a bit of a drive out into the hinterlands, Bulle Rock is the best course you’ll find and still one very much worth playing.

After six days of hiking, two days of golf, and one day of driving, my November 2024 hiking trip was coming to a close. It had been eventful; trudging through puddles, trying to cross rivers swollen by half a foot of rain, struggling up the incredibly steep Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas (don’t try to attempt any daily distance hiking records there). In addition to all that, Donald Trump won the presidential election while I was holed up in the historic Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Bill Clinton grew up and whose hot mineral baths were a popular destination for celebrities and other powerful people 100 years ago. That Bill Clinton was the beloved native son in these parts and won states like Arkansas and Louisiana 30 years ago made me reflect on how much things have changed in the political landscape just in my lifetime. Trump won them both by over 20 points.

While I planned my last day of activity to be hiking in Nashville (a surprisingly good place for it) followed by a long drive back to Washington DC, I ended up having one more day to kill. My first thought was to try to play William Flynn’s famous Cascades Course at the Homestead Inn in western Virginia. But I found out that they closed for the season at the beginning of November.

My next thought was the Highland Course at Primland, which had always looked to me from pictures to be one of America’s best-looking mountain courses. It had intrigued me enough that I would have been willing to do a long day trip to play it. But this place is really far from DC—probably a six hour drive—and incredibly remote and difficult to get to, even from places nearby. That’s because the course, which is part of a five-star resort (more on that later), is on the top of a mountain surrounded by a a gorge. There’s only one way in and unless you’re coming in from the south, this involves a long drive around the gorge. I started the day only 30 or 40 miles away, yet the drive still took 2 hours.

I’m not sure why, but I had imagined the course as broad and not too challenging, with minimal bunkering, well suited for resort golf. Well, it may not have too many bunkers, but broad-and-not-too-challenging it is not. This is without a doubt one of the most difficult courses that I’ve played. There’s ample opportunity to lose a ball on almost every shot, including several greens where you can land a ball on the green and still lose it down a cliff (happened to me twice). If you’re spraying the ball off the tee and using expensive golf balls, you could lose a significant percentage of the not-inexpensive green fee in golf balls.

So I had mixed feelings about the Highland Course. On one hand, you have to give Donald Steel and his associates a ton of credit for being able to build a functional golf course here at all. The course literally plays through the mountain highlands, not through the valleys next to them as most mountain courses do. Apparently they spent a lot of time onsite developing this routing and I’d imagine that it took a lot of this just to find any routing that would work, let alone a very good one. There’s a lot to admire about what they produced; there are only a few times where there’s more than 100 yards between a green and the next tee. I wouldn’t recommend walking this course because of how hilly it is, but at least it’s feasible in theory. At the same time, there are several holes where they could have made things a bit wider or added some shaping or a hazard to prevent your ball from falling off the world. If there were ever a course that could have used a few ‘saving’ hazards, it’s this one.


But the drive on the short par 5 first was more in line with what I had been expecting—gently uphill to a generous fairway. It’s only about a 220 yard carry over the edge of the bunker on the right and it’s probably best to hug the right side unless you’re a shorter hitter because it’s only about 265 to run through the fairway on the left. And this being the top of a mountain, the fairways drain well and are likely to be quite firm.

On the second shot, I could see that things weren’t going to be quite so simple. First thing to note, the view is spectacular. But then I quickly noticed how dangerous this shot is. The right side of the fairway slopes off into the woods and so does the left once you get close to the green. Accuracy is essential here. I only had about 220 playing quite a bit downhill, so I felt that I couldn’t really lay up, although doing so would have eliminated much of the danger. Fortunately I hit one straight and it rolled down the hill up next to the green.

The par 3 second looks a bit more receptive but there’s real danger here too—anything hitting the right side of the green with some momentum can roll off the back into the junk. This would be a good spot for a saving bunker. But as it is, I’d recommend aiming at the left side of the green, where there’s a backstop if you go a bit long.

As I stood on the third tee, I could see that my prior thoughts about this course were completely wrong. Unless you’re a very straight hitter, this is an uncomfortable golf course. This drive is narrow and the fairway looks like it might run off into the woods on the right.

​But it’s also a very short par 5 (<500 yards) and the drive is significantly downhill. All you need to do is hit something straight. If you do, there’s a good chance that your ball will kick forward and that you’ll have a mid or short-iron into the green. The green site is much more spacious and forgiving.

It’s a bit of a hike uphill to reach the next tee but when we get there, we’re greeted with a lovely short par 3. I really like the look and feel of this hole. The green rests simply on the land, abutted by a grove of mountain laurels on its right side and at the back. The green contours are also outstanding.

The short par 4 fifth plays off the top of the mountain, back down into a valley, and then back uphill to a green built into the side of a hill. We’ll see this template again. The drive is made more intimidating by the fact that they left a lot of trees just off the tee. Given how difficult this course is, the added visual intimidation is not a positive.

Don’t hit driver here because it’s only about 250 to the bunker on the left and 260 to a clump of trees on the right. And do take probably two extra clubs on the approach.

Six is another short par 5 with another very uncomfortable tee shot. Given that the land slopes left into the woods and that I couldn’t see the fairway, I assumed it was best to aim up the right. But that’s not enough; if you’re going to hit driver, you also need to hit a fade because it’s easy for anything in the 260-280 range to run through the fairway. On reflection, if I were to play here again, I’d probably only hit one driver off the tee in the first six holes (at the first)

Like the third, the approach is much more forgiving. Although you can’t see the landing area or the green, the land is much flatter and there’s less worry about losing your ball off an edge. In what’s becoming a positive theme, then green has excellent interior contour.

While the visibility from the tee on the long par 4 seventh is better, there still isn’t a lot of room to play. Because it was only about 250 to the right fairway bunkers from the 6,700+ yard tees that I was playing, I moved back to the tips, from where this hole plays 494 (about the same length as the par 5 third). At 270, I still hit it in the bunkers. Again, given the difficulty of the course and especially how long this hole already is, these bunkers, which are only 35 yards from the edge of a cliff on the other side of the fairway, could go.

Once you’re in the fairway, it’s a beautiful downhill approach to another large, well-contoured green.

The ~190 yard eighth is a lovely par 3 playing down into a valley. You can see the fine green contours from the tee as well as the danger to the green’s right.

I didn’t get a picture from the tee on the short par 4 ninth but the drive plays significantly uphill and the fairway narrows at around 210 yards, a distance which is surprisingly hard to pass (I hit a good one and I’m pretty sure I didn’t). Both the drive and the approach play about 30 feet uphill and again, you’ll probably need two extra clubs here.

After a drive uphill to the back of the spectacular hotel, we come to simpler-looking long par 4. But the clearing between the junk on the left and the right is only about 50 yards and I think again, the right fairway bunker might be one element too many.

Eleven is another longer par 4 with a less visually intimidating drive. In fact, this might be the first fairway so far that I’d describe as ‘generous.’ The hole turns left and while you can shorten it by going up the left side, you also need to be fairly long if you do this because you can get blocked by trees on the approach. The green site is well-chosen and gives ample opportunity to run one on. Just don’t go long.

Twelve is the fourth par 3 and while shorter on the card than eight, plays about the same length in practice (mid/long iron). But this one is probably more difficult because the green is narrow, especially in the front, and left is all short grass, which can leave some tricky chips.

I think that the very long par 5 thirteenth is one of the highlights of the Highlands, along with the first and the fourth. The drive isn’t particularly interesting but the rest of the hole is. After turning right in the drive landing zone, the hole turns left and narrows about 100 yards short of the green. The smart thing to do is to get a yardage to the post and try to keep it 10-20 yards short of that because an aggressive shot that misses in either direction can easily be lost.

The approach is uphill to the most heavily contoured green on the course. On its own, this green is superb, although I felt that it might have been a bit of overkill given how long and challenging the rest of the hole is.

I was reading somewhere, I think in the lodge, about how finding the par 3 fourteenth hole was the key to making the routing work. I can see why—this is the most challenging part of the property so far and it looks like there was barely enough room out there to build a green. In fact, when we get up there and see the actual green, it doesn’t look much bigger.

It’s critical here not to go for right pins because like the second, your ball can easily hit the green and run down into the woods. But the hill left of the green will kick your ball onto it. Also, long and short are both no good. So there’s probably no reason to try to do anything other than hit the left side of the green.

Fifteen brings us back to some of the nervous, narrow drives from the front nine. Again, I think there’s probably only about 40 yards between the trees on the left and running down into the woods on the right. The green is bunkerless and deep but again, stay away from the right side. I pushed my approach a little and never found my ball.

Although I didn’t get a picture, I remember that the sixteenth hole drive felt a bit more forgiving, with bunkers up the right saving you from falling down into a pit. The approach looks similar to fifteen, although there’s much more flat ground around this green.

The par 5 seventeenth features another tough drive, this time with the cliff’s edge visibly cutting into the fairway up the right side. The approach is significantly uphill, seemingly with more room left than right. The lay up landing area is fairly generous but if you’re in range of the green, make sure that you don’t go too far left.

The area around the tee on the long apr 4 eighteenth features some of the most spectacular views on the property. But don’t let this distract you from the drive, which, again, is very difficult. You probably need about 230 to clear the junk up the right and if you’re comfortable with that, it’ll leave you the shortest approach. But a slight push and your ball is lost. Left is safer, but it’s possible to run through the fairway if you don’t hit a fade.

The approach is downhill to another generous, well-contoured green. Although the drive is a bit butt-puckering, it’s a fine finishing hole.

I noted in my review of Ozarks National that Coore and Crenshaw had a very difficult piece of land and did an excellent job with the routing. Well, this property was probably an order of magnitude more difficult. And I think that Steel and Co. did an excellent job with the routing.

But I also think that there are many holes that could have removed one element of difficulty or added something to make it harder to lose a ball. There are several holes (3, 5, 11, 15) where some tree removal would make for a little more room or at least a less visually intimidating shot. They could have probably lost the fairway bunkers on seven and ten. I loved the thirteenth green, but it’s already a very long and difficult hole from tee-to-green. And there are a few greens that could use a bunker or a bit more shaping to keep balls from rolling off the green into the woods.

Overall, I thought that the Highland Course was very good, but it likely wouldn’t make my list of America’s top 100 public courses (and certainly not the top 30 like on Golf Digest’s list). A few of the tweaks mentioned above might get it there but as it is, it’s just a bit too severe to make the cut.

Having said that, provided that you have the budget for the $315 green fee (or come off season, when it’s only $215) and don’t mind driving out of your way (because this course isn’t on the way to anything), I’d highly recommend playing the Highland Course at Primland, more than other courses that I’d rank similarly. One, it must be one of the most beautiful courses in the country, a mountain course in the truest sense and one unlike anything that I’ve seen.

But two, this place in general is absolutely spectacular. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been to a five-star resort (it's certainly a level up from Pinehurst), but this place makes you understand the meaning of the phrase. It looks like a place where a James Bond villain would go on vacation, a luxurious hidden fortress in a vast wilderness. The lodge is just gorgeous, with an interior of mostly wood and rock, which fits in well with the surrounding landscape. And the furnishings are impeccable. The main room features two fireplaces and an assortment of interesting pieces of furniture and coffee table books. It was one of the most pleasant, comfortable places to have a post-round drink that I’ve experienced. And I’m sure I’d love the lodging and dining here too, if I could afford to spend the ~$1000+ a night to do so.

The next stop on my fall 2024 hiking/golf trip was the first that I had planned—Ozarks National at the Big Cedar Lodge golf resort just outside of Branson, Missouri. Like the Pfau Course, Big Cedar Lodge had been on my radar for a while. It has gotten a lot of attention in the past 6 or 7 years, with Phil Mickelson winning one of the only Senior Tour events he ever played in and Tiger Woods designing what I think is his only course open to the public (and still one of his only courses). But southern Missouri is a long way from both Washington D.C. and Michigan (the guy in my hotel noted that they don’t get too many people from Washington D.C., probably the result of both physical and cultural distance), so it wasn’t too high on the list of likely golf trips.

