[Greg Ross]

North Berwick. So under publicized, but so over-whelming. It emphasized for me that you don't have to be famous (or underrated) to be good. Can't wait to find the next underrated jewel.

[Jim Nelson]

Ballyneal without a doubt.  I had played the courses in Bandon, Sandhill and a dozen or so of the classic courses in Scotland and Ireland, so I understood on some level the concept of links golf.  I came back to Ballyneal and understood that golf, above all, was meant to be fun, in almost a puckish, whimsical way.  Part of it was the fact that most of the courses except at Bandon, I only played once.  When I play a course multiple times, I start to understand the nuance.  But it was Ballyneal that truly made me appreciate the ground game and I am hooked.   I actually embrace windy days!

Jim, nice idea for a topic.

[JNC Lyon]

Two courses come to mind:

Merion--I still have not played it, but I walked it thoroughly during the 2009 Walker Cup.  I was struck by the variety of green complexes and hole designs that stick together so well.  It's hard to believe that holes like 7, 11, and 16 could all stick together on one golf course, but they do so perfectly.  It was also my first introduction to the wide world of Philly golf architecture.

Deal--Sandwich was the first links I played in the UK, North Berwick was my favorite, but Deal had the most impact on me.  It showed the way in which ground contours and short grass can truly maximize their potential.  Deal also demonstrates that greensites do not greenside bunkers to be effective.  Deal has 8 bunkerless greens, and those greens are likely the most interesting on the golf course.  It is also a perfect display of what a British golf club should be.

Along with Woking, Merion and Deal are still the two most interesting sets of greens I have seen.

[Scott Warren]

Royal Cinque Ports.

That landscape, which allows nine greens to be bunkerless without you really noticing, because there isn't a single one that doesn't have challenge and interest in spades.

The lack of length without it being a walkover - I still challenge anyone to shoot their handicap from the 6300-yard par 71 tees.

The width of most of the corridors.

The amount of short grass around the greens.

It established a prism through which I have viewed every course I have seen since.

EDIT - John: Great minds. You count only eight bunkerless greens? I have the list as 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18.

[Matt Day]

Walking Cypress Point with a group of Aussie supers on a beautiful february afternoon four years ago.

The transition from forest to dunes to ocean was mindblowing, I think i got as much enjoyment from holes like 5/6 and 8/9 as the obvious 15/16/17

[Bill_McBride]

I was into golf architecture and links golf before I had ever played a course so there is no course that flipped the switch or changed everything.  HOWEVER, it was watching the 1978 British Open from St. Andrews on television and staring at original World Atlas of Golf for hours that got me thinking about golf architecture and got me interested in playing golf.  I was fascinated by the classic courses of the UK and USA from day one.

Bill,
Do you still think Pasatiempo is a notch below the Valley Club?

Yes, but really only on the grounds that the setting at the Valley Club is pastoral and Pasatiempo is cluttered with housing.  The back nine at Pasatiempo is still my favorite nine holes in golf; there is so much to love there.

There are also the relatively minor annoyances of the first at Pasa converted to a par 4 and the fugly driving range.

[Shane Wright]

Jim -

Gullane - first "true" links course I ever played. Ironically, it was the first Gorsemen trip. It was September 2001.  I'll never forget the sweet wedge I clipped from the 1st fairway only to watch in bounce and rocket over the green.  My jaw was dropped.  Then I put one in a revetted bunker a few holes later and had no idea what to do.  "Take yer medicine" a guy tells me.  What the heck is that? 

I was in love. 

And it only got stronger.

[JNC Lyon]

Royal Cinque Ports.

That landscape, which allows nine greens to be bunkerless without you really noticing, because there isn't a single one that doesn't have challenge and interest in spades.

The lack of length without it being a walkover - I still challenge anyone to shoot their handicap from the 6300-yard par 71 tees.

The width of most of the corridors.

The amount of short grass around the greens.

It established a prism through which I have viewed every course I have seen since.

EDIT - John: Great minds. You count only eight bunkerless greens? I have the list as 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18.

Scott, doesn't 10 have a bunker front right?  That green is fascinating in spite of that bunker, I suppose.  You were definitely the one who pointed that out to me originally.  Thinking about it now, it's unbelievable how vast the short grass is around the greens and that presentation makes the greens pop out.

