Category: Golfweeks Best

This week’s PGA Tour venue has one member and one member only — and is using golf as a force for good

“We will measure our success in terms of how many lives we can affect positively.”

RIDGELAND, S.C. – Riding on a shuttle to the CJ Cup in South Carolina, one of the passengers asked aloud, “Is there a golf course around here? Where the hell are we?”

One of them mimicked the dueling banjos from the movie “Deliverance” as a friend chuckled and replied, “If you want to go and hide, this is where you go.”

Yes, there is a golf course amid these 2,000 acres of lakes and longleaf pine forests in South Carolina’s Lowcountry and it’s a pretty darn good one. Congaree Golf Club is the brainchild of two of the wealthiest men in the U.S: billionaires Dan Friedkin and the late Bob McNair, who is best known for owning the NFL’s Houston Texans. McNair’s passing trimmed the number of members at the club to one.

Instead of members, Congaree boasts roughly 250 “ambassadors,” captains of industry who are lovers of the game, many of them flying in on their private planes to play the Tom Fazio design situated on an 18th-century rice plantation that also once served as a quail hunting preserve. The layout fits in wonderfully with its natural surroundings.

“Just the whole setting here, it reminds me of a couple of my favorite places that I’ve been,” said Jordan Spieth, noting Sandbelt courses in Australia and Whispering Pines in East Texas. “I love just these giant trees that shape the holes.”

PGA Tour pro Lucas Glover and World Golf Hall of Famers Nick Price, Mark O’Meara and Tom Watson are counted among the few, the proud who have paid the initiation fee – a donation to the Congaree Foundation – and  lend time and money to a greater cause.

“I think it just means they know you’ll help out when needed,” Glover said of what being an ambassador encompassed. “I think that’s probably what that term actually means when we get down to it. That’s a pretty good thing to call the people involved here.”

And that’s the primary reason that it’s pretty cool the Tour is making its second somewhat unscheduled stop in this rural outpost of the Palmetto State. Congaree made an unsuccessful bid to host the 2026 Presidents Cup, losing out to Medinah, but the Tour kept it on its short list of potential future venues and when the 2021 RBC Canadian Open was canceled due to the global pandemic, Congaree stepped in to host the Palmetto Championship. The tournament was held ahead of the U.S. Open in June, a month when the club is typically closed. It should play faster and firmer this go-round after the CJ Cup, which originated as a PGA Tour event based in South Korea, pairing with the Zozo Championship for a two-week Asian Swing, elected to be played stateside again due to COVID concerns.

Gary Williams, the former Golf Channel “Morning Drive” co-host and current host of “Five Clubs Conversations With” podcast, came to Congaree Club for the first time in June 2018 for something called the Global Golf Initiative, a week-long training camp each summer.

“I had no idea that their goal was to enhance the lives of young people in Jasper County, which is the poorest county in South Carolina, and that’s saying something,” Williams said.

Congaree Golf Club
The Global Golf Initiative at Congaree offers a mix of educational, vocational and golf instruction. (Photo: Eamon Lynch, Golfweek)

He witnessed the kids receive access to the highest level of athletic coaching and fitness training from the likes of Top 100 instructor Jason Baile and academic tools to enhance their opportunities for success, including SAT prep.

“They have to fit a certain profile and the common denominator is they don’t have much,” Williams said.

Bruce Davidson, Congaree’s co-director of golf, told PGA Tour.com that the ambassadors have raised approximately $15.5 million for the Congaree Foundation.

The results since 2017 have been staggering: 138 program graduates, 48 age-eligible college golfers and 95 percent of participants have attended college.

“We will measure our success in terms of how many lives we can affect positively,” Davidson told Golfweek in 2021. “There’s never been any mention whatsoever of financial return. That’s what differentiates Dan Friedkin from anyone else I’ve ever met.”