Still, the three 18-hole courses of Big Cedar Lodge, Tiger’s Payne’s Valley, Tom Fazio’s Buffalo Ridge, and Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s Ozarks National all looked interesting to me and I wanted to come here some day. My hiking trip through Missouri and Arkansas provided the perfect opportunity, although I also wanted to keep it as a hiking trip and I figured that this wouldn’t be a good time for a 36-hole day. So I decided to play only one round and that meant picking one of the three courses. This was a pretty easy decision—rarely if given a choice between a Coore/Crenshaw course and something else would I take the something else.

I had heard that it took a bit of arm-twisting on the part of Big Cedar Lodge (and Bass Pro Shops) founder Johnny Morris to get Coore and Crenshaw to do this course. If you’re familiar with their style of golf course and the land around Branson, Missouri, it’s not hard to understand why—this is a very challenging landscape over which to build a golf course. Very hilly and rocky, not at all conducive to Coore and Crenshaw’s minimalist style. I had also read somewhere that among the courses in Coore/Crenshaw’s portfolio, this one was most reminiscent of Kapalua, notoriously the most challenging course to walk on the PGA Tour. I haven’t played Kapalua but I’ve seen it many times on TV and the comparison seems reasonable. Also, the one person I’d met who’d played here was not positive, noting how difficult it was to keep their ball from rolling through the fairway, into the junk (or off a cliff).

Well, that was unlikely to be a problem for me—it had rained about 4 or 5 inches in the previous 24 hours. And it kept raining throughout much of my round. In fact, I was the only person on the course that morning. But I could see what that guy had meant—the course is short grass from tee-to-green and there are many blind/semi-blind areas where if your ball gets rolling in that direction, there’s nothing to stop it. The severity of the site also means that there it would be challenging to find green sites and that several would be built into slopes which, when surrounded by short grass, could result in some severe run-offs. It’s become the norm in new designs to have tee-to-green short grass but this course reminded me of the drawback of such an approach—if the land is hilly, short grass can create a lot of bad results for not-so-bad shots.
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But there are also so many positives about Ozarks National and thinking on it, Coore and Crenshaw accomplished something very impressive here. One, the course is completely walkable. Rarely is there a green-to-tee walk of more than about 50 yards. Two, there’s good variety in the holes and a few are unusual in very good ways, with some interesting doglegs around cliff edges and trees in the line of play. And, of course, it’s breathtaking, certainly one of the most beautiful courses that I’ve played. I think a little more rough around the edges of the course would help save a few bad bounces but there’s no doubt that the course is an impressive accomplishment. It would have been so easy to build something awful here. Not that it was awful, but the next golf stop on my trip, the Highland Course at Primland in Virginia, showed that it’s very easy to do things not as well as this on difficult land.


The first is a par 5 of around 500 yards. But while short, it’s not easy. In fact, it’s probably one of the most challenging drives on the course, with Juniper trees about 230 yards on the left, a drop-off down a cliff at the same distance on the right, a bunker just beyond that, and a convex fairway. The 5 inches of rain definitely helped with this drive!

A good drive will leave you an open view into the green, which is open in front save for a bunker about 30 yards short on the left side. You’ll want to stay just right of this because everything left kicks left…but not too far right because then it kicks right. It’s a good hole for a shorter, but more accurate golfer.

The second is a par 3 of ~170 yards playing gradually uphill. There’s obvious trouble short and right, but the bunker left is probably worse as the green slopes from left-to-right. In any case, there’s a safe play to the front-left and that’s probably where you should aim if you aren’t feeling so confident in your mid-irons.

Three is a short par 4 that shouldn’t be too difficult if you can avoid the bunker about 260 out on the left. But the short iron approach is one of several that play a good bit uphill and you need to make sure that you take enough club and hit the ball solid—although the latter is easier than usual because Ozarks National features excellent Zoysia fairways.

At ~430 into the wind and into a side slope, four was a brute of a par 4. But it’s also well-designed for a hole with such features. Obviously a long drive helps here but while the green appears to be in a fortress of bunkers, there’s a good distance between them and the green. Moreover, if you play out to the left, the ball will kick back right, toward the green, which is large and receptive. I may be a bit biased because I hit the three-wood of the year to about 20 feet from about 220 yards, but I think that the shot worked so well is indicative of why this hole works—I played left for safety and the run-up and the latter worked out even better than I thought it would.

Five is a very short par 4 that’s kind of fun, but also potentially very frustrating. It was just over 300 from the 6,500 yard blue tees and I considered going for the front of the green. It’s doable as far as length because the fairway bunker on the right is probably 70 yards short of the green. But it also gets pretty narrow between another bunker on the left and a hidden pond on the right. And as you can see, the green is on top of a hill and probably wouldn’t be the best for a 40 yard pitch. So I laid back, out to the left.

There’s really only one thing to say about the approach if you lay up: don’t be short. The shot probably plays 6-8 yards longer uphill and anything short runs 30 yards back down the fairway. This shot, I assure you, is no fun.

Six is a very pretty long par 3 that plays over one of the tamer parts of the property. The main thing to avoid here is a short hook, which will run into the junk of the left. Generally, right is better than left.

Seven is the next par 5 and is a much more comfortable drive than the first. But I think it’s important to keep it up the more dangerous left side here because things get more complicated on the second shot. While you can see the green, you can’t see the layup zone. And this is an issue because anything left of about the middle of the green runs off a cliff. You can’t tell that from the left side of the fairway, but at least you can see up the right side of the hole, which is blocked by the right fairway bunkers if you drive it up the right side. Long story short, hedge right on your second shot.

The short par 3 eighth definitely reminded me of Kapalua transplanted into the Missouri Ozarks. The idea is pretty simple—you need to get your distance right. There really isn’t anywhere good here to miss.

Topographically, the drive on the par 5 ninth is probably the tamest on the course. But it’s a very interesting one, with a diagonal bunker up the left side. With a max carry of only about 230 from the tips, there’s good reason to be aggressive with the line here although at almost 600 from the tips, it still may not be enough to give you a shot at the green

The approach is deja vu from the seventh, playing into a wide open space with a view of the green in the distance and…a cliff running up the middle of the space. Although I didn’t verify it, I think that all of this might be visible if you keep your drive up the left side. If you don’t, especially if you’ve hit a shorter drive, don’t even think about trying to skirt the pine tree on the left. Better to play out safe toward the clump of trees in the distance on the right.

I thought that ten was a pretty cool longer par 4 and it begins what I think is the best 4-hole stretch on the course. The challenge on the drive if that you’re playing into a pretty tight space unless you carry some of the bunker on the left. It’s not that long of a carry—maybe 220—but it’s also uphill and plays longer than the yardage.

The green site here is really beautiful, perched on the top of the hill with a yawning bunker at the front-left and plenty of room to run the ball up on the right. While the green clearly has a false front, I don’t think a miss short will come back more than a few yards.

While ten has some competition as the course’s best long par four, eleven is clearly the course’s best par 5. I’d go even further than that to say that it’s probably the course’s best hole and that it’s one of the more original holes that I’ve seen in a long time.

The hole’s interest largely stems from the location of several Shortleaf Pines, which are the iconic tree of both the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks and of the Ouachita Mountains further south in Arkansas and come into play both on the drive and the approach here. The first tree is right in line with the middle of the fairway and forces the lower/shorter hitter to make a decision about which side of the fairway—left will leave a longer approach while right has more trouble. Longer hitters should be able to carry it pretty easily…unless they happen to mishit it.

But the approach is the more interesting shot. Again, there’s a large Shortleaf Pine in the middle of the shot. But looking at the green, the left side will clearly leave the better approach. To get there, you’ll have to carry a deep bunker about 80 yards short of the green and skirt a clump of Shortleaf Pines on the left. And unlike the tree on the drive, you’re not going to carry the one on the right if you push your shot. So you really need to think here about what you’re capable of. You can play right of the tree but the further you go on this line, the worse the angle and the blinder your approach into the green.

I know that the dogma these days is to cut every tree down but there’s no substitute for a large, well-placed tree. Although some don’t want to admit it, golf is played largely through the air and having control over what your ball is doing when it’s up there is one of the most important skills in the game. No feature in the ground can test that as well as one above it.

And the long par 3 twelfth would be my pick as Ozarks National’s best par 3. It’s a bit like six in that the ground slopes right-to-left and that you’ll want to hedge up the right side (obviously), but the slope short of the green here is much more pronounced and creates an opportunity to sling one onto the green from short if you’re not so confident about the 220 yard direct carry.

Now I liked the fourth and the tenth a lot, but I’d probably have to give the nod to thirteen as the course’s best long par 4. It’s obviously appealing from the tee, with a heroic carry over the ravine and a stunted Shortleaf Pine in the middle (if it comes into play for you, you were in trouble anyway…).

The carry shouldn’t be an issue if you’re playing from the correct tees but as you might imagine from seeing the massive fairway, which side you’re on makes a big difference for how long the approach will play. The hole turns left, so you’ll want to be up the left side. Over the middle of the pine should be just fine.

Like ten, the approach is gradually uphill, although this green does not have a false front. There’s plenty of opportunity to run the ball on here but the approach will be challenged by a bunker about 35 yards short and left of the green if you’ve left yourself a long approach.

Fourteen is another ~450 yard par 4 and is also pretty good. It’s more interesting from the 480 yard ‘Ben’s Torture Tee’ than the 460 yard blue tees because there’s a lot more visual clutter and a decision to be made about whether to carry the left bunker. But the right fairway bunker cuts much more into play from the blue tees and I’m not sure that this shot is easier. It shortens the hole, but that doesn’t help much if you’re in a bunker.

Fifteen is a bit shorter on the card but I’m not sure that it plays so much shorter because it’s uphill, especially on the drive. The main feature here is a ring of bunkers that crosses the fairway and runs up its right side. At no point are these bunkers more than about a 215 yard carry, but don’t be surprised if you don’t make that carry if it’s playing into the wind and you mishit it.

The end stretch of Ozarks National consists of two more long par 4s and a very short par 3. To be honest, I think it’s a bit of a mediocre finish. The drive on sixteen is pretty good, with some advantage to be gained by keeping your drive up the left side because of the hilltop green. A long approach here will be very tough because unlike the other long par 4s, there isn’t much room to run your ball onto this green.

And although I had to play it in a rainstorm, the ~135 yard seventeen is a nice change of pace from the other par 3s. Unlike the eighth, the green is very deep and the premium is on accuracy.

The eighteenth is a bit meh however, with a gargantuan fairway and a very uphill approach. I suppose the centerline bunker might come into play for the longest hitters. But for most of us, you can just hit one anywhere out to the left and it will funnel to the right. No reason to challenge the ravine here.

As I was playing the front nine of Ozarks National, I was afraid that I was playing a course on land that was just a bit too challenging to build a good golf course. But if you asked which holes or features were bad or had features that were over-the-top, I wouldn’t have been able to make a strong case for any of them. Yes, you have to be careful of blind cliffs on the par 5 seventh and ninth holes. But the blindness of the latter can be reduced with a well-placed drive and all of these issues can be eliminated if you take a forecaddy—which is all-but-necessary at Royal County Down and hasn’t seriously affected anyone’s views of that course.

I come back to two things that I said at the beginning, one positive and one negative. The positive—this is an extremely well-routed course. It’s incredible to me that Coore and Crenshaw could get around this property without any significant green-to-tee walks. And the shaping does a good job of shoring up some of the steep edges without looking too much like they were shoring up the steep edges. There’s nothing about this course that’s even close to bad and the architects should be commended for that. I’m not sure that there are too many architects who could have build 18 holes here without a few bad ones or some other awkwardness, like a clunky routing.

The negative is a comment that I’m starting to think applies to more of our new courses than we might realize: that there’s such a thing as too much short grass. I always come back to Pinehurst no. 2 as my archetype for when short grass works well around greens—it works well when the slopes usually aren’t too severe and a normal miss won’t roll into too much trouble. On a hilly site like this, I think it’s better to have some rough around the edges to prevent shots from rolling too much. I still like having a lot of short grass short of greens and on slopes that feed into greens because this allows you to play the slopes. But I think there are a lot of fairways and greens where some rough at the sides wouldn’t hurt and that's especially true on this course.

