Defining Golf Courses of the Past 15 Years

For this week’s episode of Designing Golf, my Fried Egg Golf colleagues Andy Johnson and Matt Rouches joined me to discuss what we think are the 10 defining golf courses that opened in the past 15 years.

First, an acknowledgement: the actual time frame we worked with in the episode was 2010 to 2025 — technically 16 years. But who cares, right? (Maybe my past math teachers. Sorry, Mr. Saunders!) Basically, we just wanted to talk about the post-Recession era in golf course design and development, and the numbers 15, 2010, and 2025 have that nice tally-mark fullness.

Anyway, in or around 2010, the golf course industry went through a reset. With the boom of the 80s, 90s, and early aughts definitively over, developers and architects had to find new ways of doing business. Then, in 2020, another shock to the system. As the Covid shutdowns ended, money flowed back into the game — but in different patterns than we saw 20, 30 years prior. 

Andy, Matt, and I wanted to understand this period of golf course design and development a bit better. So we tried a thought experiment: in 2055, when we look back on the years between 2010 and 2025, what will be the golf courses that, for us, defined the era?

Before getting into our list, a couple of notes:

1. We limited ourselves to new builds and transformative redesigns. While historically informed renovation has been a major trend of the past 15 years in golf architecture, we preferred, in this episode, to focus on original, modern design work.

2. Andy, Matt, and I are all based in the U.S., so inevitably our sense of what has been influential and important in the golf course industry since 2010 will have a stateside tint. In fact, I’m sure we’re getting ripped for this in the X replies and Instagram comments right now. That’s okay, and perhaps warranted. But trust me, we’re not trying to assert American exceptionalism here. We’re just making a list to start a discussion and maybe have a little fun. We’d love to hear which courses our friends across the world would include. 

Okay, enough throat-clearing. Here, in chronological order, are what we consider the 10 defining golf courses of the past 15 years:

Sweetens Cove Golf Club (2014)

Location: South Pittsburg, Tennessee
Architect: King Collins Golf Course Design
Course Profile

Andy: “This is the first internet golf course…. And I think it shows that if you build something interesting for public golf, there is a great market there.”

Matt: “It’s literally just a golf course in a flood plain in this valley, and social media was able to prop it up because it is an interesting course and it got people to go there.”

Garrett: “What we saw with Sweetens Cove was King Collins absorbing influences not just from the usual suspects, but also from Fazio, Mike Strantz, and Gary Player.”

Tara Iti (2015)

Location: Mangawhai, New Zealand
Architect: Tom Doak

‍Andy: “I think [Tara Iti] completely changed the golf landscape in New Zealand and will continue to change the golf landscape in New Zealand.”

Matt: “When I was younger, I created a list of courses I wanted to visit at some point in my life… and Tara Iti was one of the first that I wrote down.”

Garrett: “If we’re talking about what the broader historical trend is that Tara Iti represents, the rise of the destination private club and the continuing predominance of the destination resort is a big story. Tara Iti fits right into the middle of that.”

Andy: “The other thing is the idea of pre-selling and selling out your tee times.”

The Loop at Forest Dunes (2016)

Location: Roscommon, Michigan
Architect: Tom Doak
Course Profile

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‍Matt: “It is a fully reversible golf course…. And I just think that it opens up this can of worms for different concepts — like picking a concept for a golf course and going all in.”

Garrett: “There is such an efficiency of maintenance and footprint with a reversible course. You really get two courses in one. So as we’re thinking about this new, maybe slightly scary era of the world’s environment, if you can have a course that is efficient like that, that’s got to be appealing.”

Andy: “It’s one of my favorite modern designs. I don’t think it has had as much influence as it should have, to date.”

Winter Park Golf Course (2016)

Location: Winter Park, Florida
Architects: Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns

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‍Matt: “I think Winter Park set this precedent of, if you have a golf course, you can do a relatively affordable renovation, have really smart golf course architecture, and make it a really interesting, engaging course that becomes this invaluable community asset.”

Andy: “The story of Winter Park [established] the idea that good golf architecture doesn’t have to be more expensive and doesn’t have to be inaccessible to the public.”

