To those who’ve mentioned rating and raters, this thread is not concerned with ratings. This thread is about unique golf courses that bring something new to the table. I don’t care if a course is good enough to be Top 100 or Top 200 or #1 or whatever. I would like to focus on unique courses, attempts to break molds, noble attempts, etc.
So far we’ve mentioned…
If The Old Course was the first course, that certainly added something to the world of architecture...a golf course.
CBM/Raynor's work at NGLA did as well. The first template course, which was used to show the world what architecture was and build an "ideal" course.
The courses where the architect applied new turf and agronomy knowledge and studies (like Merion by Wilson) would have to be seminal to innovation.
Of the new innovations here, would it be fair to say that some of the new approaches to GC development was to combine golf with U.S. resort and destination venues along the R.R. and trail south for the winter for the northerners? Ross and his perennial work at Pinehurst would also be in those categories or resorts-agronomy-design in particular pine barrens, also like Pine Valley.
Innovation or development by industrialist or wealthy like Fownes at Oakmont, Merion and PV Crump, led to many other courses developed by private wealthy individual efforts leading to the Keiser, Kohler, Trump profile of developers of modern day. Golf innovation or breakthroughs seem often to come from wealthy individual's efforts who become passionate about the game and its fields of play.
The early desert courses would have to be on the list. Red Lawarence' Desert Forest would have to be included, I think.
Slightly different, Shadow Creek would be included as the mode, of golf-course-as-putty model.
Prestwick
Sand Hills.
And to go out on a flier here, though I've never played it, Kinloch's many holes with dual fairways must be distinct.
Muirfield's routing.
Emirates GC, Dubai. First grass golf course in the Middle East.
New Zealand - first heathland cut through trees.
Woking - first attempt at transplanting strategic links concepts and TOC like greens to heathland - the course still stands out today.
St Georges Hill - first housing estate course - and likely still the best housing estate course.
The above centre around heathland golf, but somehow there must be mention of heathland golf being the ground zero of realizing the importance of turf for inland golf. So really, a meld of maintenance and design for inland golf was originated somewhere in the heathlands. I think this is possibly the most important aspect of the heathland movement.
I don't believe TOC was the first course, but I think it was the first to demonstrate consistent strategic principles throughout even if it may have been partly due to happy accident.
I think Mike Strantz designed some unique courses.
Some questions were added:
Does Cypress Point qualify with the use of the bay as a hazard in the line of play?
It would be great to discover which was the first course to incorporate a diagonal water carry that wasn't a burn or ditch.
And Peter P. offered a great point:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed...", well, you know the rest. This site has done much good in highlighting and discussing and promoting the world's great golf courses, but the gain has come with a price, i.e. more than ever, our experiences are pre-judged, ready made, and objectified, while the capacity for true subjective and singular experience -- that place where the transcendent lives and breaths -- gets ever more stifled