Design Notebook: The State of Public Golf Architecture, Circa 2026

Hello and welcome back to Design Notebook, your monthly download on what’s happening in the world of golf architecture.

In this edition, I preview what’s shaping up to be a big year in public golf course design and development. I also get something off my chest about a certain golf course naming trend.

First, though, I want to highlight some recent content from our architecture team:

• The latest installment of our “All Grass Is Local” video series profiles the maintenance operation at Cal Club.
• Andy Johnson’s beefy new pod with Tom Doak.
• The year’s first episode of Designing Golf, covering some new ideas in golf architecture and new projects we’re excited about.
• Matt Rouches’s guide to golf in the Nebraska Sandhills.
• Matt’s course profile on Lookout Mountain Golf Club.
• My report on the details of the emerging legal showdown between the National Links Trust and the Trump administration.

We’ve hit the ground running in 2026, and we intend to keep the good stuff coming throughout the year. Thank you for supporting our work!

All right, let’s dig into today’s topics.

A Pivotal Year for Public Golf Architecture

Since the Recession, the macro-story of the American golf course industry has been the rise of the high-end destination. Think of the launches of Streamsong, Cabot Cape Breton, and Sand Valley; the refinement and expansion of Bandon Dunes, Big Cedar Lodge, and Barnbougle Dunes; the emergence of remote, multi-course clubs like Old Barnwell, Fall Line, and Childress Hall. As the National Golf Foundation’s Greg Nathan put it in my conversation with him a few months ago, “The trend is in retreat.”

This year, however, I predict that the focus will shift to the affordable, accessible side of the industry. I think 2026 will be a pivotal year for everyday public golf courses — for better or for worse.

First of all, the next several months will begin to reveal the consequences of the Trump administration’s push to control municipal golf in Washington, D.C. Will the National Links Trust, the now-terminated leaseholder, fight back in the courts, with the help of the high-powered law firm it recently hired? And what exactly are the administration’s plans for East Potomac Golf Links and D.C.’s other two municipal golf facilities, Rock Creek Park Golf Course (where an in-progress renovation had to be halted) and Langston Golf Course? By the end of the year, the answers to these questions will start to come into focus.

As I explained in my FEG newsletter piece last week, the implications of the conflict between the NLT and the Trump administration reach far beyond the nation’s capital. The NLT aspires to provide a model for municipal golf management nationwide. Through its media profile and its (now-on-hiatus) annual symposium, the group has fostered collaboration and knowledge-sharing between municipal golf advocates and operators across the U.S. I know of many courses that have benefited directly from the NLT’s efforts. So if we lose this organization, we lose a major force for the advancement of affordable public golf in America.

Okay, I’m bumming myself out. Let’s talk about some public golf course projects to look forward to this year.

→ Perhaps most significant will be a trio of redesigns completed in late 2025 and poised to receive wider recognition in 2026:

Buffalo Dunes Golf Course‍

Garden City, Kansas

Over the past several years, Superintendent Clay Payne, assisted by architects Todd Clark and Zach Varty, has led a transformation of this Kansas municipal course. Payne’s team has removed trees, added and reshaped bunkers, and redesigned every green, all while keeping the budget around $100,000 — a strikingly low sum in today’s market. I discussed the project with Payne on an episode of the Fried Egg Golf Podcast in 2024.

By the end of the 2025 season, 18 new greens at Buffalo Dunes were in play. Payne told me via email that some tweaks to cart paths, on-course bathrooms, and tee boxes remain to be done.

Great Dunes at Jekyll Island Resort

Jekyll Island, South Carolina

Brian Ross and Jeff Stein’s bold, Walter Travis-inspired remodel of this Golden Isles gem debuted three months ago. Stein filled me in on the story and ideas behind the project on a fun edition of the Designing Golf podcast last November, and our friends at No Laying Up recently visited the still-maturing course for a winter match. As Great Dunes grows in, I suspect it will garner a lot of fans among the bargain-starved golfers of the southeastern barrier islands.

Miami Lakes Golf Club‍

Miami Lakes, Florida

The advantage of hiring an architect as experienced as Bruce Hepner is that you know he’ll work efficiently: he broke ground on his redesign of Miami Lakes in November 2024, and the course reopened for public play a year later. Here’s project manager Danny Martinez on how the course is looking and playing:

“Everyone loves the greens, which are unlike anything south of The Park [in West Palm Beach]. I had one player, a regular before our project, tell me he couldn’t quite place his finger on why but that he was just happy and felt really comfortable on our course now. (This has been my favorite piece of feedback.) Several players mentioned how ‘clean’ or ‘bright’ the course feels and I think that’s a direct result of our tree work. I couldn’t be happier with how things feel out there.”

Martinez also mentioned that November 2025 was Miami Lakes’ best-ever month financially, and December topped it.

→ In addition to these completed projects, I’m keeping an eye on three ambitious public-course renovations that should wrap up in 2026:

Augusta Municipal Golf Course, aka The Patch

Augusta, Georgia

Last April, my colleague Matt Rouches reviewed the Augusta National-led plans to revitalize this local muni. Before this year’s Masters, the main course at The Patch will reopen after a renovation by Tom Fazio and Beau Welling. Eventually, the property will also feature a short course designed by Tiger Woods’s firm, up-to-date practice grounds, and educational facilities. The idea is for The Patch to become a youth and community hub, similar to The Park.