The philanthropic heart of the club also extends to a club down the road. Sergeant Jasper Country Club, a public course where the green fee is $16 on weekdays and ticks up another dollar on the weekend, was on the verge of closing its doors when the Congaree Foundation bought the club in 2021 and is working to reinvigorate the course to provide a quality experience for aspiring golfers of all ages.

Forty miles from Hilton Head Island, where the PGA Tour plays annually at Harbour Town, and 90 minutes from Kiawah Island, where Phil Mickelson won the 2021 PGA Championship at the Ocean Course, is an equally impressive golf course where something special is happening. It’s also not a bad place to hide out for a week watching the PGA Tour.

Sergeant Jasper Country Club has new ownership, but it will still be open to the public. The Congaree Foundation acquired the nine-hole golf course in Ridgeland last year.

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Former USGA boss Mike Davis takes on ambitious golf course design project in South Florida

The first course at the new Apogee Golf Club is slated to open as soon as 2023, with two more courses on the way.

When Mike Davis announced in September 2020 his plan to retire as CEO of the U.S. Golf Association, he said he intended to launch a second career as a golf course architect and partner with Tom Fazio II. A little more than a year after he officially stepped down, those plans are coming to fruition with an ambitious project.

Davis and Fazio – who often goes by Tommy and whose uncle is famed architect Tom Fazio – are set to embark on building the private Apogee Club, which will consist of three 18-hole courses in Hobe Sound in southeast Florida.

“I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. It’s 1,200 acres. It’s three 18-hole golf courses, it’s two short courses, it’s cottages. There’s no housing to it, so there’s not a real estate play. There’s one big practice range, almost 360 (degrees), and a performance center and another smaller practice range,” Davis said in a recent phone interview. “One of the courses is going to be designed by Gil Hanse, one designed by Kyle Phillips, and then Tommy Fazio and I are doing the third. But we’re overseeing the in-house construction, and I’ve been very involved with the permitting process.”

Davis said he’s been doodling golf courses since he was a kid and that during his tenure with the USGA he was a student of architecture, benefiting from staging championships and playing at most of the best courses around the planet. After the 2019 Presidents Cup, for instance, he toured New Zealand and played many of its esteemed layouts. Davis said he had a few different architects approach him about partnering, but the logistics seemed to work well with Fazio, who is based in nearby Jupiter, Florida, where Davis owns a home. (He and his wife rebuilt it since his retirement.)

Mike Davis (left) and Tom Fazio II have broke ground on an ambitious project named Apogee Club in Hobe Sound, Florida. (Courtesy Fazio-Davis)

“I knew Tom had skill sets that not only I don’t have, but I’ll probably never have, where he’s just spent his life building golf courses,” Davis said. “It’s just been fun coming up with the vision and then turning a vision into a master plan and then going from a master plan to literally finding the site, negotiating it, buying it, and just the whole thing, the permitting process. It’s been so much fun where even to retain Gil Hanse, to retain Kyle Phillips, to kind of master plan the property and say, OK, Gil’s course is going to be over here, Kyle’s is going to be here, ours is going to be here, how will we make them different from one another?

“But at the same time the vision is to make it a very golfer-friendly facility that’s fun to play, that doesn’t beat you up, that you’re not losing a bunch of golf balls. It’s very walking friendly; they’ll have caddies. And as much golf as there is in the greater Jupiter area, it’s underserved right now. You can’t get into clubs. You can’t get on golf courses. It’s a hotbed for golf, but even before COVID it was underserved.”

Such a huge undertaking requires deep pockets, and Davis and Fazio found not one but two principals who fit the bill. As they began quietly looking for land, Davis approached Mike Pascucci, who made his fortune in the car-leasing business and founded Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y., and asked if he’d be interested in a project of this magnitude.

“He jumped in immediately and said, ‘I’d love to do it.’ As this thing grew and we knew what kind of capital it would take, and not just capital but how much time it was going to take, he kind of said, ‘Listen, I’m not sure we don’t need a partner here just to help with the enormity of this project,’ ” Davis recalled.

