3 Architects’ Choice Top 100 Golf Courses In compiling the Top 100, golf architects were free to select their favourite courses using whichever criteria they felt most appropriate. It wasn’t an easy task, as Peter Matkovich highlights: “I spent many hours debating in my mind the various values and credentials of the courses. It’s almost like asking to rank your children in order of preference.” But over 240 golf course architects completed it, and many who participated shared their thoughts on what made a golf course great. Location was most frequently cited. Scottish-based architect Sam Thomas says: “My choices are special primarily due to location, location, location. The sites of each would be any architect’s dream.” Brit Stenson of IMG Golf Course Design says: “To me, the very best courses are great routings on unusual or maybe even unique sites. The Golden Age architects often had the opportunity to select from and design on truly outstanding sites, and they had the limitations imposed by the construction equipment and methods of the day. It is that combination of opportunity and constraint that fostered their genius, their adaptive flexibility, and hence that gave us so many truly unique journeys in golf.” And, almost uniquely in sport, this diversity of playing surface is what makes golf special. Ian Andrew adds: “One of the great joys in golf is that each setting for the game is completely unique. When the golf course fully integrates and incorporates the setting right into the architecture we are left breathless. Royal County Down and Prairie Dunes are the two best examples I know of where the line between golf and landscape beyond is so blurred that you don’t know whether to grab a sketch book, a camera or you golf clubs. While there ‘may’ be a handful of better designs, there is no grander experience and no place I would rather be than either of those two courses.” Location also encompasses another crucial factor – the weather. David Johnson said: “A great golf course is not only defined by having superb strategy and conditioning, but it offers intangibles that result in a Just what is it that makes a golf course great? Is it strategic golf holes, a breathtaking setting, immaculate conditioning, or something else? Toby Ingleton finds out what the architects think. TOP What to be takes it Photo: Gary Lisbon
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=