Old Dane Golf Club

Dakota City, Nebraska

Trev Dormer is in the process of reconstructing this small-town nine-holer into an architecturally audacious 12-hole course with loops of six and nine holes. About 12 minutes from King Collins Dormer’s Landmand Golf Club and owned by the same family, Old Dane will double as an everyday track for locals and an afternoon option for Landmand pilgrims.

A few days ago, Dormer told me that progress was a little slower than expected in 2025 because of record rains. “We should be grassed out fully by the start of June, with some preview play in September,” he added.

Swope Memorial Golf Course

Kansas City, Missouri

In early 2025, Todd Clark and Ron Whitten started a historically informed renovation of this important A.W. Tillinghast-designed municipal course. Their work is scheduled to be unveiled this year. My colleague Meg Adkins, a Kansas City local, visited the site recently and will have a full report for the Fried Egg Golf newsletter soon.

→ Because of rising land costs, byzantine regulatory processes, and a general tilt toward premiumization in the American economy, accessible new builds are rare these days. But I’m looking forward to two in 2026:

Warmouth Sands Golf Course

Vidalia, Georgia

Meant both to serve the small town of Vidalia, Georgia (known for its onions), and to attract play from visitors to nearby Ohoopee Match Club, this new municipal project has struggled through a variety of construction delays. But the end is in sight: architect Mike Young informed me late last week that the entire course has been sodded and is set to open in May or June.

Old Field

Mocksville, North Carolina

Smyers Craig Coyne — a recently formed firm consisting of veteran architect Steve Smyers, up-and-comer Colton Craig, and writer Tom Coyne — laid out this rustic, charming-looking six-hole par-3 course 30 minutes outside of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Craig seems to have been the primary design voice on the project. One of the developers, Stephen Edwards, sent me some additional info in an email three days ago:

“Old Field is coming along as expected. With a late summer/early fall Bermuda grow-in, it was well established before going dormant, and then we did a rye overseed on the Tahoma 31 Bermuda to help it hold shape and be well established through the NC winter.

“We did two soft-launch events, one with the Outpost Club and another with Twilight Golf Club, and hope to fully launch post-2026 daylight savings with a Masters week par-3 contest the first week of April.”

→ Did I miss any upcoming projects in the accessible public golf space? Let me know in the comments.

"Old" Is Getting Old

In the 2000s, we had Old Sandwich and Old Macdonald. In 2019, we got Old Toccoa Farm in Mineral Bluff, Georgia. Then the floodgates opened. Old Barnwell arrived in 2023, Old Sawmill — a private Tyler Rae design outside of Charleston, South Carolina — late last year. The year 2026 will bring Old Petty, Old Dane, and Old Field. Later this decade, Old Shores and Old Charlie, both in the Florida Panhandle, will swell the ranks.

Look, “Old” has always been a popular adjective in golf course names. Old Head. Old Waverley. Old Town Club. Hell, The Old Course!

Problem is, in recent years, the word has come to be associated with a particular kind of course: rootsy, vintage-y, built for purists. In fact, it has probably evolved into a conscious marketing appeal to a particular type of golfer. Do you like your bunker edges ragged and your green contouring Golden Age-inspired? Join “Old [Place-Specific Noun].”

It’s starting to feel a bit lazy.

I’m harsh because I care. I adore Old Sandwich, Old Macdonald, and Old Barnwell. I fully expect to enjoy the upcoming “Olds” as well. But let’s just make a bit more of an effort on the names, okay? (What a relief it was to hear that Brian Schneider’s new course in Aiken County, just miles from Old Barnwell, would be called “New Holland.”)

Chocolate Drops

Check in on the “Courses & Architecture” section of our member forum for regular Chocolate Drops.

→ Salt Lick Golf and Hunting Resort will feature two 18-hole courses and a nine-hole par-3 course on a duneland site near Hutchinson, Kansas (home of Prairie Dunes Country Club). Todd Clark and Ron Whitten are attached as designers.
→ Soule Park Golf Course, one of the best municipal courses on the West Coast, got hit hard by flooding in December.
→ Wohali, a massive new luxury golf and real estate development outside of Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah, is already bankrupt.

A Course We Photographed Recently

PGA West Pete Dye Mountain Course (La Quinta, CA)—designed by Pete Dye in 1980

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Underlined and Starred

“You [Americans] showed us that there’s money in golf. That had never occurred to us. The money has corrupted us, all of us, myself included. Once you start making it, it’s a damn cancer, the money is. You start thinking, ‘What can I do to make more money?’ In my generation, we went into golf with no expectation of wealth. The golf alone sustained us. For years, we resisted thinking of golf as a business. Right through the Second World War, we had clubs with one full-time employee: he gave lessons, made clubs and sold ‘em, kept the caddies in line, and mixed the drinks. The game was cheap then: you might have paid five quid for a year’s worth of golf, and you got your money’s worth. You played after work, until you could see the ball no more. You played every day, except Sunday; the Presbyterians wouldn’t hear of golf on Sunday. But you played the six other days, and you hoped for wind to make your game interesting. Scotland was poor, and there was nothing else to do, except the pubs. Golf was the national sport. Everybody played. Your mother played. Golf was the game.” -John Stark, as quoted by Michael Bamberger in his book “To the Linksland”