Steve Ross, the largest private real-estate developer in the country and owner of the Miami Dolphins, stepped in.

“You couldn’t pull this off without people like Mike Pascucci and Steve Ross. You couldn’t do it,” Davis said. “What’s really cool about it is they’re doing it more as a legacy project. They don’t need to do this. But they just want to leave something behind that they and their families can look at and say, hey, this is something we created from scratch. It’s just fun to be around people that successful who aren’t resting on their laurels.”

Besides the financing, Pascucci and Ross are responsible for the name, Apogee Club.

“I’m not sure I’d heard the word before, but its meaning really is the pinnacle of something. They wanted something unique, and obviously the name is unique,” Davis said.

Mike Davis (right) and Tom Fazio II visit the grounds of what will become Apogee Club. (Courtesy Davis-Fazio)

Following a public hearing Sept. 27, clearing and grubbing began on a piece of land featuring live oaks, pine trees and very sandy soil.

“Gil is going to do the first golf course that will start construction (this) month, and if everything goes according to time frame, we should have a golf course hopefully at least in part ready to play by the end of 2023,” Davis said. “Tommy and I will start the second golf course basically a year later, so it will open and be ready to play by the end of ’24. Kyle Phillips will do the third course, which will be open for the end of ’25. That’s what’s so neat about Steve Ross and Mike Pascucci is they want to see this thing done. They’re not doing one of these things where let’s see how many members we get before we build the next golf course. They’re saying, let’s do it and we’ll get members in due course, and if it takes a while, if we have a recession, so be it. We want to do this thing right.”

It’s got the potential to be quite the second act for Davis and a special place to celebrate the game he has enjoyed since his youth in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

“It’s going to be kind of this oasis for great golf,” he said. “The amount of work is staggering, but I’m just loving it. It’s fun.”

Check the yardage book: TPC Summerlin for the PGA Tour’s Shriners Children’s Open

Bobby Weed, with input from Fuzzy Zoeller, designed the desert course in Las Vegas that hosts this week’s PGA Tour event.

TPC Summerlin, site of this week’s Shriners Children’s Open on the PGA Tour, was designed by Bobby Weed and opened in 1991 in Las Vegas. Two-time major winner Fuzzy Zoeller provided input.

TPC Summerlin ranks as the No. 3 private course in Nevada on Golfweek’s Best ranking of top layouts in each state. It will play to 7,255 yards with a par of 71 for the Shriners Children’s Open.

Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the players face this week. Check out the maps of each hole below.

Golfweek’s Best 2022: Top public and private courses in Iowa

The top public-access layout in Iowa promises a casual round on excellent terrain.

The top-ranked public-access golf course in Iowa, Spirit Hollow in Burlington, promises a casual experience on bold terrain with plenty of elevation changes that have proved to be a hit with Golfweek’s Best raters.

Designed by Rick Jacobson and opened in 2000, Spirit Hollow is No. 1 in the state on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for top public-access layouts around the U.S.

Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses in each state among the most popular. All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Also popular are the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top private courses in each state, and that list for Iowa is likewise included below.

(m): Modern course, built in or after 1960
(c): Classic course, built before 1960
Note: If there is a number in the parenthesis with the m or c, that indicates where that course ranks among Golfweek’s Best top 200 modern or classic courses.
* New to or returning to list

Hurricane Ian has wreaked havoc on numerous Florida, South Carolina courses

Flooding and downed trees closed many top-rated golf courses in Florida.

As Hurricane Ian rampaged north along Florida’s Atlantic Coast, officials and first responders in the state were focused on providing relief and rescue for the thousands of people most in need. As various local and state agencies assess possible loss of life, golf is of course a low priority for those affected by the storm that approached Category 5 strength as it roared ashore.

It’s still worth a look to see how courses in Florida might have been impacted as well as what might be in store for the second projected landfall in South Carolina as what is now a tropical storm continues north. Golf is a huge industry in both locations, with thousands of employees and hundreds of courses likely already affected – or soon to be – by the devastating storm.

