On Thursday, November 13, Fried Egg Golf obtained an email to members from North Berwick Golf Club in East Lothian, Scotland, announcing that the club had hired U.S.-based designer Gil Hanse as its consulting architect.

From the email:

"Beginning in 2026, Gil will work closely with us to develop a Master Plan for the West Links, ensuring its heritage is preserved while preparing for the future."

North Berwick's West Links is a revered course, home to the much imitated "Redan" par 3 and "Pit" par 4, along with many other unique holes. Golf architect and longtime North Berwick member James Duncan mused on the magic of the West Links in this Fried Egg Golf video.

More from the club's announcement:

"Gil's strength lies in honoring the heritage of the course, restoring key features, while remaining sensitive to modern play. This thoughtful approach ensures the West Links retains its character while evolving for the future. Continuity and consistency will come through minor refinements, with no major changes anticipated. A critical priority, however, is addressing coastal erosion through robust contingencies and protective measures to mitigate future risks from the advancing sea."

The email also mentions that Hanse's hiring came after "a rigorous selection process, including on-course evaluations and consultations with other leading architects."

For the past few years, North Berwick has employed Clyde Johnson, a UK-based architect and Tom Doak associate, to assist with projects like the restoration of the front-left bunker on the Redan hole. Johnson is a terrific young talent, and from a personal standpoint, I feel bad for him. His recent work on the West Links has been very well received.

Philosophically, the move from Johnson to Hanse is more or less lateral. Both are historically minded architects. Plus, as the portion of the email that I bolded indicates, Hanse's alterations to the course are expected to be, like Johnson's, careful and subtle.

In terms of public relations, however, Hanse is obviously a bigger name. He also commands higher fees, in general.

This decision by North Berwick might be an indicator of a broader sea change in British and Irish golf. Over the last several years, visitor rates at top links clubs, even at those that do not host Open Championships, have skyrocketed. Golf tourism in Great Britain and Ireland has become a big, lucrative business. Many clubs have more money to spend than they ever have, and some have chosen to invest a portion of that windfall back into their courses. Royal Dornoch Golf Club's decision to roll with King Collins Dormer's out-of-the-box plan to overhaul its Struie Course is an example of this trend.

But I'm skeptical that more expensive, ambitious architecture will improve British and Irish links courses. Some places don't really need to change. So I hope Hanse uses a light touch at North Berwick.

Iowa has around 250 9-hole courses. The majority of which are rather basic but fun and cheap. I recently was able to visit the in progress Silo Club by Kevin Hargrave. It's a great looking strategic 9er with many options, including teeing grounds with different angles and elevations.

All this to ask. How do you all compare 9 vs 18? I know many are not into rankings but someone asked me once grown in where I think it might rank in state. I didn't really know how to address it and other great 9-holers in the state or even across the country compared to their 18 hole counterparts. I'm inclined to remove hole quantities from the equation at all, but doing something great 18 times seems like it should carry slightly more weight than 9.

Jason Bruno (aka "Links Nation") caused a bit of a stir on X earlier this week when he posted some fresh shots of Harbour Town Golf Links, which recently reopened after a historical renovation by Love Golf Design. The controversy revolved around a pair of revetted green-side bunkers in one photo.

Some commenters complained that Harbour Town architect Pete Dye never built revetted bunkers. (He did — at Harbour Town. They just didn't last very long because the sod stacks collapsed. Ultimately Dye replaced the revetted walls with the turfed-over walls that became a mainstay of his later designs.)

Others objected to the use of artificial materials in the sod stacks.

For the most part, though, the critics just didn't seem to like the look of the bunkers. Which is fair, but we should probably wait until the bunkers have had a chance to mature before rendering a final judgment.

In an April 2025 edition of Design Notebook, Scot Sherman, lead designer at Love Golf Design, gave me some insight into the thinking and technical process behind bringing back these bunkers:

Scot: We’re working on some details that really speak to what Pete did originally that didn’t last real long. He did some sod-stacking to several bunkers out there, and from the pictures and from recollections of others, some of that stacking was with Bahia and or St. Augustine grass, and it didn’t last long. And natural sod-stacking usually has to be replaced every three or four or five years, and [Harbour Town] just didn’t do it and [eventually] just grassed the faces. So again, in a tip of the cap to [Dye], we’re going to go ahead and do some of these that were originally stacked, but we’re going to do it in a little bit of a modern context. We think we could do something that’ll last a little longer. We have an artificial product, and we’re going to alternate artificial stacking with natural sod. We really don’t want it to look artificial, but we also want there to be hints of the sod-stacking. So we’re going to do a row of the artificial, a row of Celebration [Bermudagrass] sod, a row of the artificial, a row of the Celebration, and it’ll fuzz a little bit, and you’ll be able to discern the stacking.

