I can't locate the thread but ther was one on here a year or two ago about Swansea Bay which was championed as a fun course despite playing under motorway arches and with a factory background.
Don't you play under an aqueduct or something of that ilk at Tryall in the Caribbean?
I think someone drove a motorway and bridge through Royal Queensland - did it ruin the course?
Hunstanton is one of those links on which there are few glimpses of the sea. The very strong 17th and 18th holes are marred by a row of somewhat inelegant beach huts off to the right of the fairways and the automatic traffic lights that now prevent golfers playing to the 18th green if there are bathers making their way to the beach.
I don't remember what effect the graveyard at Ballybunion had on me, as I was in my young teens when I played there in the mid 60s. The course (there was only one then) was then, I presume, played in a different hole order. But there's a graveyard on a hole at Hexham (a very handsome course, for the most part) on which you play up to a raised green beside a graveyard, reminding the golfer not to take too long on his putt. But the most exciting hole at Hexham is the last, a short, downhill par-4 to a green beside the Spittal, a handsome old country mansion which serves as the clubhouse. Just off the fairway to the left, very much in range of my left-hander's slice) is a collection of potting sheds and greenhouses in which the estate's early vegetables, fruit and salad crops were grown. Acres and acres of glass just waiting for my slice!
There are many courses of which I can think on which a shot somewhere is aimed at one church spire or another, but the two courses I most think of in this respect are St Enodoc and TOC. Play TOC with a local and he'll tell you on many a hole to take aim on this spire or that tower. The trouble is that I don't know which is the Presbyterian Church, which the Catholic Chapel and which the Methodist - it's not just St Rule and St Regulus for the locals.
The 10th at St Enodoc would probably be deemed unfair (for someone of my modest length) or simply too jolly difficult if it weren't for the romance of taking distant aim on the doorway to the little church in which Betjeman is buried.
At Brancepeth Castle a number of holes are enlivened by views of or even aiming at the little church. The castle is too austere and overpowering to add pleasure to those amazing long par-3 holes at the turn.
The presence of the church beside the 12th green at Burnham and Berrow surely adds something to that hole even if it doesn't contribute to the playing strategy.
Many of our seaside courses are blighted by the proximity of caravan sites, but I can think of two courses blighted by ammunition factories - Alsager and Shaw Hill. neither is of any great architectural merit, but it can be somewhat off putting to reach the top of your backswing at the very moment they decide to let off a controlled explosion with a loud BOOOOOMMMMM. Such hazards are not visible - nor are the machine gun ranges at Strensall, alongside which is the admirable course of York Golf Club. Many a backswing has been shot to pieces with an ill-timed burst of fire.
The drive at Conwy's 18th is blind over banks of gorse towards an angled fairway. The club flagpole (where it is today) is the line for avergae players, tigers taking the more dangerous right-hand route over more of the gorse. When the marina was being built a number of the contractors were given some sort of attractive playing deal and they made all sorts of useful contributions to the upkeep of the course, but they helped themselves, too. They constructed a tall silo in which to store their ready-made concrete. It stood about half a mile beyond the perfect line off the 18th tee (the flagpole then being elsewhere) and they helpfully painted a large white arrow on their silo on the precise line for a perfect drive.
At Maesdu a little railway line runs between it and North Wales. Two or three holes are played alongside the railway and tales of bouncing the ball off a railway track back onto the course abound (similar to those from Prestwick). But there's something rather endearing when, waiting for the green to clear in order to play your second shot, the old-fashioned semaphore sugnal arm clunks into the away position just as the green clears. How that railway should be brought back to St Andrews - steam operated, of course!
I'm sorry to those of you who have heard this before, but I grew up playing golf as a boy at Lilleshall Hall in Shropshire, a nothing-special Colt course of puny length. The 9th hole was a dog-leg played towards a distant fence before the fairway turned abruptly right and uphill to the green (actually quite a strong hole). Beyond the fence were some of the extensive grounds of Lilleshall Hall a sports training facility, then the best in the land. In those days I could easily clear the fence with my drive and the greatest pleasure was to hit the little corrugated iron hut in which the coaches sheltered as their charges laboured on the pitch. I was playing there in 1966 when my father advised me not to reach for the driver but to take a 3-iron for safety (I could hit a mean 3-iron in those days). The players at that moment on the pitch were the England football squad preparing for their only Wolrd Cup win. What if I had taken out Geoff Hurst?
The proximity of housing can easily mar a course for me. I have no problem with the houses alongside the 18th at TOC, and I don't really notice those beside the early holes at Royal Dornoch, but they do not enhance Royal Lytham. Many commentators have criticised the domestic backdrop of Royal Liverpool, but I rarely notice anything other than the course here. But it's poor old Moortown for whom you have to feel sorry. Most of the losses to their original MacKenzie course have been caused by neighbouring golf courses either selling up totally (Moor Allerton) or parting with some land (Sand Moor). The fear of a sloppy left-hander such as I slicing into someone's bedroom has caused a number of excellent holes to be lost. Unfortunately they are not even handsome houses - cf Pasatiempo.