As of Thursday morning, it proved impossible to obtain status updates for the courses closest to landfall near Fort Myers, Florida. Communications have been compromised, and many residents of Southwest Florida are still without power and could be for days or weeks. Golf course operators and superintendents were in the field or attempting to reach their courses to evaluate damage, reports of which will roll in slowly.

There are dozens of golf courses, public and private, around the Fort Myers area, parts of which are reported to have received winds in excess of 140 mph along with massive storm surges of coastal water and flooding. All that area’s courses likely received damage of some sort, some of it possibly disastrous. Based on past experiences with hurricanes in Florida, it’s likely most of them have trees down, with some courses losing hundreds or possibly thousands of trees. Past hurricanes of lesser strength have proved capable of rendering tree-lined fairways into jumbled messes of snapped conifers and oak trees.

Courses also might be underwater, especially those close to the Gulf of Mexico, the Intracoastal Waterway and inland bays, rivers, creeks and other waterways. In Southwest Florida, that list includes almost every course. Standing water has been reported on courses as far north as The Golden Bear Club at Keene’s Pointe just west of Orlando not far from Disney World, and damage also likely includes washed-out bunkers at many courses – in past storms, it wasn’t uncommon to see bunkers inundated or stripped completely of sand.

It could be weeks or months before some of the worst-hit courses are able to reopen. Grass can continue to grow so long as fresh water receded fairly rapidly, but the general cleanup efforts can be extensive.

Golfweek’s Best maintains a list of top courses across the state, both public-access and private. Many of the courses on these lists likely experienced some damage, with several courses in particular a cause for increased concern.

Nearest Fort Myers and landfall, the public-access Gasparilla Inn & Club in Boca Grande sits just a few miles from the initial landfall site. Likewise, the private Coral Creek Club in Placida was directly in the track of the storm. Both courses sit near saltwater, with Gasparilla Inn & Club on a barrier island. Emails and calls to that facility were understandably unanswered as relief officials and first responders continue to focus on other more pressing matters. Gasparilla Inn & Club ranks as No. 27 on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access courses in Florida, while Coral Creek Club is No. 14 on Golfweek’s Best list of private courses.

Moving east from landfall, Hurricane Ian will have impacted many other courses on Golfweek’s Best lists as it rolled across Central Florida toward an exit near Titusville, Merritt Island and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center about 50 miles east of Orlando. Top-ranked private courses likely to have felt the effects of the storm include Calusa Pines (No. 2 private in Florida) in Naples; Mountain Lake (No. 3) in Lake Wales; Naples National (No. 7) in Naples; Concession (tied for No. 10) in Bradenton; and the aforementioned Coral Creek Club, among possibly others.

The list is even longer for top-ranked public-access courses along the storm’s path likely to have felt impacts large or small. That includes the three courses at Streamsong (ranked No. 2 Red, No. 3 Black and No. 4 Blue) in Bowling Green; Bay Hill Club & Lodge (No. 5) in Orlando; the two courses at Hammock Beach (No. 11 Ocean and No. 12 Conservatory) in Palm Coast; Hammock Bay (No. 17) in Naples; the two courses at Orange County National (No. 20 Panther Lake and No. 24 Crooked Cat) in Winter Garden; Southern Dunes (No. 26) in Haines City; and Reunion Resort (No. 30 Watson Course) in Kissimmee, among possibly others.

Several of these and many others have reported closures of various duration on their websites and social media. Streamsong, one of the most popular golf resorts in Florida, is an example of how even inland courses not directly on the center track of the giant storm were affected to some degree. The resort hosted play through Tuesday morning as crews prepped the courses, but it announced on its website that all three courses will be closed through Sunday. That comes at a destination featuring wide-open layouts with relatively few trees in play to have blown down – the hurricane’s massive rainfall and the effects of storm surge can cause closures even miles from the coasts.