Overall, I thought Ozarks National was a fine course, certainly deserving of a spot in the top 100 US public courses, although probably somewhere in one of the bottom few deciles. For comparison, I'd have it in a similar spot as the South Course at Arcadia Bluffs in Michigan or Pinehurst no. 4. And while it’s the only course that I played at Big Cedar Lodge, I’d definitely recommend a golf trip here because the other 18 hole courses looked pretty good and there are a few spectacular-looking par 3 courses. The facilities are also some of the nicest that I’ve seen. It’s not cheap, but few of the good golf resorts are any more. At least this one delivers on golf, and in a setting that’s very different, but not much less visually stunning than Bandon or Cabot. Plus, you have Branson next door. It’s not for everyone, but there are some good deals on nice hotels and I had fun at Dolly Parton’s Christmas Stampede.

My planned summer 2024 golf trip was a tour of Indiana, which had several courses that I’ve been wanting to see for awhile, especially the Ross Course at French Lick but also The Fort, Harrison Hills, and a few others. Unfortunately, the plans for my trip fell through and that Indiana golf trip will have to wait for another year.

I had some free time however in early November 2024 however and having not done a big vacation in 2024, decided to do something that I had wanted to do for a long time: go hiking in Arkansas. But not just Arkansas; the plan was to drive west from Washington DC and hike in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Tennessee as well. I changed my plans slightly, spending a few days with family in Michigan first, which also changed the starting point of the trip as it meant that I would be coming south through Indiana.

Now while this was not a golf trip, there were several courses on the route that I was interested in playing and I figured it’d be a good idea to spoil a few of my otherwise good walks. My first thought for the Indiana leg of my trip was to do the Ross Course, but the hiking that I wanted to do in Indiana was in the vast forests about 45 minutes southwest of Bloomington (highly recommended—I’ve never hiked anywhere in the midwest that felt more remote), so I decided that the best course logistically for me that was high on my list to see was the Pfau Course at Indiana University, a Steve Smyers remake of a course that had previously existed on this property. This was probably 2nd on the list of courses that I most wanted to see in Indiana, so it was a perfectly good back up.

The main thing that I had heard about the Pfau Course was that it was very long and very hard—~8,000 yards from the championship tees with a course rating of 80 and bunkers everywhere, requiring a strong aerial game. Now I’m sure it’s a miserable experience from the tips (which no one except maybe Bryson should play), but I played the third-to-back blue tees at 6,700 yards and found that the horror stories of its difficulties to be completely overblown. This is a difficult, but very playable course. Yes, some holes are heavily bunkered. But almost every fairway is plenty wide enough and there’s a safe side to play to at every green. There’s often room to run the ball onto the green or at least up next to it. And the greens, while challenging, are not overdone. Plus, this is certainly the finest piece of land I've seen for a university course—broad and rolling with a nice mix of treed and open holes.

I thought that this was easily the best of the university courses that I’ve played (Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame) and would compare favorably to any public course in Michigan. What struck me was how thoughtful and balanced the design was. Some holes rely heavily on bunkers, some have very few. There are blind, uphill drives and ones downhill where you feel comfortably blasting away. Angles are important, with a lot of diagonally bunkered approaches to greens. And the par 3s feature a good mix of lengths and shot requirements. Plus, for my money, the open feel of the back nine with the native prairie grasses between the holes (which you really don’t want to hit into) has about as pleasant a feel as you can have on a parkland course.


The ~530 yard (from the blue tees) par 5 opener is an almost-ideal starting hole. The white pines on the right make it not very slicer friendly, but there’s more room on the left and it really opens up if you can get one past about 250. The approach is the first of many thoughtfully bunkered shots; narrowing the fairway starting about 120 yards short of the green, requiring either a conservative layup or accuracy on a more aggressive shot. But you can definitely get one on the green here if you’re accurate because there are no impediments on the direct line.

The long par 4 second is a beauty. There is a cluster of bunkers up the left but the fairway is so wide that they didn’t strike me as much of an issue. It’s a good hole to sling a draw and try to get one well down the fairway.

Because the approach is much more demanding. In fact, along with eighteen, this is probably one of the two most demanding approaches, with the direct line to the green blocked by bunkers. There’s plenty of safe room to the right, but this approach strongly favors a draw. Or, if you did what you’re supposed to on the drive, you could have short enough of a second that shot shape isn’t important. And while it doesn’t look it, there’s plenty of depth to the green. This course gets off to an excellent start.

​And the ~185 yard par 3 third is no weak link. There’s a bit more movement in this green (I four-putted…) but again, ample safe space to miss at the front. Given the right-to-left tilt of the green, I wouldn’t recommend missing right.

Four is the first of consecutive shorter par 4s with drives semi-blind up and over a hill. I really liked these drives—they always remind me a bit of golf in England, where the architects of old were never shy about partially or even fully blind shots. We’re starting to get them back with all the neo-Golden Age designs in recent years and I’m glad that Smyers wasn’t afraid to have a few here.

But the more notable thing about this drive is how narrow it feels, with bunkers up both sides of the fairway. The hole isn’t that short at ~400 yards, but this drive does contrast nicely with the wider fairways on one and two. The downhill approach, with diagonal bunkers on the right side of the green is another beauty.

I think five is supposed to be the drivable par 4, although it can stretch to 390. If so, I think it works well for this purpose. It’s another up-and-over drive, but if you were going for the green, you either need to carry some maple trees on the right or sling one around them. The penalty for missing right here would be searching for your ball in the prairie.

For the rest of us, it’s a downhill wedge to a green with a severe false front on the right side, making for a very tough back-right pin. Whatever you do, don’t go over the green.

Six is a fairly long par 4 (~420), but bunkerless. It really stretches out beautifully from the tee—just be careful that you don’t go too far right because the rough quickly gets pretty nasty. The approach is uphill to another green with a false front but this time, there’s much more depth, as is appropriate for a hole this length.

Seven is the long par 3 and it’s very well-designed for the type—lots of runway short to run the ball onto the green. You’ll want to note where on the green the pin is because the green is over 50 yards deep.

Eight is another ~420 yard par 4 (520 from the tips!) with a bit more curve in the fairway than what we’ve seen so far. I like this drive quite a bit; there’s plenty of room, but you can easily run through the fairway on the left and leave yourself a very long second if you either skirt or carry the tree short and right of the fairway. It isn’t too tall and shouldn’t be too much of a problem for a decent ball striker, but it’s one of those things that can make you a bit uneasy and I think adds a nice element of challenge.

The approach looks almost as difficult as that on two but again, the green is very deep and misses short and left won’t leave too hard a third. There’s more short grass there than it seems and the green is gently wavy. Another fine hole.

Nine is the second par 5 and it can be quite punishing if you’re inaccurate…as I learned. With a series of bunkers up the right, the drive is one of the narrower ones so far. I think it’s probably best here to dial it a bit down on your swing, going for accuracy and just accepting that this will be a tough three shot par 5. Because the right side is no good the whole way to the green.

While the front nine isn’t exactly tight, the back nine has a more open feel. At ~330 from the blues, ten is the second shortest par 4 on the course. The main feature is the big bunker that cuts into the fairway on the left about 100 yards short of the green. This is probably another hole that is intended to be drivable the way the kids hit it these days but this time, there’s trouble up both sides in the form of prairie (left) and bunkers (right).

The first thing I’d say about the eleventh hole is…make sure you’re playing the correct hole. If you’re walking the course like I was—and which I’d highly recommend because it’s an almost perfect walking course—you might to the tees right off the back of the tenth green and play a beautiful long par 4…which happens to be the sixteenth hole. I did that, then played the seventeenth, and then came to the eighteenth hole, which I recognized from pictures with all the bunkers in front of the green. Oops.

What you want to do, and which should be less of an issue if you’re in a cart, is go about 50 yards back down the tenth fairway and to the left, where you’ll see a hole playing towards a hospital. That’s the eleventh hole. It’s a bit of a dull drive but like the second, it’s important to hit a fairly long drive here because the green is blocked off by bunkers on its left side. But also as with the second, there’s plenty of open space right of the green, albeit a bit less depth to the green. It’s one of the more demanding approach shots.

You could also play the wrong hole after you play the eleventh because the fourteenth tee is right there, but fortunately there’s a sign that sets you on the right path. At over 480 from the blues, twelve is by far the longest par 4 on the course. But I think it’s very well-designed for such a long par 4. The fairway is wide open, although left is no good as there’s prairie grass. There are bunkers on the approach to the green, but the one on the right is probably 25 yards short of it and there’s plenty of room to run one on. It’s another very fine par 4.

Thirteen is a par 5 but only about 30 yards longer than twelve on the card. But it plays west, which was on this and probably most other days, into the wind. So that 30 yards difference seemed more like a 130 yard difference. The drive is pretty benign but the approach is not—blind over prairie grasses on the right with a bunker about 60 yards short of the green on the left. Actually, unless you want to get within about 75 yards of the green, you can just play up the visible part of the fairway on the left. This is a pretty scoreable hole as long as you aren’t too wild.

To this point, the shaping of the Pfau Course has been excellent and has fit the land as well as almost any new course that I've played. But while there have been several Doak 7 holes, there probably haven't been any Doak 9 ones.

The drive on fourteen is the first shot that I think achieves one of these higher levels. It’s one of the best driving holes I’ve seen. The main feature is the set of bunker that run diagonally up the right side of the fairway. So that’s always good, a diagonal drive. Makes you think about how far you can carry it and penalizes you for getting greedy or missing.

But the unusual feature of this drive is how the fairway slopes away, making the line or the shape of your drive more important. It’s easy to run through the fairway if you go too far left. And you can also get stuck behind a tree through the fairway that’s on the direct line of the left edge of the bunker and was about as far away as my good drive. So there’s more than just the bunkers to think about here.

I didn’t find the approach to be as interesting as the drive but it’s aesthetically pleasing and open in front, giving those who took a line too far left or have to play something low around the tree (or chunk one from the right bunkers) plenty of room.

Fifteen is another long par 3 like seven, but this one seems to be designed mostly for the golf team. It’s an extremely hard, uphill shot with no chance to run the ball on the green because of the upslope at the front-right. I guess it’s fine to have a very hard hole once in awhile, but it’s certainly not my favorite of the par 3s.

Besides fourteen, the other hole that I’d nominate as world class is the par 4 sixteenth. I think it was playing a bit longer for me than the 406 listed from the blue tees, but this was just as well because it makes a terrific long par 4.

Although the fairway angles from left-to-right and you might think that the better angle will be from the more challenging-to-hit right side, you’re actually better off driving it up the left side here. Because the approach to the green—which is the course’s best—has bunkers angling from short-left to long-right and you’ll have a better view into the green from the left.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned is that several of Pfau’s greens are narrower in front than in the back. That’s especially true here on sixteen. That means that it general, you should pick a club that gets you at least into the middle of the green. Smyers knows our bad habits (not taking enough club) and exploits them.

While the front of the green here is narrow, a shot missed left at the front is very playable because it’s all short grass. Still, it’s a tricky shot because of the subtle upslope onto the green and the tacky Zoysia grass. Missing this green is ok, but the closer you are to it, the better.

Seventeen is another uphill par 3, but it was only playing 145 for me. I thought that this was about the perfect yardage for this hole. The green sits on a hilltop with a false front at the front-right, but also sloping off into the prairie on the left. Like fifteen, it demands a very accurate shot. But that seems a bit more reasonable here because the hole is about 60 yards shorter.

Eighteen is only 390 from the blues (but 520 from the tips), but was a tough hole with the wind, which was blowing everything straight into the woods at the corner of the dogleg right. The approach, which cued me in to the fact that I was playing the wrong hole about an hour-and-a-half earlier, is very tough—all carry over bunkers. I’d say that like fifteen, this shot is more appropriate for the golf team than most of the rest of the people who play this course but at least the green has about 40 yards of depth (not that you can tell).