Garrett: “And the story really blew up, too. That story had an effect on people.”

The Cradle (2017)

Location: Pinehurst, North Carolina
Architect: Gil Hanse

Matt: “[The Cradle] kind of galvanized the idea that short courses are great for resort business models and getting more rounds in a day that don’t take four hours.”

‍Garrett: “I think this is something that you really saw pop up in that post-Recession era. What are the different forms of golf that we can have, other than this old model of the somewhat expensive-to-build-and-maintain regulation 18-hole golf course?”

Andy: “It was a big risk from the resort to do something different.”

Mammoth Dunes (2018)

Location: Nekoosa, Wisconsin
Architect: David McLay Kidd
Course Profile

‍Garrett: “Because of what Kidd did at Gamble Sands and then at a higher profile at Mammoth Dunes, everybody else had to react.”

Andy: “This was pushing the width trend, which really started in the late 90s with Sand Hills — the idea of giving space.

Matt: “This has to be the first golf course that was built with the sole purpose of being fun, which in turn makes it easier for most people to play.”

Garrett: “The idea since the Golden Age has been that intricate golf architecture is better. Golf architecture should be intellectually engaging…. And Kidd came in and said, ‘Well, actually, I think the most important thing is that people have fun, and that they come away from their round with confidence and a sense of elation.’”

Ohoopee Match Club (2018)

Location: Cobbtown, Georgia
Architect: Gil Hanse
Course Profile

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Andy: “Is Ohoopee the greatest golf course on this list? No. Is it the golf course that has become kind of the gold standard in terms of [business] models, atmosphere? It introduced a whole new way to experience a destination golf club with its all-inclusive day rate.”

Garrett: “After Ohoopee, we saw a wave of these [destination golf clubs] start being built.”

Matt: “I think their logo also has had an influence on a lot of golf courses that followed.”

The Lido (2023)

Location: Nekoosa, Wisconsin
Architect: Tom Doak and Brian Schneider (with an assist from C.B. Macdonald)
Course Profile

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Matt: “Using GPS bulldozers — where you’re essentially plugging in data and elevations, and these bulldozers are just spitting out what that data is telling them to — it was sort of a revolutionary way to build a golf course… and we’ve already now seen more golf courses using the same technology.”

Andy: “As we go forward, it’s going to change the definition of what a great site is…. You don’t necessarily have to have a site with the most sensational natural gifts.”

Garrett: “[The Lido] also represents the culmination of this love for Golden Age architecture, and more specifically the love for the architecture of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor.”

Old Barnwell (2023)

Location: Aiken County, South Carolina
Architect: Brian Schneider
Course Profile

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Garrett: “[Old Barnwell] is part of an answer, maybe a full-fledged answer, to a big question that a lot of architects and golfers have been asking for the past 15 years, and that question is, ‘Is there a world beyond Coore & Crenshaw, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse?’”

Matt: “It’s this conjunction of minimalism and built.”

Andy: “I would have had The Tree Farm in this location, and it would have been around the idea of the Aiken golf explosion.”

Medinah Country Club (Course 3) (2024)

Location: Chicago, Illinois
Architect: OCM Golf
Course Profile

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Matt: “[Medinah No. 3] feels like it’s almost the first course to take a very historically significant golf course… and it’s not a complete redesign, but they took away some of the most famous holes… and it’s essentially a new golf course.”

Garrett: “And it’s an OCM golf course. I think OCM are going to be one of the most prominent firms of the next 20 years.”

Andy: “They have a lot of projects right now.”

Honorable Mentions:

• Old Macdonald (2010)
• Cabot Links (2011)
• Bandon Preserve (2012)
• Cape Wickham Golf Links (2015)
• The Olympic Golf Course in Rio de Janeiro (2016)
• Scottsdale National Golf Club (The Other Course) (2016)
• Sand Valley (2017)
• Peninsula Kingswood Country Golf Club (North Course) (2018)
• St. Patrick’s Links (2021)
• The Park (2023)
• The Tree Farm (2023)
• Brambles (2024)
• Childress Hall (Upper Course) (2024)
• 7 Mile Beach (2025)

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