Course of the Week

Muirfield is the links every architect names as the fairest test in golf. A study of the Honourable Company’s home in Open Championship week.

Royal Birkdale sits on a strip of dune land between Southport town and the Irish Sea. It has hosted more Opens since 1954 than any other course except St Andrews. And yet, in the hierarchy of famous links, it exists slightly beneath the radar — the working man’s Open venue, the one nobody quite talks about with the reverence it deserves. Here’s why that’s wrong.

We profiled Aronimink last week. This week we go to the other Donald Ross course that has a fair claim to being his masterpiece. Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina is the most influential American course of the 20th century, the home of American golf in a way no other club has matched, and the venue that has hosted four US Opens, three of them in living memory. Here’s why.

Pebble’s booked. Bandon’s a flight away. Here are seven public courses worth driving for — the ones the magazines have missed and the locals quietly love.

Eighteen months out from the 2027 Ryder Cup, Adare Manor is being quietly re-tweaked yet again. We walked the property and spoke to the people who actually maintain it.

Buried in the piney woods of East Texas, Wild Spring Dunes is Tom Doak’s collaboration with the Keiser family on 2,400 secluded acres. Early visitors are already calling it one of the most exciting new courses in the country. Here’s why.

Every generation of golfers produces a new set of favourites. Shinnecock Hills, in Southampton, New York, remains undefeated against all of them. The 2026 US Open returns to the Long Island links in June. Here’s why no course in America has tested the game’s best players more honestly.

Donald Ross called it his masterpiece. After 64 years without a major championship, Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania is back on the biggest stage in golf. Here’s why the course collectors and architects have always known what the rest of the world is about to discover.