I really liked the Pfau Course. If it were in Michigan, there’d be a strong case for it as the best public course in the state. Every top Michigan public course has several weaknesses, but this course doesn’t. Although it may not hit the highs of an Arcadia Bluffs, Forest Dunes, or Greywalls, it’s sound, with no poor holes and very thoughtfully designed, with a lot of variety. Aesthetically, it’s very strong, although you might have to give some of the credit for this to our native grasses and trees. Still, the landscape architect has to figure out how this all can fit together. And Smeyers and his team did.

Thinking about the golf design strengths of the Pfau Course, it's the variety and balance that stand out. Sometimes it’s wide, sometimes it’s narrow. Sometimes it has a lot of bunkers, sometimes it has few. Some holes are straight, some curve. The shaping is so well done; always soft and blending in with its surroundings. The bunkers are attractive, yet of low profile. And—perhaps the most important thing for me—the holes fall over the rolling landscape in different ways, creating a lot of visual and shotmaking variety. The squared off greens reminded me of one of our most highly regarded new courses in Michigan, the South Course at Arcadia Bluffs. But I liked this course more—the land is superior and there’s more variety in the bunker schemes.

Yes the Pfau Course is difficult, but not as difficult as I had been led to believe. I’ve played many courses that are more difficult for the average golfer (my third course on this trip, the Highland Course at Primland in the Virginia mountains might be at the top of this list) but there should be plenty enough here to challenge the college golfers. That was obviously what they had in mind creating a course that could stretch to almost 8,000 yards—which it does effortlessly, with few walkbacks to the championship tees. And maybe they intend this course to host professional events as well. It’s certainly of the caliber and challenge to do so (I’d rather watch a tournament here than Valhalla). They may not need those extra yards if the rollback happens in a few years, but it doesn’t look like they sacrificed anything in the routing to get them.

This is one of the best of the crop of new public courses that I’ve played and should be a mainstay well up the list of top 100 public courses, although maybe not in the top 100 US overall. Given the variety of golfing challenges, the terrain, and the course’s beauty, there are few courses I’ve seen that I’d rather have as my home course. The IU community is very fortunate to have it.

As in the rest of the country, golf at northern Michigan’s top courses is booming. Arcadia Bluff’s rates are up to $250, yet the tee sheets on both courses are still full every day until about 6 PM. You can probably get lucky and snag a time for 2 off a cancellation a few weeks ahead if you’re flexible about when you go but if you’re trying to book for a large group, you’ll probably have to do it a year in advance. I had similar difficulty last summer with Forest Dunes—I was able to get tee times on the Loop, but nothing for the afternoon on the original course.

I had an easier time at Treetops. Although I wasn’t able to get lodging, I didn’t have trouble getting tee times. Now maybe that’s because Treetops has four courses and even with the golf boom, it’s hard to fill up four courses. But I think another part of that is that Treetops just isn’t considered one of the ‘in’ places anymore. Although it was the place to go in 90s and maybe early 00s, it just isn’t anymore as the courses were designed by now-officially-designated-as-uncool guys like Robert Trent Jones and Tom Fazio and have fallen off the ‘best of’ lists.

I noted that I didn’t understand this when I reviewed the other Treetops courses a few years back. I always thought that at least three of the Treetops courses were very good and merited being on lists of the state’s 20 or so top public courses. Having just returned, my feelings haven’t changed. Considering the number and quality of courses, Treetops is still the best northern Michigan golf resort. It’s also significantly cheaper than Forest Dunes, Arcadia, or Boyne, with peak rates in the low $100s.
​
This time I got a chance to play what I always considered the best of the Treetops courses, the Fazio ‘Premier’ course. And I’m as convinced as I ever was about it. This is without a doubt one of Michigan’s top 10 public courses. The course is beautiful and nicely routed through several valleys, with well-placed and well-shaped bunkers and a challenging (sometimes too challenging) set of greens. It has a handful of excellent holes. It’s also much more user-friendly than the Jones course and a bit easier than the Smith Signature.


The mid-length par 4 first has always been one of my favorite openers in the state. The fairway is comfortably wide and the approach into the green, sweeping from left to right and open in front, is quite attractive.

And when you stand on the tee of the par 5 second, you know this is going to be a good course. The fairway is expertly bunkered, first about 240 out on the right, the a second a bit further out on the left. The layup zone is also well-bunkered, with two bunkered obscuring the right side of the fairway and one on the left about 90 yards short right where you’d want to hit it for the best angle. The green is pretty severe with a spine coming in from the back-left and dividing it into two sections. But hey, that just means you’ll have to be precise with your approach.

This is an excellent par 5, the first of several.

The third is another mid-length par 4 and another good one. Like the first, there’s ample room from the tee. But the uphill approach is deceptive. The bunkers are both at least 10 yards short of the green. There’s plenty of room to run the ball up on the left but the green is quite wide and pretty undulating.

Four is a Treetops specialty—the drop shot par 3. This one doesn’t drop as far as many of the others, probably only 50 feet. And like the previous hole, the bunkering here is deceptive—only the one on the left is close to the green.

After a short uphill hike, we come to one of the holes for which this course used to be known back when people talked about it, the short par 4 fifth. It’s only about 310 yards and easily drivable for long hitters these days, although it gets pretty tight up near the green.

What made this hole a topic of discussion is the crazy green, which has a small, but normal right side but then drops about 7 feet downhill into a small bowl at the back-left. Honestly, I don’t know what they were thinking here. It fits the terrain, but it just looks and plays a bit silly. Still, it’s a good hole when the pin is on the right, as it was on this day.

Six is a short par 5 playing through a fairly narrow valley with bunkers up the right. It should be easily reachable with a straight drive for a decent player. The front-left is open although hitting here will leave a tough putt if the pin is at the back-right.

After this point, we come to the part of the property that Fazio must have spent some time puzzling over. The obvious thing would have been to continue up the valley. But then—assuming the boundary of the property is roughly where the course is—there wouldn’t have been enough land for 18 holes.

So Fazio decided to take a left turn up another valley, but one that would require him to go up and over a probably 100 foot high ridge. The short par 4 seventh covers the first part of it. While it’s very pretty and a good driving hole, there wasn’t a good location for a green site. Fazio did his best to bulldoze the side of the ridge to create one, but it’s an awkward second shot and not one of my favorite holes on the course.

The 190 yard eighth is the more serious drop shot par 3, probably almost 100 feet downhill. This one’s a bit friendlier than the more famous sixth on the Jones course because the green is much wider and you’re not dead if you miss it. Still, these shots are very tough to judge and aren’t my favorite.

But much tougher is the ~400 yard par 4 ninth. The fairway opens up if you can make the ~200-220 yard carry over the left bunker. And I think it’s important to try to hit a long drive here because the fairway turns pretty far out from the tee and a short drive will leave a very awkward blind shot. Also, the approach to the green is severely uphill.

It’s a tough hole—especially for weaker golfers—but I like this one because the fairway is sensibly routed through the valley and the green site, while making for a tough approach, is actually very well-chosen. Fazio found a nice spot on the ridge that just the right depth for a green. I’m sure he felt that this hole was a bit of a risk, but it’s well-executed and I like it quite a bit.

There wasn’t anything challenging about building a hole on the site of the mid-length par 4 tenth, which continues up the valley from the sixth. The green opens at the front-left and is probably best approached from the left side, especially if the pin is on the right. It’s another challenging green but like the third, I like this one quite a bit.

​I’m not a fan of the pond par 3 eleventh. It’s very tough from the back tees at almost 200 yards. And there isn’t much bailout room because the hill left of the green is pretty steep.

While Fazio’s first encounter with the ridge on holes 7-9 was a challenging one, the ridge flattens out here at the far end of the property which makes for some excellent holes, including the uphill par 5 twelfth. It’s a pretty good carry to reach the fairway up the right side—probably 225 yards and uphill. But this side gives you a bit better look at the green, which should be reachable off a good drive. I didn’t get a closeup but this is another pretty severe green, long and angled from front-right to back-left with a high middle tier and low back section.

The next two holes, 400 and 450 yard par 4s respectively, are about as solid as any you’ll play. Unfortunately, I forgot to get photos from both tees. The approach to thirteen is classic Fazio—diagonal green bunkered heavily on one side but relatively open on the other, giving the weaker player an easier way onto the green. These greens both look great and play effectively. This one looks especially good because the land is gentler here and they didn’t have to move a lot of earth (or so it appears) to construct it.

When I see greens like this, I’m reminded why Fazio was in favor for so long and puzzled why he’s now out of it.

I did get a shot of the drive on fourteen from the forward tee. The bunker on the right is probably about 240 from the tips and the hole turns gently right past it. There’s a lot of room to the left, but hitting over there will mean a long approach.

And the approach…to me, this one even outdoes thirteen. It’s basically a perfect green complex for a log par 4, bunkerless and wide-open at the front-right, with the land short and right tilted to help your ball onto the green. But if you’ve driven up the left side of the fairway, you’ll have to contend with the dip at the front left. I’m sure they moved some earth to construct this green but it looks almost perfectly natural.

This elegant simplicity is something that a lot of the new big name courses are missing. But I guess it doesn’t look as good on social media as 50 acres of waste bunkers and 14,000 square foot greens that everyone four-putts.

The ~360 yard par 4 fifteenth was always this course’s most famous hole. Maybe not for the best reasons because it’s awkward and definitely a bit gimmicky. But I still kind of like it, even though it’s out-of-character with the rest of the course.

The first issue is that you actually need a pretty long drive here—probably at least 240—because the hole doglegs right around a hill in its last 100 yards. If you don’t hit it far enough or hit it too far right, you’ll have a blind approach. And you really don’t want that here because the green is crazy, every bit as crazy as the woke social media greens that I was just praising the last hole for not having.

Like the fifth green, this one is high in the front and low in the back. But it’s probably 4 times the size of the fifth green, with at least 1,000 square feet of space on the lower back tier. So despite the silliness of the green, I think it actually works from a playing perspective. If you’re playing to a front pin, you’d better have control over your ball or you’ll end up with a 75 foot putt that goes about 9 feet uphill. But if the pin’s at the back, you have some options. You can hit it back there and stop it, or you can use the slopes in the middle and right of the green to get it there.

Aesthetically, I’m not a fan. But there’s a logic to this green and I think it works. I think it’d work better if you didn’t have to hit such a long drive to give a decent view of the green. Also, like I said about the fifth green, it also fits the landscape because there’s another valley behind the green. So while I don’t love the hole and would have preferred something in line with the understated aesthetics of the previous two holes, it has some merits. It’s definitely not the worst questionable hole in the world.

Sixteen gets us back to the core strength of this course: a par 5 running through a valley. As much as I like this hole again, I didn’t get a good set of pictures. You drive off the side of a ridge into this valley, with this bunker on the right probably 290 out. But it’s one of the tougher drives on the course because of trees that encroach on the right probably 220 out.

​The hole curves to the left with another set of bunkers probably 100 yards short of the green on the right. The green is elevated and again, quite difficult. There’s a small, high-left tier over the bunker which makes for a nasty pin placement. Our back-right pin is probably the easiest—as long as you get something running into the middle of the green, it should feed back there.

The 200 yard par 3 seventeenth continues this theme of greens with disparate sections. It’s wide open and straight-forward if the pin is on the right. But there’s another, lower tier over the bunker on the left. Except for very strong strikers, it’d be tough to fly one in there and stop it. But if you can get your ball running into the middle of the green, it should feed down there.

The Fazio course starts with one of the state’s best openers and ends with one of the state’s best closers. This is a great long par 4, perhaps even better than fourteen.

The drive is pretty simple although you’ll want to be up the left side as the hole turns left and gets very long if you’re in the right rough. The approach is one of the best looking in northern Michigan. Again, like number thirteen, there’s plenty of open space at the front-right and this green calls for a running approach. But there’s all kinds of trouble left so if you try to take one at a left pin and pull it slightly, this forgiving hole becomes punishing pretty quick.

