Links Courses: Golfing perfection or clay waiting to be shaped?

[John Connolly]

With tinkering recently at the Old Course and Trump's plans for Turnberry it got me wondering. So much of what accounts for the praise heaped upon links are its unadulterated landforms. If that premise is true, wouldn't the routing and length be the only thing you could justify changing? Can men, machines and "beasts of burden" make those places better?

[Thomas Dai]

An example.

Ballyliffin Old, as a local once said to me, "made by one man with a mower", and the newer Glashedy course, "made by a bunch of men with big machines".

The former has a multitude of humps and bumps and hollows and ripples and uneven stances and crazy bounces. The latter has smoothed-out/graded fairways with hardly a ripple or uneven stance in sight. Whilst I like the Glashedy (except for the par-3 7th), especially the routing, I much prefer the Old.

Each to their own though.

atb

[Alfonso Erhardt]

Deleted

[Ian Andrew]

I think its politically correct to say perfection and I expect you'll get only that answer.
To say clay is to open yourself up to critical comments.

It's obviously perfection for me because I will have gone to play them 8 times in the last 10 years.
I find the golf much more compelling than anywhere else, except perhaps Melbourne.


I think the answer lies in the dunes themselves.
There are a few sites like the Cashen Course where I don't think a natural course existed.


I think another interesting way to get the answer you seek is a discussion on whether Royal Birkdale is a great links course.
In my private conversations with architects I have found the course to be extremely polarizing on opinion.