Category: Essays
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Hazeltine National Golf Club
Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, designed by Robert Trent Jones, is renowned for hosting major championships. Its unique holes present a variety of challenges. The club promotes walking, enhancing the experience, while maintaining immaculate course conditions.
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RainDance National Golf Course
RainDance is the longest course in North America. Downhill holes and a variety of tees mitigate that for most players and the greens offer more of a challenge than the length. With a beautiful setting and impressive practice area, RainDance outperforms expectations, even if the course isn’t commensurate with the…
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Augusta Wind Golf Course
This feels as close to the kind of local Scottish links golf as you can get in America. It’s in the Nebraska sand hills and is maintained by community members who almost certainly don’t do it for the money. For as low as the budget must be, the greens are…
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Mad Russian
I don’t know if John Barth was a golfer, but I imagine he’d like the Mad Russian. It’s got a wacky routing, odd angled fairways, good greens, and a striking sense of humor. Located in Milliken, Colorado, this former farmland was turned into one of the most original designs in…
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Ballyneal Golf Club
Ballyneal is a Tom Doak course located among Eastern Colorado’s chop hills. The isolation, the use of the sand dunes, and the size of the course make it as unique and fun as anything out there.
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Landmand
Landmand has to be one of the most audacious golf courses built in recent memory and every bit of it works. It’s fun, it has a sense of humor, and it’s built on a big site with undulating land that will leave you giddy. AND…it’s public.
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Bayside Golf Club
Bayside Golf Club in Brule, Nebraska offers a fun and scenic course designed by architects Dave Axland and Dan Proctor. The front nine blends well with the landscape, while the back nine presents more severe terrain. The combination of scoring holes and challenges creates a unique golfing experience, rewarding patience…
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Veenker Golf Course
Perry Maxwell got to Iowa 50 years before Kevin Costner, and someone in the planning department at Ames decided they didn’t like the ballfield. Fortunately, eleven Maxwell holes remain and make it a worthwhile trip to see. The new additions are forgettable (or lamentable) and the routing is a head…
Layman's Hall 