The green is large with gentle, elegant undulations.

Fazio courses were maybe a bit overhyped 20 years ago, but now many are under-hyped and under-appreciated. I’ve played at least a half-dozen and while a few were a bit bland, each was at least very good; well-shaped and with a few very good holes. Fazio courses always look great because the shaping is so thorough—it’s not just his (in)famous thing about trying to hide the cart paths, but the gentleness of the mounding and shaping of the bunkers. If you look carefully, you can always tell that there’s a lot of shaping, but everything is always so well blended together that you usually have to go looking for it to see it. His courses always look very natural, even though they probably never are.

While Fazio courses can sometimes be a bit bland, that’s certainly not the case for Treetops Fazio. The course is gorgeous, the holes are interesting from tee to green, and the greens…if anything, they’re a bit too interesting. I also think the routing is good. There were only so many options given that the routing is mostly ridges and valleys, but Fazio navigated this well. If not for the stretch of 7-9 going up and over the ridge twice, it’d be completely walkable. It's still probably an easier walk than Greywalls in Marquette, which I’ve done several times. There’s probably only one green to tee walk that’s more than 100 yards (9 to 10).

In fact, that was one of the things that stood out to me in playing this course and the Jones course again: the routings are pretty compact. Rarely is there more than 100 yards from a green to the next tee. You certainly can’t say that about some of the top Arthur Hills courses in northern Michigan or the first Smith course next door. Maybe the old masters knew a bit more about what they were doing than we’ve given them credit for.

So I think it’s too bad that this course has fallen off all the best-of lists for Michigan. For me, it’s comfortably in the top 10 public (although nearer to 10 than 1) and should probably make a list of the top 25 courses overall. It’s the best course at Treetops and the best northern Michigan forest golf cart adventure course, unless you include Greywalls in that category. It’s also the only Fazio course in Michigan. I wish he had left a few more. His style was perfectly suited to this type of property and there’s no doubt Shanty Creek and Boyne would have better courses if he had been involved there.

The final stop on my Ireland trip was Narin and Portnoo, a course that Tom Doak described as a ‘remote outpost of golf’ in the yellow Confidential Guide, way out at the western tip of Donegal. This place is a pretty significant trek even from Rosapenna, which is itself about two hours west of Royal Portrush. This part of the country probably wouldn’t have been worth the extra miles for all except the most diehard of golf course nuts (or Ireland sightseers) until recently, but the enhancement of Portsalon and Rosapenna—especially the addition of St. Patrick’s—has certainly changed the golfer’s calculus.

Narin and Portnoo has responded to this with several ‘upgrades’ to the course under the auspices of a new owner, carried out by the biggest name in golf restoration/renovation, Gil Hanse. Now when you show up here after having driven several hours through remote countryside and seeing the rustic nature of the surroundings, you might wonder what someone like Gil Hanse, whose name is associated with big money US clubs like Oakland Hills and Los Angeles, is doing all the way out here. But apart from the owner probably having made it well worth his while, it’s not so surprising when you see the land. Much of it is pretty spectacular: large sand dunes next to high rocky cliffs. Anyone interested in building golf courses would give this site a substantial amount of their time.

You might have noticed that I put the word upgrades in quotes in the previous paragraph, suggesting that I have reservations about what was done here. Now let me start by saying that I don’t exactly know what this place looked like before Gil Hanse came here. Apparently his weren’t the first renovations, with previous renovations having added the current fourteenth and sixteenth holes through the highest of the dunes. But while I also hadn’t seen Portsalon before, my review was almost unequivocally positive and that I had no problem seeing the work that Pat Ruddy had done to the course as an upgrade.

Why am I less certain here? While hole-for-hole, Narin and Portnoo is an excellent course and has a handful of the most exciting holes that I played in Ireland, I feel that the whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts. And that’s because more than any other course I saw in Ireland, there’s a real problem of stylistic inconsistency from hole to hole, with some holes looking like they’ve been here for 120 years and others looking like they were built in the last few years (and some looking like they were built in the ‘mounds’ architecture phase in the 80s and 90s). This is also an issue between the Colt to the Mackenzie and Ebert holes at Royal Portrush, but there it’s only two holes. Here, it’s probably almost half of the course.

Having said that, it’s clear that there have been changes to some of the rustic opening on the farmland portion of the property, namely adding interest to the greens on what were otherwise fairly featureless holes. This work is excellent and was probably a significant improvement over what was there before. And some of the holes on the heavier terrain also have this same rustic feel. It just that when you get into the back nine, with new holes in the heaviest terrain, that the course starts to feel disjunct. It still might be possible that even with the inconsistent style, the new holes are an improvement over what was there before. But I wish that a little more care had been taken to blend everything together or, if it wasn’t possible because the land for the new holes was too severe, that an alternative routing that could have preserved the consistent rustic character wasn’t chosen.


Ok, enough with the general comments. As I mentioned, hole-for-hole, this course is excellent. It starts with the first hole, an almost-drivable par 4 of about 315 yards, another of several excellent first holes that I played on this trip. This one is a bit awkward, but quite brilliant once you take the hole thing in.

The visibility on the drive is kind of poor, but you can see that out-of-bounds cuts in on the right. This might encourage you to keep your drive left. The problem with this is that a small creek cuts diagonally across the hole from short-right to long-left. It’s only about a 200 yard carry if you drive straight out, but becomes substantially longer if you miss left.

If you hug the out-of-bounds, there are also two bunkers about 230 out. But it’s best to be on the right side because the green is deepest from this angle.

The par 5 second is about 510 yards from the tips and has several bunkers in the middle of the fairway to about 230 yards. These bunkers are on the direct line to a new green on the left, right next to the property boundary. While the land coming into the green is dull, the green itself is outstanding and its location just left of the out-of-bounds fence generates a lot of interest for those thinking of going for it in two.

Three is another par 5, this one about 550. The fairway is tame farmland and quite wide, but the hole gets a bit more interesting as you approach the green. The first obstacle is a cluster of bunkers about 110 yards short of the green. Next is the green, which, like the second is heavily contoured, but also has a false front. It’s pretty clear that both two and three are new holes (this one used to be a par 3 plus a par 4) and I think Hanse did a very good job with a pretty uninteresting stretch of land.

The next section of the course, working into the dunes, has a nice, rustic feel. Three is a par 4 of 330 yards which isn’t too difficult, but where the wild fairway almost ensures a blind approach. Five is only a few yards longer, but features a more challenging diagonal drive over dunes on the left. You can let one rip on four but here, it’s probably best to play a bit more conservatively.

Six is a par 3 of about 135 yards that plays from dune top to dune top. The main challenge here (other than the wind) is getting on the right tier of this steep, two-tiered green.

Narin and Portnoo goes through a progression on the front nine: tame farmland to moderately heavy dunes…to wildness for the next few holes. Seven is another very short par 4 (~315) and was downwind, making it easily drivable. Except that the green, tucked behind a dune to the right, isn’t really hittable, at least not on the fly. It would take a few plays to figure it all out, but I think that if you hug the dune in front of the green, the fairway contours will feed your ball close to the green or even onto the front. But playing up the left isn’t too bad either—the left side of the fairway feeds balls back into the center.

Not too hard a hole, but I liked it.

Much, much harder was the 410 yard par 4 eighth, playing back into the wind from a tee jutting out into the ocean. The first issue here is that the fairway ends at a drop-off ~230 yards out…which was just as well because I couldn’t drive it that far anyway. The area between here and the lower fairway approach the green was ground under repair and I’m not quite sure what it all will look like when it’s done. In any case, with this wind (from the W/SW, which I think is common), it will always be a long, very tough par 4.

Nine, another par 3 of only about 140 yards is clearly a new hole. In addition to its obvious beauty, it plays well, giving plenty of room at the front-left but requiring great precision if you go for pins at the narrower, back-right part of the green.

The par 5 tenth is another wild one. Continuing to play back into the wind, the drive is relatively open but the second plays mostly blind down into a valley about 130 yards short of the green. It’s really important to hit a good drive here so that it’s easy to clear a bottleneck at this point between the obvious junk on the right and a nasty hollow on the left. Less obvious is that if you go at the green over the junk on the right, you actually have about 75 yards of open fairway.

It was a puzzling hole to me at the time but the combination of my photos plus Google Earth shows that there’s a lot of sense to it. It appears to be a very good hole.

While eleven is another very short par 3, it’s also another good one.

Playing back into the farmland, the very long par 4 twelfth (~460) brings back the rustic feel of the opening stretch. It’s about a 220 yard carry over junk on the right and you want to keep your drive up the right side because the hole turns right and, again playing into the wind, you need to cut off every yard that you can.

Thirteen is another longish par 4 to an open fairway, but with a much more interesting (and challenging) approach. This big—and interesting—green is perched on a ledge overlooking junk on the left. While the bunker in line with the green is really well short (40-50 yards), the rough is some of the nastiest on the course. Better to approach from short and right.

I think my biggest problem with Narin and Portnoo comes in the next few holes and really, the whole closing stretch. Some of them, and especially this one, the 440 yard par 4 fourteenth, just don’t look right. I think that this and the neighboring sixteenth were added a few decades back and whoever bit them did a very poor job, flattening the fairway and making the hole look very artificial. This fairway reminded me a lot of the incredibly disappointing Glashedy Course at Ballyliffin, where Pat Ruddy bulldozed a magnificent landscape to create something that looked like a 1990s American public course in a spectacular Irish landscape (maybe he did the same here?).

But the fifteenth, yet another sub-150 yard par 3, is a Gil Hanse creation and while it fits pretty awkwardly into the routing, is a very good one, perhaps my favorite of the bunch. One, I’ve always been a sucker for an uphill par 3 and this one looks like something out of the Nebraska sand hills.

While there was clearly some fairway leveling on the oceanfront par 4 sixteenth (also about 440 yards), it didn’t feel as egregious as on the fourteenth. There wasn’t anything too interesting about this hole but obviously the setting contributes a lot to its merits.

The last two holes couldn’t be more in contrast with each other and make for a pretty awkward pair. Seventeen is yet another very short par 3, this one only about 115 yards. I’m realizing that despite the variety of the settings, the fact that all five of the par 3s are very short is a real weakness. The three on the back nine all feel pretty shoehorned into the routing too.

That brings us to the long par 5 eighteenth, which felt about 18 times as long as the seventeenth. The drive is out over some of the best terrain on the course toward an old green, which I think was the old seventeenth (a hole that Tom Doak found particularly noteworthy). But before we get there, the hole turns right, we have to navigate a cluster of bunkers that turns out to be about 245 yards short of the green, and then the hole runs on and on until we reach the green, just short of the clubhouse.

I’ve played other 625 yard holes before but into the wind, I’ve never played one that felt as long as this. I hit three good shots and still couldn’t get near the green. Honestly, it’s a pretty unpleasant hole to finish and I don’t understand the decision to turn two mid-length par 4s into this monstrosity. Plus, this hole eats up a good chunk of the course’s best land. It’s just a very puzzling hole to me.

Narin and Portnoo is clearly a very good course, but also pretty clearly a mixed bag. Actually going back over the pictures while writing this review made me feel that the issue I wrote about at the outset, the stylistic inconsistency from hole to hole, is less of an issue that I thought. It’s mostly the flattened fairways on holes fourteen and sixteen that stand out as a negative in this regard.

But more of an issue than I realized when I was playing and when I started writing this review is the mix of holes and the awkwardness of some of the routing. The course starts with a bunch of short par 4s, then the back nine is a bunch of long par 4s. All of the par 3s are short. While the holes are tight to each other and walking distance between them is never an issue, the course repeatedly uses par 3s to bridge these spaces. Now that’s a good idea in theory, but I have an issue with every par 3 feeling like it’s doing this. Why not make the seventeenth a longer par 3 playing down into the current eighteenth fairway and shorten the ridiculously long eighteenth? Or cut one of the par 3s and make the eighteenth two holes again?