[Dan Boerger]

I played NGLA with little knowledge or real interest in GCA. But it almost hit me like a lightening bolt when I played the Alps hole there. I remember hitting a good approach shot onto the green, and then (when on the green) looking back and thinking "holy sh-t", there's an amazing amount of stuff going on here.

It really sparked my interest in this subject.

Another course I really looked past for many years is the Yahnundasis ... but now realize there are some really good holes and features there.

[Terry Lavin]

I think it's easier for me to think in terms of a three-course progression.  Cherry Hills CC in Denver is the first great, classic course that I played.  It stirred me to my golfing soul.  The mountains, the history, even the damned moat around the green.  I was so excited to have played there that I paid the locker room guy to fill my duffel with various keepsakes from the club.  After that, I'd say the Dunes Club in Michigan changed the way I looked at golf courses.  It was (and is) so different from other Midwestern golf courses that I started to see the possibilities offered by different types of properties. Finally, Sand Hills just transformed the way I look at golf courses.

[Andrew Lewis]

Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.

Jim-Yale did it for me as well. I had never seen anything so bold or different. I understood immediately that it would act as a sort of benchmark for me as to all those that came after. My feelings have not changed some 27 years later.

Yale may be the clubhouse leader.  Jim's comment about scale & slope is exactly what hit me.  I never knew a golf course could be like that.

Yale also would be my choice.  The scale, slope and -- of course -- those greens!

[Yannick Pilon]

Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, SC.
By Mike Strantz.
Summer of 1994.

I had been to Myrtle Beach a couple of times with my parents as a kid and was already into golf course architecture as a result, but the day I stepped on that golf course for the first time, I realized what great golf course architecture could do.

I would not say it changed me per say, but it pushed my interest much further.  I still have fond and vivid memories of the place even if I haven't been back there in more than 12 years....

The links courses of Scotland had a similar effect a couple of years after that.

YP

[Kyle Henderson]

I've had a few script flippers.

Started playing in 2002.

Lake Chabot introduced me to quirk (blind par 3 dropping 100 feet in 150 yards, ski slope par 6, etc.)

Tobacco Road introduced me to bunkers over 30 feet deep, par 3s that alternate the angle of play by 90 degrees from one set of tee markers to another and holes sculpted by a visual artists to evoke a thematic and theatric sense of scale.

Ballyneal introduced me to truly fast and firm playing surfaces, absent tee markers and course ratings, first-rate naturalism in bunker construction, "mogul greens," and fairways contoured so heavily that their massive widths are defined by multiple targets (kick slopes, flat lies, short cuts) as well as their central and surrounding hazards.

[Sean_A]

The first course which really opened doors for me as far as posibilities go was Troon circa 1991.  It was the first links I ever played.  Before that I had only played parkland courses some of which are very good, but still of the same basic type.  

After Troon I had smaller eye openers such as Pennard and North Berwick, but they were only important in so much as they showed me links didn't always have to be a battle to the death.

Kington circa 2000 was a huge surprise for me.  Before this I was always a firm naturalist.  Kington made me realize there is more than one way to skin a cat and that unnatural looking features can be beautiful in their own right if their function is spot on.  Right around the time of Kington, Beau Desert and Huntercombe drove home that unnatural features are just fine.  I have even gotten to the point where Raynor's stuff doesn't bother me - my mamas so proud of me.  

Ciao  

[Bill Shamleffer]

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to play St. Louis Country Club a few times when I was in high school & college.  I had never seen bunkers with steps going into them, or greens with valleys in the middle.

Remember the scene in Field of Dreams when the old ballplayer asked Kevin Costner if he was in heaven, and Costner responds, No this is Iowa.  Well that is what it was like to be on St. Louis C.C. when I was a teenage golf fanatic.

[Tony_Chapman]

Firethorn, Lincoln NE.

then,

Sand Hlls, Mullen, NE

then,

Prairie Dunes, Hutchinson, KS

[Joe_Tucholski]

I can’t say that I’ve completely “Flipped Da Script” but the course that sparked my interest in course design is Rustic Canyon.  When I first played the course in early 2010 I played with a gentleman probably twice my age who stated he played the course three times a week.  He knew the course and wish I would have listened to what he had to say a bit more as I'm sure it would have improved my score.  Hole 14 is the hole that I really remember thinking this course is different.  My playing partner that day played his drive well to the right while I played it over the trees/bushes.  He didn’t reach the green but left his approach short right maybe 40 yards.  I took wedge and landed to what I thought would be 20 feet only to watch it roll long left.  I then watched my playing partner take his putter from 40ish yards out aim far right and let the ball feed to five feet.  I didn’t get up and down and he of course made his par.