“The thing we were most concerned about was our location near the Peace River and possible storm surge, and would we have flooding?” said Craig Falanga, Streamsong’s director of sales and marketing. “But we were really fortunate, and the damage is minimal, just cosmetic really. … We plan to have it all cleaned up and reopen Monday.”

Streansong Resort
Streamsong, home to three top courses including the Blue (pictured), received light damage in Hurricane Ian but was lucky to avoid intense flooding and will reopen Monday. (Courtesy of Streamsong Resort/Laurence Lambrecht)

Anyone with plans to travel and play golf anywhere in Southwest or Central Florida in the coming days and weeks should check with the courses before embarking.

As the storm moves north, it possibly will affect TPC Sawgrass and its two ranked courses (No. 1 public-access Players Stadium and No. 18 Dye’s Valley), as well as the private Pablo Creek (No. 17) in Jacksonville. Those are just the ranked layouts in a region full of dozens of compelling courses.

The storm moved into the Atlantic Ocean late Thursday morning and made a second landfall mid-day Friday in South Carolina. The projected cone includes courses from Hilton Head and its dozens of layouts north through Charleston – a region that includes Kiawah Island Golf Resort and its highly rated Ocean Course – all the way to Myrtle Beach.

In fact, numerous courses in that area reported considerable flooding.

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Check the yardage book: Quail Hollow Club for the 2022 Presidents Cup

StrackaLine offers hole-by-hole maps of Quail Hollow Club, for which the routing has been shuffled ahead of the 2022 Presidents Cup.

Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina – site of the 2022 Presidents Cup – was originally designed by George Cobb and opened in 1961. There have been several renovations to the layout including work by Arnold Palmer and, most recently, Tom Fazio.

Quail Hollow ranks No. 4 in North Carolina on Golfweek’s Best list of private courses in each state.

The PGA Tour has shaken up the normal routing of Quail Hollow for the Presidents Cup in an effort to make sure players encounter the club’s Green Mile, which normally is the tough three-hole finishing stretch. Because the Presidents Cup is match play, there’s a chance many matches could end before reaching those holes. Instead, the normal finishing stretch has been moved up in the routing. What is normally No. 16 at Quail Hollow will play as No. 13 in the Presidents Cup, the normal No. 17 will be No. 14 in the Presidents Cup, and the normal No. 18 will be No. 15 in the Presidents Cup.

The shuffling includes 10 of the holes in total. Nos. 1-8 will play as they normally do, but every other hole on the course has been shuffled in the routing. Each of those changes is indicated on the graphic maps of the holes below. The holes are shown in the routing in which they will be played for the Presidents Cup, and their normal place in Quail Hollow’s routing is indicated in the headers below. Each of the holes that has been moved also has a black box upon the graphic indicating its position in the Presidents Cup and in the normal Quail Hollow routing.

In all, Quail Hollow will play to 7,571 yards with a par of 71 for the Presidents Cup.

Golfweek’s Best 2022: Top public and private courses in Hawaii

After a tight battle, there’s a new No. 1 among Hawaii’s public-access layouts.

It’s a tight race for the title of best public-access golf course in Hawaii, with the Four Seasons Resort’s Manele Course in Lanai having jumped ahead of Kapalua’s Plantation Course for the No. 1 spot on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in 2022.

Built by Jack Nicklaus atop lava outcroppings and opened in 1991, the Manele Course features three holes atop cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. Besides being No. 1 among Hawaii’s public-access layouts, it ties for No. 32 among all modern courses built since 1960 in the U.S.

Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses in each state among the most popular. All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Also popular are the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top private courses in each state, and that list for Hawaii is likewise included below.

MORE: Best Modern | Best Classic | Top 200 Resort|
Top 200 Residential | Top 100 Best You Can Play

(m): Modern course, built in or after 1960
(c): Classic course, built before 1960

Note: If there is a number in the parenthesis with the m or c, that indicates where that course ranks among Golfweek’s Best top 200 modern or classic courses. Several of the private courses listed below do not qualify for those premium lists because they haven’t seen enough rater play in the past 10 years, but they are still eligible for the state-by-state lists.