Maybe it’s a bit unfair to change my primary criticism of the course months after playing it from being about stylistic consistency to being about the mix of holes and the transitions between them. But both speak to the same broader issue: the course doesn’t feel like a harmonious whole, more like a collection of parts. And that’s how I felt about it when I finished. To be sure, the parts are mostly very good. The opener is excellent and so are the short par seventh and some of the par 3s. But I left feeling that the course I had just played lacked a bit of coherence, something that I rarely felt on other Irish courses, even though many of those weren’t as good as this one.

I’m not sure that there was a course on my Ireland trip that I was more excited to see than St. Patrick’s. Sure, Royal County Down has to be near the top of any list of courses that someone would be excited about seeing anywhere in the world, but this new Tom Doak course was on what was reputedly one of the best sites in the world, one which has been a tantalizing prospect for development for decades (there were supposed to be two Jack Nicklaus courses here). And consistent with that, the course debuted highly on Golf Magazine’s world ranking. So there was a good chance that I would be seeing a course in Doak’s top tier, with Pacific Dunes, Barnbougle, and Ballyneal.
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But after two playings, one in calm conditions and one in fairly windy conditions, I was a little bit disappointed. Maybe the hype was just too high, but I felt that the course was definitely below Royal County Down and Royal Portrush and probably a level below Bandon’s best. Actually, if it were one of the Bandon courses, I’d probably put it in 5th place, ahead of the Sheep Ranch but behind the others.

Why did I think this? First of all, it’s not because of the greens or the terrain. Both are outstanding. Although I’ve only played 5 or 6 Doak courses, this one probably has the best greens of the bunch. They’re a great mix of severe and subtle but interesting. Then there are some (like no. 11) that are unlike anything I’ve ever seen and quite bizarre, but in a good way. The terrain is also outstanding; much hillier than typical for a links course, but still with the subtle humps and bumps that give links courses so much interest.

My main issue with the course is that I don’t think it’s particularly interesting off the tee. It’s usually quite wide open and some fairways are among the widest that I’ve seen. Now in my first go around, when it wasn’t windy, I figured that this was a concession to the wind, which is probably blowing pretty good more often than not. But it was blowing a good 15 mph. in my afternoon round and I felt pretty much the same.

Still, part of me believes that I’m knocking St. Patrick’s a bit too much in my mind for this. This may be one of these cases where in reviewing the course while writing this review, I realize that it was a bit better than my impression at the time. In any case, the course has continued to move up the world rankings and I would still strongly recommend to visiting Americans that they include St. Patrick’s in the northern Irish golf itinerary. Everyone will agree that this is an excellent course and I think that it also provides something quite different from all other courses that you’ll see across the northern part of the island. It does have a bit more of an ‘American’ feel and I think in this context, that adds some good diversity.


Actually St. Patrick’s starts with one of its more interesting drives. The fairway narrows substantially just past the ridge where the fairway drops out of sight on this 375 yard par 4. Ideally, you’d carry this ridge but keep it short of about 260, where the fairway narrows. Then the hole drops into a narrow valley where you have a clear look straight up the green.

It all seems pretty straight-forward until you get to the green, which slopes from back-to-front and left-to-right and has a diagonal ridge running back-left to front-right in the middle. Neither the drive nor the approach is that demanding, but you must be sure to stay below the hole and hedge right here.

The second is a par 4 of around the same length with a drive that’s pretty simple if there’s no wind, but which can become much trickier in the wind—especially if it’s blowing from the left as it was in my afternoon round. That’s because the fairway comes on the right at about 220. But you also want to favor the right side of the fairway because the green is blind from the left side.

​In any case, unless you’ve hit a long drive here and have a short approach, I’d recommending hedging short and right again because again, the green slopes from long left to short right.

Like the first two holes, the mid-length par 3 third is beautifully framed by dunes. It’s pretty simple to discern the main strategic thought from the tee: short is better than long. The green is sort-of two-tiered, with a higher tier running across the back and a lower one at the front-left. There’s also ample room short of the green.

The look and feel of the course change substantially when we emerge onto the par 5 fourth tee. It’s not a long par 5, probably 550 from the tips and 500 from the next set.This hole was playing into the wind and it was bombs-away as the entire landing area is at least 60 yards wide. It might be trickier downwind as the fairway narrows to about 40 yards around 300 yards out.

The pair of bunkers on the right is probably 50 yards short of the green but the landing area is wide enough that they shouldn’t be an issue. It’s probably best not to be in the far left side of the fairway for the approach if you lay up, but anywhere else is fine. You’re left with a very tricky pitch however if you go for the green and miss wide right.

There’s a set of back tees that stretches the par 3 fifth to about 215, but most of us will play it in the 130-160 range. It’s actually pretty well suited for both lengths—there’s plenty of room to run the ball onto the green, but the green is full of little wrinkles that will almost always leave you a difficult second shot if you miss the first by too much.

Six is another par 5 with a huge fairway, but one that’s bisected by a hell’s half-acre type hazard that’s pretty near on the right and a bit further out on the left. Downhill and downwind, it was too near for me at all points from the second-to-back tees—I drove through the fairway into the crap at 275 up the left. I’d strongly recommend moving back a set of tees here, or just taking less club.

You should be able to reach the green off a well-placed drive. If you lay up, the fairway is wide-open. Still, you’re much better off being up the left side because there’s a nasty hump at the front-right of the green that could kick your ball in any direction and leave you a wickedly difficult pitch.

Seven is another mid-length par 4 with a much narrower fairway. But one thing that’s working in your favor here is that the bunkers up the right are a pretty easy carry, somewhere between 200 and 220. The wind (out of the southwest, which I suspect is standard) was into and from the right, so it felt comfortable to aim out over the bunkers and let the wind bring it back.

The approach is always blind but the green sits in a bowl. Especially given the uncertainty, it’s best to hedge a bit right here because the primary slope is from left-to-right.

What was an into-and-from-the-right wind on seven is now a down-and-from-left wind on the short par 4 eighth. This is the perfect wind to try to drive the green as the fairway runs from left to right along a ridge into the green. The only issue is not veering too far right into one of the nasty bunkers. It would be a very awkward hole if the wind were coming from the right, but this would be out of the northeast, which appears to be uncommon in this area.

Nine plays back the opposite direction again but a little more off to the right…and more directly into the wind. That made this hole, the first long par 4 of the day play brutally long. Again, the fairway is quite wide but it was critical to be up the left side because the hole simply plays too long if you went out to the right (which I did, twice).

It’s a very good approach, wide open up the right but with about the left third of the green guarded by dunes. The angle in is a bit better from the right (although I couldn’t reach so it didn’t even matter…) but I don’t think that really matters because if you’re up the left side, you’d still want to play your second a bit out to the right. It was irrelevant because I couldn’t reach it, but if you can reach the green, you could use the slope at the back-right to feed one onto its right side.

It’s a big, wide open hole, but there are a lot of interesting subtleties at the edges.

The 410 yard par 4 tenth looks challenging, but is another easy driving hole. The junk that you see off the tee is only about a 200 yard carry and the fairway beyond this is between 50 and 95 (!) yards wide. It’s definitely best to be up the left side here because there’s a huge bunker right of the green and the left side gives you a clear view into it. There’s a pretty substantial sideboard at the back left side but the ball can also get stuck up there and leave an impossible shot if you don’t run deep enough into the green.

I’m not sure I remember a fairway that felt wider to me than that on the long par 4 eleventh. There’s nothing to say about the drive here but a hell of a lot to say about the green. It’s one of the strangest that I’ve ever seen. Coming into it, it looks two tiered, with a high-tier on the left and a low one on the right that has a bank on its right side. Actually, there’s another high tier on the right. And the low level in the middle broadens at the back.

The best way to describe the contours of this green are T-shaped or maybe Y-shaped; the low part is Y-shaped but there are high tiers alongside the stem of the Y. I guess I’d say you should try to hit your drive up the opposite side of the fairway from where the pin is but I’m not sure that this matters much. It’s really all about precision on the approach and good lag putting when you inevitably end up in a tough spot.

Although the drive again is not too interesting, I thought that the ~540 yard par 5 twelfth was one of the better holes on the course from tee-to-green. That’s because the fairway narrows to a small gap at about 420 and you need to be able to hit your first two shots ~445 to get it up to the next level and have a clear view of the green for your third. This hole played almost directly into the wind, so it was quite tough to do. If you don’t make it, you’ll have a very challenging, blind third.

The green is a bit tamer, but it runs off at the left and there are some interesting contours to contend with if you miss over here.

The ~360 yard par 4 thirteenth has a different look, up and over the highest dune ridge on the property. This looks to have been the most difficult part of the property and Doak et al elected to cut through the high ridge. It doesn’t take more than about 220 to get a clear view of the green but the fairway does narrow somewhat beyond this. Still, it’s probably one of the tougher driving holes because you’re very exposed at this high point and you’re almost certainly facing a cross wind from the left.

Fifteen is an obviously excellent driving hole. The safe play is out to the left but it’s pretty easy to run through the fairway into the dunes on this line. And it’s only 190-220 to carry the bunker up the right, so the hole almost demands that you take on the riskier shot. You should probably do it, but it puts you at risk of landing in the junk on the right if you let it slip a little—it’s pretty close to your driving line.

On a course that is not noteworthy off the tee, this is a great driving hole by any standard.

I’ve seen a lot of people point to the short, uphill par 3 fifteenth as the weak point of St. Patrick’s. I completely disagree with this; it was probably my favorite par 3 of the bunch.

Having seen so many great ones on the heathland courses of southeast England, I’ve become a sucker for an uphill par 3. But—in addition to providing a link to higher ground for the big downhill next hole—it’s a very well-measured hole in its own right. It looks like a tight target, but it’s not. The green is very broad at the front, which is important because you’re playing a short iron 25 feet uphill into the wind. I’d imagine that there are some disasters on this hole, but it isn’t asking anything unreasonable. And hell, there’s a lay up fairway if the 130 yard shot is too much for you.

By contrast, most people seem to love the long, downhill par 4 sixteenth. It’s not hard to understand why. It gives you a beautiful, panoramic view of the property and it’s very forgiving. You’d be hard-pressed to miss this fairway…although it’s possible to reach the bunker up the right if you’re really wild.

The approach is straight-forward. The main issue is distance control—always an issue when a hole is playing downwind and the ball is bouncing.

​Seventeen is a medium-long par 3 with a green perched over a big dip at its front. There’s plenty of room to bail out right if the pin is on the left and you’re worried about distance control. But the green runs uphill to the back-right and bailing out here will leave a tricky, downhill put to a left green. A lot of people seem to like this hole too, but I didn’t find it to be all that interesting.

Downhill and with the wind down and from the right, eighteen should be a simple driving hole. The green is fairly broad and the approach also shouldn’t be too difficult, but there are severe penalties for missing here: a massive pit at the front-right and all kinds of junk on the left.

As has happened a few times before, I set out on this review thinking there was a chance that having another look at the pictures and thinking more about the holes some time after visiting the course would change my view of it a bit. But it really hasn’t. Besides the spectacular site, it’s clear what the strength of St. Patrick’s is: the greens. But it’s also clear to me now that the course just isn’t that interesting from tee-to-green. Save for the fifteenth hole, there’s not really a lot of thought required off the tee here. There are a few holes where you might want to club down to avoid running into junk, but there usually isn’t too much to think about at the sides. There are a few holes where you’ll have a better angle from one side of the fairway than the other, but unlike at Pacific Dunes, where the narrow greens can make for some very awkward angles off misplaced drives, I didn’t feel that drive placement was as important here.

There may be a point to this, however: it’s possible that there are any days that are significantly windier than what I experienced. The course played very easy in my calm first round and I didn’t feel that it was particularly difficult in my consistent 10-15 mph. second round either. But maybe 25 mph. winds are common here and the course is designed to be played in those. Maybe if I played it in very heavy winds, I’d appreciate the width off the tee and the fact that fairway placement isn’t so important.