Garrett: So the outcome of this sod-stacking process — will it look like a revetted bunker, like you would see in Scotland?

Scot: It’ll have a little bit different appearance. It won’t be that clean revetment like you’re used to seeing, and nor was Pete’s original sod-stacking. It’s going to be a little fuzzier, a little more ragged.Between ourselves and the owner and the old pictures that we have from the late 60s — the original tournament there that Mr. Palmer won — we’re going to put some of them back. I don’t know that we’re putting all of the ones we know about back, but some of that’s going to be a field decision. For example, there were a couple [sod-stacked bunkers] behind No. 9 green. Those are going to go back for sure. We’re putting back the dreaded deep pot bunker left of 14 green.

"Restoring" a golf course always involves tricky decisions like this one. If you want to honor Dye's vision, do you try to recapture the course that existed on opening day, including the parts that didn't end up being sustainable because of some technical deficit? Or you do pay tribute to the architectural refinements of the ensuing years — which, in Harbour Town's case, were overseen by the original architect and a long-tenured, well-respected construction company?

Or do you simply trust your own taste and go with what you think is the better option?

I'm personally a skeptic of the new revetted bunkers at Harbour Town. But not because I think they dishonor Pete Dye. They just don't look all that great to me. But I'm not too worked up about it because ultimately it's a fairly minor aesthetic issue.

These past several days have been rich with cross-discussion between FEGC and Golf Club Atlas! There's now a thread discussing the subject I raised in this week's edition of Design Notebook.

By far the best reply, in my opinion, comes from Mike Young, who has turned into something of a pen pal of mine over the years. Mike designed and continues to own and operate The Fields Golf Club in LaGrange, Georgia. He has influenced my thinking about golf architecture and maintenance deeply. The last time I interviewed him was in March 2024, when we discussed the ins and outs of building and running a mom-n-pop golf course. I find him to be a unique and important voice in the industry.

So it's no surprise that I found myself nodding along vigorously with his contribution to the GCA thread:

"I'm not sure original or unoriginal should be the question. The question should be are [the courses] sustainable and can the game continue to be played on them. If not then why does it matter. Subtlety seems to be gone no matter the 'style' and the abundance of money has ideas being tried that may have been thought of earlier but could not or would not be implemented int he past due to agronomic issues or playability issues.... There is a lot of good young talent out there and the overabundance of money available today may be more of an issue when it comes to originality than we think."

Mike also says that "a good routing with subtle, strategic greens and bunkering can always stand the test of time if it can be maintained."

Right on. I think this is a logical extension of my own statement that an important, under-discussed task of a golf architect is to "prepare a ground for the game." Part of preparing a ground for the game is ensuring that the game can be played on it affordably and sustainably into the future.

If I could write my essay again, I'd probably add a section about the importance of "innovating" in the arenas of economical construction and maintenance. The industry has learned an incredible amount about golf course maintenance over the past several decades. Because of these knowledge gains, architects now have the ability to build the most affordable, sustainable golf courses the game has ever seen. But the problem is we're lacking owners and developers for whom that is a primary objective.

To be clear, I don't think Mike is saying golf architecture shouldn't be bold or innovative. He's just pointing out, accurately, that if it can't be maintained without great expense and effort, there's no real point to the initial boldness or innovation.

Anyway, always listen to Mike Young.

Apologies for the logrolling, but this video by our team on Gil Hanse's work at Seminole Golf Club rocks. I had nothing to do with it, so I like to think my opinion is not wholly worthless here.