Living in LA I try to get up there once or twice a month and believe it is all I could ask for from a golf course.  It’s a place that my friends who top over 50% of their shots can still manage to play and also a course that challenges the scratch golfer.

[cary lichtenstein]

Pebble Beach

[Mike Hendren]

Jackson (TN) Country Club in the mid-70's.  Boldly pushed up greens guarded by deep grass faced bunkers.  Perhaps Langford's influence and my first classic course played in competition. 

Wild Dunes in the mid-80s.  My first introduction to the thrill of seaside golf (17, 18) and heaving fairway movement (10, 11, 12).

Bogey

[Doug Wright]

Good question Jim. Can't say it was one course but a couple events:

1. Oak Hill East 1973.  The first "major" course I ever played; made me realize there is a difference in the quality of golf courses.
2. First Scotland trip 1990. First encounter with links golf. Walking the Old Course and playing Muirfield and North Berwick were eye-opening.
2. The Island, 1994. Fresh off the overnight plane, my second GBI trip, and the quirk that was The Island was rapturous.
3. Sand Hills 1999. Not playing it--looking for it on the then relatively new Internet and I found the Sand Hills Course Description on GolfClubAtlas.com.  The rest, as they say, is history.

[Bryan Drennon]

The 86 Masters and my first time on the grounds in 87 hooked me on golf. The 88 Heritage that Greg Norman won and the opportunity to follow him on Sunday had the biggest effect on my love of architecture. I found myself drawing golf holes in school instead of studying and even went out in the back yard and dug a bunker with mock railroad ties fronting it (ala the 13th at Harbor Town). I can't believe my parents let me do that.

[Jim Tang]

JC -

Pacific Dunes.  It was the first time I had every really played off sand based turf, which was a revolutionary experience for me at the time. 

[Tom Kelly]

I've always had a decent idea about what makes a good golf course and possibly more importantly what makes a bad one. But spending 6 months working on the Melbourne Sandbelt and the following 6 months in St Andrews and the east coast of Scotland helped me see what makes a truly great golf course stand out above all of the good ones out there.

Sandbelt bunkering both visually and strategically had a profound effect upon me. Especially at Kingston Heath where the bunkering turns what could have been a pretty ordinary course on fairly boring flat land into a great golf course. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the mighty Royal Melbourne, but it gives me a great excuse to go back one day!!

Barnbougle Dunes and St Andrews Beach, I was delighted to see modern courses which don't 'try too hard' and let simplicity and nature do the work. Up until then my experience of modern courses were inland English courses trying to copy US tour stadium courses and were all boring and mostly very bad with no character whatsoever.

Then came the big one.....The Old Course, everywhere I ever visit now will be measured against it. The variety of shots one can use to play a single hole is unreal and I loved how people of all abilities could enjoy the course in their own way. It challenged the pros yet gave the beginner a chance.

Carnoustie showed me what a a hard golf course truly is and that hard can also be fair.

North Berwick and parts of Cruden Bay showed me that ridiculous can sometimes be great.

Though Cruden Bay coupled with Gleneagles Kings Course also made me realise I'm not a fan of blind approach shots!

14th at Royal Dornoch showed me that the placement of a green has far more bearing on the quality of the hole than the placement of a bunker or water hazard ever can.

[Paul Stephenson]

Two events, both when I was in my teens.

I remember playing St. George's in a junior tournament and thinking what a nice course it was.  Hilly with nice undulating greens.  When I played a tournament at Cataraqui later in the summer and again thought it was a nice course.  Nice undulating greens and good par 3s.  When I found out it was designed by the same architect I thought I'd like to find out more about this Stanley Thompson guy.

The second was playing Barrow golf club in England.  It's not too far from the Irish Sea without a tree on the place.  The wind coupled with a total lack of depth perception made me rethink how I was not going to run out of balls again.

[Jason Topp]

For me it was not a particular course but instead from realizing that my enjoyment of the game need not revolve around my score.

   

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