Looking at the almanac, the winds in this area appear to vary from a low of 11.3 mph in July to a high of 16.8 mph in January. At the 90th percentile, the winds are between 18-20 mph. thought the summer to 25-27 in the winter. So what I experienced in my second round was probably near the average for that time of year (~13 mph in early May).

This suggests to me that they designed the course to be a bit on the safe side. I think it’s pretty easy at average winds and a 25 mph. wind is pretty uncommon. I can’t say that I fault Doak or the resort owners for hedging on the safe side—you’d rather that guests have a good round than spend all day losing balls (you can go do that next door on Pat Ruddy’s Sandy Hills Links). But it does make the course less interesting for me than some of its peers at Bandon and Cabot. Those places are windy too but I found each to be much more interesting off the tee than St. Patrick’s—except for the Sheep Ranch, but that’s the case-in-point because I found it to be by far the least interesting of the Bandon courses.

Still, St. Patrick’s was clearly the third best course between Dublin and Donegal and even though it’s a bit out of the way, it’s worth a visit for traveling Americans because there are three other good courses in the area (the other two here and especially Portsalon) and the Rosapenna Hotel is a lovely place, very comfortable, with two good restaurants and good facilities (pool/sauna/steam room). It has a brawnier, more American feel than the other Irish links courses and while that may not be my favorite thing in its own right, it does complement the other courses in the region very well.

Now we get into the part of my Ireland trip that includes several of the courses which Tom Doak described in the yellow Confidential Guide as ‘remote outposts of golf.’ My last five courses, Portsalon, the three at Rosapenna, and Narin and Portnoo are all in Donegal, the northwestern county of the Republic. Apparently when Doak visited them in the 80s and early 90s, they were all very rustic and of Portsalon, he said that much of it was buried in a drift of sand and he wasn’t sure that it was still there at all.

But in his quest to protect Irish links clubs from the EU regulatory agencies, Pat Ruddy convinced many of them in the late 80s and early 90s that they needed to build courses on their remaining links land now, or else looming regulations would mean that they would never be able to do so. That gave us some unfortunate new courses that would have been better left as sand dunes (Ballyliffin’s Glashedy Course), but also led to the updating of several existing courses, including Portsalon. Doak visited Portsalon again sometime in the late 00s and noted that while it had a few dull holes, Ruddy had transformed Portsalon into an excellent course, with outstanding views and a few outstanding holes to match.

I agree completely with Doak’s assessment. This is a fine course and probably the only course outside of what I’d consider the top tier of Irish courses that I played (Royal County Down, Royal Portrush, St. Patrick’s, Portmarnock, The Island) that wasn’t disappointing. While it doesn’t quite have the drama of Portstewart, hole-for-hole, it’s probably a sounder course. It’s true that the course gets a bit repetitive around the turn but apart from that, it has a fine and interesting mix of holes in the dunes near the coast and holes on hillier inland ground. Along with Ardglass and Narin and Portnoo, this is the only course that I played where a significant portion of the course is not on links land. And of these, Portsalon has by far the best inland holes. In fact what  the strongest stretch of holes, 13-15, crosses hilly inland terrain.

Unfortunately Portsalon has the same negative as almost all of the other second tier Irish courses: it’s too expensive for what you get. While at 150 euros, it’s not as egregious as Portstewart (£235) or the Ballyliffin courses (180 euros for the Old, 200 for the Glashedy), I’d say that this course would be reasonably priced in the $125-145 range, not in the upper $100s. But if you’re an American who’s come all the way to Donegal to play golf, it’s a worthwhile stop. Stay at Rosapenna and take the 20-30 minute drive out here. It’s a bit different than most of the other Irish links courses and while a bit on the pricey side, it’s still definitely worth playing.


While I noted that 13-15 might be the strongest stretch of holes, for a two hole stretch, you can’t beat the openers. The ~355 yard opener (the scorecard is in meters) competes favorably with Ardglass and Royal County Down for the best opener on my trip. It’s only about 150 yards to carry the ditch, which is actually a walking path to the massive beach on the left. You want to keep your drive up the left here, which, if you hit it far enough will give you a view of the flagstick and from which you won’t have to cross as bumpy of terrain. The terrain walking from the fairway to the green and around the green is about as good as anything you’ll find anywhere.

Tom Doak singled out the ~430 yard par 4 second as a great hole and I’d second that in the strongest possible way. To put it simply, this is in the top 10 holes I’ve played anywhere in the world.​

It starts with what might be the single best drive that I’ve seen. Obviously it’s an incredible view over the beach and the river. Also obviously, it’s a diagonal carry over them and the more you carry, the shorter second you’ll have—a serious issue on a long par 4. And the carry distances are almost perfect. Short hitters don’t have to make any carry if they don’t want to, but then you have every length carry from 150 up to 270 depending on your preference. And the carry on the ideal line is about 240, which seems almost perfect for longer hitters. So blocking out everything on the right side, this is obviously a great driving hole.

But it’s what’s going on on the right side that brings it to yet another level. There’s a dune ridge running diagonally up the entire right side of the fairway. So the further you bail out to the right, the more likely you are to go over the dune ridge and have a long and blind approach. The only negative I’d note about that is that just over the dune ridge is the seventeenth fairway and there were a lot of people from this hole in the seventeenth fairway when I was playing that hole.

If you’re a long hitter, the drive is even more exacting because two high mounds narrow the fairway starting at just under 300 yards. If you hit driver and push it just a little, you’ll be stuck behind them…or maybe in them. If you want to fit one in the narrow opening between them and the fairway, you’ll have to make about a 270 yard carry and be very accurate. But if you hit the fairway, you’ll have a flat lie and a short shot into the green. So in short, this is an extraordinary driving hole for everyone.

…And actually the approach and the green are quite good too. The river crosses the fairway at about 350 yards but beyond that, it’s open ground to the green. As if it needed it, the green is one of the most interesting on the course, softly domed with lots of interior contour. Even without the rest of the hole, this green probably would have stood out to me as one of the best I saw on my trip. But it’s not likely to be what you remember about this hole.

If there were ever a course worth playing for one hole, it’s this course for this one. Fortunately many of the others are very good too, so let’s move on.

We can see pretty quick that it’s not going to be too much of a letdown after that—the ~360 yard third crosses very fine links terrain. The green is in line with the left rough but—as I learned the hard way—you don’t want to try to cut it short. A drive up the right may leave a slightly worse view of the green but because the hole isn’t too long, just put one out there somewhere. The massive double green (shared with the ninth) is beautifully contoured.

Four is a mid-length par 5 that looks fairly similar from the tee. The green should be very reachable if the wind isn’t unfavorable and you can shorten the approach again by cutting up the left. The second is very forgiving for those who can’t reach the green as the fairway is shaped like a half-pipe. But the noteworthy thing here is just how interesting all the little rumples in the fairway are. Links terrain at its finest.

We reverse direction for the ~200 yard par 3 third. While it’s challenging, this isn’t my favorite hole because while the green site in the dunes is great, the green itself looks kind of like a table top. Ruddy should have tried harder to blend the green in better to its surroundings.

While the layout of the ~450 yard par 4 sixth is similar to the third and the fourth, it gives you a great view of the beach. The drive requires some accuracy but the real difficult is in the approach, which is probably the course’s most difficult. The green is narrow and sits up on a ridge, with run-offs at the front and right. It’s probably on the cusp of being too severe but the pitch from short isn’t too hard and it’s a good place to miss (much better than missing right).

Through the dunes again on the ~390 yard seventh, but this time the hole bends a bit to the right. The green is elevated again but it’s a much broader target than the previous one.

The ~530 yard par 5 eighth isn’t too difficult, but it’s a good hole crossing more fantastic terrain. It’s becoming clear at this point that while there are a lot of holes that don’t have much going on design-wise from tee to green, the contours in the fairways provide plenty of interest.

The hole doglegs left and there isn’t too much trouble if you hug the left side. The major feature here is a cluster of three bunkers in the middle of the fairway starting about 90 yards short of the green. Carrying these shouldn’t be an issue if you’ve hit a decent drive. The remainder of the hole is open into the green and it presents a good opportunity to make up a shot.

The drive is much tighter on the long (450+) par 4 ninth. There are staggered fairway bunkers, first right, then left, although the second is probably out of reach for all but very long hitters. The approach is pretty straight-forward but the green is quite narrow for such a long hole. But there’s no trouble short and it’s a good place to miss.

Ten is a lovely par 3 of about 155 yards—nice setting, well shaped bunkers given the surroundings. Just a nicely conceived and constructed hole.

The next two holes, a ~550 yard par 5 with a flat fairway and a dull ~180 yard par 3 over flat terrain are clearly the weak point of the course.

But then the character of the course completely changes and it gets very good again. I just loved the short par 4 thirteenth. It’s probably best to play it conservatively, laying up off the tee and then wedging on. But it’s also possible for longer hitters to drive one up near the green. To to that, they’ll have to be quite accurate because the fairway narrows to under 15 yards between trees on the left and dunes on the right at about 270. If you lay back, you must play up the right side or you’re likely to be at least partially blocked by trees.

The new green, set up to the left past a rock wall with trees framing the background, presents a very different look but the course is stronger for it.

Playing from up the hill over the thirteenth green, fourteen is also an excellent hole…but one which I really wish I had a second stab at. It’s clear that the hole turns right and that you run out of fairway on the left (at about 250). But what isn’t clear is that you also run out of fairway if you go up the middle and that you must cut at least some of the right side off. If you go up the middle, your ball can kick forward into some nasty long grass-filled hollows at about 270. There’s more room over the dunes right than you can see and at only about a 220 yard carry, it’s important either to aim right or hit something up the fairway with a cut. It’s a very good driving hole, but definitely one where you need an understanding of the lay of the land.

The approach is pure links, over bumpy terrain to a green that looks just to have been shaved down from its surroundings. It’s another excellent green on a course that probably has the best set of surface contours I saw on my trip, except for St. Patrick’s.

Teeing off right behind the fourteenth green and going back up the hill, the short par 3 fifteenth is another fine hole. While you need a solid shot to make it up there, this hole is made by its green, which may be the finest on the course.

The mid-length par 4 sixteenth shouldn’t be too hard…just don’t pull your drive. After the up-and-over blind drive the hole runs gently downhill over more modest farmland. But the approach over a creek framed by the picturesque village and mountains is certainly aesthetically pleasing, if not outstanding.

Seventeen is another reachable par 5 that doglegs left around a creek and gorse so while you’d like to be up the left side, there’s certainly risk in it. No matter where you drive it, you’ll probably have to contend with golfers playing the second hole who have driven it over the ridge into this fairway. The approach runs uphill and tilts a bit left. If you go for the green in two, be wary of the gorse on the left.

At around 400 yards and pretty wide open, eighteen is much more difficult than it appears. The first challenge—especially on into a wind quartering from the left, was carrying the very unusual sunken footpath that runs down to the beach and is a diagonal carry up to 230 yards if you go up the right side. This would make for a very challenging driving hazard…if it weren’t for the fact that it’s covered with a chain link fence and your ball will bounce off it if it hits it (evidenced by blue marks from the fence paint, which I know from experience).

The approach is over a very narrow creek but the green is broad and flat. Not the most inspiring finishing hole, but still one that presents a good challenge.

My initial impression of Portsalon was that it wasn’t too far behind either Portmarnock or The Island in quality. Revisiting it now reinforces my initial impression. While the number of outstanding holes is limited and many of the remaining holes are fairly similar from tee to green, most cross interesting terrain and the greens are consistently very good. This course reminds me of the Old Courses at both Ballyliffin and Rosapenna which are both over very good links terrain. But I think that the supporting cast of holes here is stronger than either of those courses because the dune ridges along the fairways create more interesting driving. Plus, the the greens are much better. And this course has one all-world hole and 3 or 4 other excellent ones, all of which those courses lack. So it's a much better course than those.