I'm presenting it for discussion because I think this project at Seminole is notable in a couple of ways:

1. According to Seminole, a major purpose of the renovation is to combat incursions from the club's moody neighbor, the Atlantic Ocean. Many seaside golf courses will confront this reality in the coming years, and unfortunately most of them won't have the financial wherewithal to simply raise playing surfaces by multiple feet. Whenever we discuss the future of golf architecture, we need to talk about how golf course owners, superintendents, and designers will confront the effects of global warming.
2. Seminole is now acknowledging that it didn't have — perhaps never had — Donald Ross-designed greens. As golf architecture nerds have long known, the course's famously exacting green complexes were chiefly the work of Dick Wilson, a talented mid-20th-century architect best known as Robert Trent Jones's main rival. The club has now chosen to restore the greens that Ross planned in great detail but perhaps never built to spec. This raises a fascinating question: should a golf course restoration (or "historical renovation," to use Hanse's preferred, ass-covering term) bring back what was built or what was designed/planned?

Over on Golf Club Atlas, an occasionally contentious discussion of Seminole's decision-making has unfolded over the past several months. A key contributor has been Hal Hicks, a former Seminole superintendent who opposes the recent work. Hicks knows his stuff and makes a lot of strong points, but he's obviously — understandably — advocating for the version of the course he knows best and spent much of his career nurturing. His work is now literally being buried. That can't be easy.

For me, the critical question is whether Ross's greens are better, more artful, more interesting, and more playable than Wilson's. To my eye, they appear to be, yes.

Anyway, the Golf Club Atlas thread seems to have reached maturity, because a few members are now implying that we're doing PR for Seminole, and that's the only possible reason that the club deigned to let our crew on the grounds. Couldn't possibly be that Andy, Cameron, and Matt earned the opportunity by helping us establish a reputation for doing good, fair work.

Calumet Country Club — a Donald Ross design in Homewood, Illinois (just south of Chicago) — has closed permanently, according to W&E Ventures, the depressingly named company that owns the property. Read a Patch article on this development here.

W&E, which purchased Calumet in 2020, cited an effort "to prevent vagrancy and security issues" as its rationale for shutting down "all golf course operations" and removing "all infrastructure throughout the property."

You know what else might have helped make the golf course safer? Reopening and restaffing it.

Anyway, Calumet has been struggling for a while, but it was an important fixture in the Chicago golf scene (the former home club of Fried Egg founder Andy Johnson, in fact), and I'm sad to see it go.

My state has 4 sand green courses. I've been able to see 2 of them so far and really enjoy the uniqueness. Putting is a bit irrelevant but the shotmaking is a blast. Ground runners, bounch and splashers, or stock high and soft shots are always an option. Although greens are usually tiny so distance control is at a premium with stock shots. Big fan of using my hickories playing them. Has anyone else played a sand greens course? How do you "rate" them? Fun and routing are my 2 categories.

When talking about my favorite golf courses I often describe them as being quirky. Two of my very favorite courses on earth are National Golf Links and Merion East, both of which I feel feature some real quirk. Both of these courses are from the teens and have a bit of a vernacular design quality to them. In other words, there really wasn't an established template (for lack of a better word) for what constituted acceptable or "normal" design features at that time. The Old Course has informed golf course architecture more than any other golf course, and I would be hard pressed to think of a more quirky collection of golf holes. There are many other examples of great golf courses that are also quirky, North Berwick for example. I'm sure that you, if you think about golf course architecture could cite your own examples.

I value quirk so much that I've often tried to think about it as a fourth principle of design. Strategic, Heroic, Penal, and Quirky. But can quirky really be designed, and if it is, does it come across as inauthentic? I don't necessarily think so, I think the 7th at Ballyneal is a tremendously fun golf hole that is quirky as hell, but doesn't feel like a party trick. But I can see that a modern golf course design trying to get too cute, or lean into quirk too much could elicit scorn from a lot of players. So I ask you, could quirkiness be a design principle or is it merely a byproduct of unique landforms or features that the routing is required to play over or around? It certainly feels more prevalent in older golf courses, but I'd welcome further examples of modern quirky designs; Ones that you feel pursue the goal successfully or even ones that you feel were less successful in it.

I think the way we discuss and approach the idea of penal and strategic as a binary needs improvement. As it creates a reductive discussion seeking a binary answer to a non-binary problem.

As it’s clearly evident in every great both strategic or penal hole, all have a clear penal hazard or strongly directive contours that direct a lead one or multiple lines of play.

If we believe this last statement to be true, then we must accept a non-binary application of the terminology. This scale is a work in progress and is presented with an interest in discussion of not only the concept but the definitions and how best to apply it to features, holes, and golf courses.

The 0 is reserved for golf essentially as impossible or inconsequential.