Upon reflection, I think I’m comfortable calling this the leader of the second-tier Northern Irish/Ireland courses, just ahead of Portstewart. It’s definitely not as flashy and many would dock it for feeling a bit repetitive from the middle of the front nine through the beginning of the back. But while it definitely doesn’t feel as repetitive, Portstewart’s back nine isn’t exactly full of great holes. And while the front nine has some fine holes and is memorable, this isn’t always for the best of reasons. With the exception of eleven and twelve, the Portsalon holes have interesting, often challenging drives over good terrain playing to good greens. It may not be as good for championship golf as Portstewart, but Portsalon strikes me as more solid throughout.

So if you go to Ireland with your golf clubs and make it as far as Donegal, be sure to play Portsalon. It’s an excellent complement to St. Patrick’s, which given the rankings is likely to make Rosapenna a common destination for American golfers (although it was surprisingly empty when I was there). But honestly, I think I liked Portsalon almost as much as I liked St. Patrick’s.

Everyone knows which are the top 2 courses in Northern Ireland. But do you know which is 3rd? The consensus appears to be Portstewart’s Strand Course, just a short drive west of Portrush. While not as well-known as Royal County Down or Royal Portrush, the course got some attention when Jon Rahm won the Irish Open here in 2017 and, judging by the high green fees, appears to be on the itineraries of a lot of visiting Americans. And the dunes here are at least as impressive as anything at Royal County Down. So it’s a course worth discussing and, if you’re on an Irish golf trip and the budget isn’t an issue, one worth visiting.

But while Portstewart is a very good course, it’s clearly a few rungs below the Northern Irish top 2 and I’d also have it below the top 3 courses that I played on this trip in the Republic, St. Patrick’s, Portmarnock, and The Island. Like several of those, Portstewart covers some pretty heavy terrain. But it does it in the least artful way of the bunch, with several holes in the heavy dunes on the front nine coming off as a bit gimmicky: too narrow and with some awkward routing choices. To be fair, the dunes area really big; many are 40-50 feet high rather than the 5-10 feet that you find on a lot of links courses. But you could say the same of some of the dunes at Royal County Down and The Island and they (well, more the former than the latter) seem to handle it without the degree of awkwardness and severity.

Portstewart is a tale of two nines, with the first nine running through the large dunes and the back nine running over more standard links land, albeit a bit hillier than your usual links land. The club didn’t acquire the land that covers the front nine until the 1960s and didn’t construct it until 1992. The previous course consisted of the back nine and part of what’s now called the Riverside Course, neighboring and on similar terrain to the current back nine.


The first hole, which is a bit of a mix of the terrain from the front nine and the back nine, is said to be considered (according to the yardage guide) among Europe’s finest opening holes. That seems a bit excessive—I wouldn’t say it’s better than the opening holes at Royal County Down, Royal Portrush, or even Ardglass—but it is a very good opening hole. It’s ~420 yards, so the main issue here is not bailing too far away from the dunes on the inside of the dogleg to leave yourself a reasonable length second. But unlike several other greens on the front nine, this one is very accepting of a run-up shot if you do have to come in from some distance.

The 360 yard par 4 second is one of the most awkward holes here and was just downright unpleasant to play into a wind that was quartering from the left. From the tee, you can’t see much of the fairway, which narrows to almost nothing at about 240, and there’s all kinds of opportunity for losing balls up the right side. The smart play here is just to try to hit one 200-220 yards to hit the widest part of the fairway. The uphill approach is to a narrow green with junk on both sides.

The downhill par 3 third is straight-forward enough, with a deep back-to-front sloping green. A miss short is much better than one wide or long.

Like two, the ~540 yard par five fourth highlights my primary issue with Portstewart: several of the holes are just a bit too narrow, which will always be a problem on a links course where the wind is likely to blow. Although there wasn’t much excuse for it on the second, the major issue here is that the valley through which the fairway is routed just isn’t that wide. But they could probably cut a bit more grass at its edges. The green has a pretty good false front and you want to make sure that you get all the way up top.

Exiting the big dunes on the drive, the long par 4 fifth is a much sounder hole than the previous few. Actually, it’s a very good one; there’s ample room right but because of the length of the hole, you get a significant advantage if you hug the (more dangerous) left side. Still, you’ll probably be able to find and play your ball if you miss left.

The approach, through a gap in the dunes, is one of the course’s best. So is the deep but narrow green, which places a premium on accuracy for the long second.

Another weak point of Portstewart is its set of par 3s. None of them is very interesting, although they're all challenging. If it looks like your tee shot is coming up short, you’ll want to yell for it to get in one of the bunkers. Otherwise it’ll run about 20 yards down a hill and you’ll have a blind pitch.

The par 5 seventh features another awkward tee shot, especially if you’re not playing the back tees. From the (6,625 yard) white tees, it’s only about 250 to run through the fairway on the direct line and you’ll either have to lay back, hit a draw, or carry some of the dunes on the right.

But it gets more gimmicky on the approach, where you play uphill to a narrowing fairway that’s blind where you think you’d want to land the ball. You don’t want to land the ball there—just bunt one up near the furthest point you can see because beyond this, the fairway narrows to about 5 yards wide and the hole drops into a pit of doom on the right.

​It’s not a long par 5 and you’d think this would be an opportunity to have a short second, go for the green in two, and have a shot at eagle. But unless you’re very accurate, you’ll probably just lose 2 or 3 balls if you try to do this. This hole is probably best played 4-iron, 9-iron, wedge.

The 410 yard eighth is another awkward driving hole, running straight out about 300 yards to the end of the fairway, then turning sharply left over a ravine. It’s probably best to hit something about 250 and just take your mid-iron approach. Long hitters could get near the green with a favorable wind and that might be worth trying if you don’t care about your score but like most of the rest of the front nine, if you care about scoring, you should just play this hole conservatively.

Straight into the wind, the 350 yard ninth was absolutely brutal. That’s because unless you can carry it about 230, you’re driving to a narrow fairway with a pit of despair on either side. I couldn’t make the carry and hit it in the one on the right, which actually set up one of my best shots of the trip—an 8-iron that just barely cleared the crest of the hill and ended up 10 feet from the pin. It’d be an interesting hole with any other wind, but it was borderline unplayable with this one and we probably should have moved up a set of tees.

As I mentioned above, the character of the back nine is very different, crossing much more standard links terrain. And although I’m not sure how many would make it, there’s an argument to be made that this is the better of the two nines.

It isn’t always a lot easier—the 400 yard tenth features a drive to a narrow fairway with bunkers 230 and 265 on the left and dunes/long grass up the right. The approach is much easier, downhill to a broad green without any trouble in front.

The 375 yard eleventh plays to a broader fairway, although one progressively narrowed by bunkers up the left side. It’s definitely got a bit of a ‘championship course drive’ feel, wide open if you lay back but narrow if you hit a driver. The approach is over a valley to a green that’s cut into the side of a dune. There’s plenty of room up there which is good…because there isn’t really a good place to miss it.

We played the par 3 twelfth to a dopey temporary green left of the real green (without any reduction in the green fee). But the shot to the real green didn’t look to be anything special either.

The 490 yard par 5 thirteenth is pretty straight-forward, although there is OB up the right. The main feature here is a set of bunkers that narrows the fairway about 50 yards short of the green. They’re well-placed to mess with those who are on the cusp of being able to go for the green in two. The green has two bunkers on each side.

The fourteenth is also a par 5 and of similar length, but much more interesting and challenging. Like the seventh, it’s a quick dogleg right, where it’s easy to run through the fairway on the left. Again, you either have to lay back or hit something that can carry part of the dunes at the corner of the dogleg. But as we learned, it’s definitely possible to overdo this and end up in…another pit of despair, this time filled with deep grass where you’re unlikely to find the ball.

The rest of the hole runs gradually uphill across some lovely links terrain with a green set in a broad hollow in the dunes.

Fifteen might be the best par 3 of the bunch but I’m not sure that’s saying much. The green has bunkers front and right so again, it’s an exacting shot. But the par 3s all look and play similar.

I actually thought that the last three holes, lengthy par 4s running to, away from, and then back to the clubhouse might have been the strongest part of the course. Each is a solid hole and this part of the course feels like an Open Championship course, albeit maybe a bit easier off the tee.

Although there are no fairway bunkers, the sixteenth has a narrow fairway with dunes on both sides. The approach into the green is a good one—the green is open at the front and accepts a run up shot.

Also bunkerless off the tee (and at the green), the seventeenth is nonetheless significantly harder. Part of this was because it was playing into the wind (at 430, it’s also 40 yards longer). But a large part of it is the green itself, which is perched on a hill where anything short will roll back 10-15 yards. It might be the single hardest shot on the course although I appreciated the fact that unlike some of the course’s other hard shots, it’s easy to tell what’s going on here.

The bunkers up the left on the semi-blind eighteenth are only about a 190 yard carry and while there’s OB right, there’s plenty of room left. Downwind, it was a pretty simple driving hole. The approach looks similar to that on sixteen, although there are five bunkers around this green.

Portstewart appears to have become a standard part of the Northern Ireland golf trip itinerary. And some might see it as being in the upper tier of courses, maybe not on the level of Royal Portrush or Royal County Down, but in the conversation with courses like The Island and Portmarnock.

For me, this is not the case. First of all, I’d say there’s a pretty significant gap between Royal County Down and Royal Portrush, then another significant one between Royal Portrush and The Island/Portmarnock, which I’d rate similarly. I think that the drop off from The Island/Portmarnock to Portstewart is not much smaller than the drop off from Royal Portrush to The Island/Portmarnock.

To me, this is clearly a lesser course than those and belongs on the second (third?) tier with the lesser-known Portsalon and Narin and Portnoo. Several of the holes in the big dunes are awkward and honestly, a bit gimmicky. Some of this might have been the nature of the beast given the size of the dunes and narrowness of the corridors. But I’m sure that the course could have been routed or shaped in a way to avoid some of the awkwardness that we find on holes like two and eight.

And while I didn’t mention it much in my discussion of the holes, the shaping on and around the greens was often pretty rudimentary and not in a good way. A lot of the greens are awkwardly set in their surroundings, with abrupt changes in slope. This course might be a case where if they had moved more dirt, it would have looked like they had moved less. I don’t know who designed this course but in general, I think several architects could have done a better job.

This brings me to my last point, which is more a general reflection on my Ireland trip but one for which this course is a good case in point—except for the top courses, golf in Ireland does not offer good value for money. I paid £235 to play Portstewart, close to $300. If it were in the US, I’d say this was about a $150 course. And while Portstewart was one of the most egregious examples, green fees at all of these second-tier courses were at least close to if not over $200. That simply isn’t a good value for a course that would struggle to be in the top 10 public courses in my home state of Michigan, which Portstewart and everything below it would.

While you’d expect to pay a premium to travel abroad and might not mind doing so because these courses are a lot different that what you’ll get to experience in the states, if you care about getting your money’s worth for golf, I’d actually recommend avoiding the second-tier courses. Although some people scoff at it because of the amount of driving that it entails—Royal County Down to Ballybunion is almost a 5 hour drive—it might be best to stick to the top courses when visiting Ireland. Yes Royal County Down is $375, but it’s surely one of the world’s top 10 and is a much better value for money than Portstewart (or Narin and Portnoo or certainly Ballyliffin, which is the worst value of all).

Next time I go to Ireland—and someday I will because I ended this trip in Donegal and didn’t get to Ballybunion or Lahinch—I’ll be more sensitive to the green fees at these second-tier courses. On this trip, I tried to hit everything that seemed worth playing between Dublin and Donegal and there were just too many courses that I wouldn’t have missed had I not seen them. I might miss a gem (like Portsalon) along the way, but this would allow me to shorten my trip and not feel as if I had been had. Others may care more about the experience of the trip, but I expect a strong, positive correlation between the quality of the course and the green fee.

To me, Ireland has too many good, but not great courses charging visitors too high of greens fees. I’d much rather go play Pine Needles or Forest Dunes again than incur the considerable expense (plus the flight) to go play these. Or I’d go back to southwestern England, which (for now) is less well-known and offers better golf at lower rates.