The 1 is the golden goose. We haven’t been able to define or find a purely strategic hole without a clear penalty. They either are a bit too penal to be a 1 or they are so ineffective that it creates a 0. So 1 and the definition of strategy are open for debate.

(?)

7 is much clearer as that’s the point of penal golf. The most recent perfect example was 18 at Bethpage with the flanking bunkers on the drive and the uphill cross-bunkered approach.

Excited to hear and see the discussion. Remember this is a tool for discussing and cataloging golf not a value judgement on the hole or its quality. (Please find a way to add photos to comments; this thread needs it).

OCM has my attention. Their original US work is only beginning to come on line at Fall Line and Luling, though not too many will have played them yet. But early images suggest a possible new flavor for where architecture and design can be heading. I sense a middle ground between, say, the camps of Doak and Coore & Crenshaw compared to perhaps King and Collins, Franz, or Jackson Khan. Something maybe closer to Scott Hoffman, though I haven't seen his work yet.

My initial reaction to OCM is that their work is rooted in a naturalism that doesn't err too far into universal playability. A naturalism with teeth. There's width and angles, but moments of constriction, then approaches and green complexes that visually appear more exacting than perhaps what's been produced at many Dream Golf types of examples in recent years.

As an example, Tepetonka provided a flyover of their entire routing on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQxDCcckYaz/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

It looks quite good to me. Big, broad land with significant slope. Like it could almost be a midwestern skiing area, but with likely less elevation. Par 4s and 5s are often routed over grand scaled corridors, and the par 3s are nestled into amphitheaters of trees. The land has some deeper ravines from glacier retreat, and a good-sized creek comes close to a few greens.

Initial comparison might be something like High Pointe meets CapRock Ranch? No doubt good courses to be in conversation with.

Some notes I made from the flyover:

The routing seems very compelling. There may be a couple moments of directional back and forth, and the creek system seems to have a pattern of guarding the front and left side of greens/holes. But the par 3s appear in beautiful spots and both the opening and closing holes appear very strong.

1 is a big bold par 5 with a elevated forced carry tee shot--a theme that appears on a handful of holes.

3 is a lovely par 3 downhill over the creek.

4, a par 4, looks to have severe slope right to left with bunkers lining the left side to ostensibly save balls from tumbling into the woods. Then it also has an imposing looking green complex with massive bunkers.

6 has a beautiful natural green site.

8 again strikes a balance of beauty and perceived challenge. Long par 5 with what looks like a perimeter running along entire right hand side.

11! Hogs back potentially drivable par 4 with deflecting slopes falling on both sides the closer you get to the green. Great risk and reward, but with real teeth!

12 another intimate par 3 situated in cedars.

14! Shorter par 5 but with the creek heavily guarding the green.

15! Stunning par 3 guarded by creek left and bunkers right.

16 bunkerless maybe for the entire hole. Expansive forced carry over wetlands or bog (?) with a walking/cart bridge. Elevated green.

Wasn't sure whether to title the thread Tepetonka or OCM more generally. Happy to hear thoughts on both course and the architects.

As we wind down the season here in Philadelphia (only 10 more days to post rounds) I started to take stock of the year I had, where I played, and what my favorites were. In the interest of getting some conversations started on this burgeoning new board, I thought I’d ask: What did you check off the list in 2025 that really stuck with you? What made it special? Insider information on it? Feel free to post specific holes or design details.

I have a few, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t shouting into the void before I posted them.

Clyde Johnson has restored the Himalayas bunker at St. Enodoc Golf Club in southwestern England to something resembling its vintage form. (Hire this man to work on more GB&I links courses, please.)

OCM Golf teased an "exciting 36-hole project on some amazing land." The property includes "streams, lakes, rocks, and undulation." Work will begin in early 2026, "once the snow melts!" We at Fried Egg Golf have it on good authority that this facility will be north of Toronto, sitting on 850 acres.

OCM Golf has broken ground on a new short course for Royal Queensland Golf Club in Brisbane.

Scot Sherman, lead architect at Love Golf Design, will restore Donald Ross and Walter Travis features at Camden Country Club in South Carolina. I've heard great things about this course.

Quintero Golf Club in Peoria, Arizona, is back in business after a major renovation (involving the trucking in of "Augusta white sand") by Rees Jones.

Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in Tampa has wrapped up the second phase of a renovation with architect Bobby Weed. The club claims to have restored its "1916 Tom Bendelow and Donald Ross design," but I have some follow-ups about historical accuracy.

Dave Zinkand shared a few photos of his new reversible course at Medina Country Club in Ohio.

Tyler Rae's frilly (somewhat fussy, to my eye?) new bunkers at Ansley Golf Club in suburban Atlanta debuted last week.

Gray Carlton posted some new footage of Brian Schneider's renovation at Silver Spring Country Club in Connecticut.

Clayton, DeVries & Pont offer an update on partner Frant Pont's bunker work at Harry Colt's Whittington Heath. Brian Schneider chimed in with a pointed reply.

CDP are also moving dirt around at Portsea Golf Club, a charming course on the tip of the Mornington Peninsula.

As part of its overhaul of the Robert Trent Jones-designed Patterson Club, Proper Golf is building a green based on No. 4 at Spyglass Hill.

More footage from Proper Golf's work at The Patterson Club.

More bunker-tainment from Mike Nuzzo's redesign of Club Walden in Ohio.

Kawonu Golf Club, a new build by Andrew Green near Greenville, South Carolina, has shown quite a sophisticated and assertive marketing muscle.

Friend of the program Will Watt took some good-looking photos of Mike Clayton and Mike DeVries's new course in Tasmania, 7 Mile Beach, which opens for 18-hole play on December 4.

Back on October 24, Sugarloaf Social Club posted footage of the Great Dunes at Jekyll Island, a Walter Travis course recently resto-vated by Jeff Stein and Brian Ross.

The Lodge at Pebble Beach has reopened after an extensive renovation.

Golf Course Architecture has a story on Faldo Design's new course in Qiddiya City, Saudi Arabia. Funded by the Kingdom's Public Investment Fund (the same source of support behind LIV Golf), Qiddiya is a planned entertainment and tourism capital located in the raw desert outside of Riyadh. In addition to a Nick Faldo-designed golf course, the city will boast a Formula 1-quality race track, a Six Flags theme park, and a Dragon Ball theme park—whatever that might be.

The Kingdom's effort to attract international tourists to attractions like Qiddiya City—and its associated golf offerings—is the real reason LIV Golf exists, by the way. And will likely continue to exist until Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" program starts to produce results.

This video about Faldo's course, posted on the "Sir Nick Faldo" YouTube channel, is full of exactly the kind of unintentional comedy that can help get us through hard, weird times.

For Golf dot com, Alan Bastable has all the details that are fit to print on this strange story.

The facts:

• A large pile of rubble has recently appeared on the property of East Potomac Golf Links, a 1920s Walter Travis course owned by the National Park Service and operated by the National Links Trust.
• The dirt is coming from the White House, where, in the midst of a government shutdown, the Trump administration is carrying out a $300-million renovation project. This project includes the construction of a now-infamous state ballroom.
• The Washington Post, which first reported the story, noted that the rubble will be used to "add mounding" at East Potomac.
• The National Links Trust has redirected all press inquiries to the Department of the Interior, and the Department of the Interior has not commented on the matter.

A few observations and speculations:

• When the National Links Trust vied for and won the lease to operate East Potomac in 2019 and 2020, it declared an intention to restore the course to its original, reversible design, with the help of architect Tom Doak. So far, those plans have not come to fruition. More recently, The Independent reported that President Trump "is weighing [a] refurbishment and rebranding" of the course in the image of his family's golf properties in New Jersey and Scotland.
• Is the delivery of fill from the White House an indication that some sort of East Potomac renovation is underway? Unlikely. Bringing in dirt is rarely the first step of a golf course construction project.
• Sources tell Fried Egg Golf that the construction company in charge of the rubble delivery, Clark Construction, insists that the material is not toxic.
• This is a big mess. And dumb.

Wild Spring Dunes, an under-construction Dream Golf resort in East Texas, will hold a soft opening on November 12, with eight holes of Tom Doak’s new 18-hole design available for play. Doak had this to say about the course on Instagram: “What’s the best public course in Texas? The first 18 holes at Wild Springs Dunes [have] come a long way since I last saw it in July without a blade of grass being planted, to playing 18 holes the last two days with lead associate Brian Slawnik, our client Michael Keiser, and his crew from Dream Golf.” The resort also posted some Jeff Marsh photographs of the course on its website.

The second course at Wild Spring Dunes, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, has been routed, and clearing is underway. The resort’s lodging component is expected to debut in 2027.