* New to or returning to list

Ross Bridge on Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama suffers accidental poisoning of greens, closed indefinitely

After a chemical-application mishap, renovation of the greens at Ross Bridge will commence as early as April 2023.

Ross Bridge, one of the top-ranked golf courses on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama, has suffered a debilitating chemical mishap that poisoned most of the greens on the layout in Hoover near Birmingham.

Much of the 18-hole course is closed indefinitely as crews attempt to save portions of the putting surfaces in hopes of operating the course at some capacity over the fall, winter and early spring.

Earlier in September, the maintenance staff mistook a 1-ton bag of herbicide and fertilizer mix for a bag of green sand that was to be applied to the putting surfaces. The herbicide was spread across the greens of Nos. 5-18, killing much of the bent grass on those surfaces. The bag of herbicide had been stored in the wrong building before the mishap, said John Cannon, chairman of Sunbelt Golf Corporation that operates the Trail’s 26 courses at 11 sites. He said the herbicide mix could appear as being green to the naked eye, similar to the mix that was supposed to be spread across the greens.

“It was just the wrong product in the wrong place, and it should never have happened,” Cannon said. “It’s pilot error, no doubt about it.”

Charcoal will be injected into the greens this week to try to form a filter layer, giving the surviving grass a better chance to spread. If that method works, the course could reopen in some capacity for this winter. In the meantime, holes 1-4 were undamaged and are open now, forming a playable loop that returns to the clubhouse. The practice facilities remain open.

Ross Bridge Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail
The ninth (right) and 18th green at Ross Bridge on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail near Birmingham (Courtesy of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail/Michael Clemmer)

“Ross Bridge has very large greens, so we know we’re not going to get 100-percent coverage even in the best circumstances,” Cannon said. “It really is about seeing what progress we can make in the next month or so without having play on the golf course.”

Regardless of those efforts, the course will be renovated with new putting surfaces starting in the spring of 2023. Operators already planned to renovate the greens from bent grass to Ultradwarf Bermuda grass at Ross Bridge in 2024, and those plans have been accelerated. The greens will be cored out and regrassed, and other improvement projects such as tree clearing in key areas will commence ahead of schedule.

“We just hope to take what we have, which internally is a real tragedy, and end up 12 months from now with a better product,” Cannon said. “You have to find the bright spot somewhere when you’re going through difficult times like this.”

The timeline for the greens renovation has not been set, but work could begin in April or even earlier if the current surfaces don’t recover sufficiently after the charcoal injections. Cannon said the greens renovation would need to be completed with full grow-in before October next year to get ahead of any possible cold weather and early freezes.

Ross Bridge ranks No. 4 in Alabama on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list of public-access layouts in the U.S. It is adjacent to the AAA Four Diamond Renaissance Ross Bridge Resort and Spa, just minutes down the street from Oxmoor Valley, another Trail facility that features two full-size 18-hole courses (Ridge and Valley) with a revamped short course scheduled to come online this year.

The chemical mishap will not only affect tee times at Ross Bridge, Cannon said, it will affect bookings at the hotel and send more play to Oxmoor Valley. The accident’s total economic impact for the Trail cannot yet be projected, but it could reach into the millions of dollars. “Accelerating (the greens renovation) by a year changes the whole capital plan for the Trail for the next two years,” Cannon said.

The Trail was conceived by David Bronner, CEO of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, in the 1980s as a way to boost economic growth and diversify the state’s pension fund. It has expanded in the ensuing decades as one of the most popular buddies-trip destinations in the U.S., with golfers able to bounce from site to site with consistently solid golf courses, hotels, restaurants and other amenities.

The Trail’s operators are experienced in converting original bent grass greens to Ultradwarf Bermuda, strains of which have been greatly improved in recent decades. Only four courses on the Trail, not counting Ross Bridge, still have bent grass greens, Cannon said. His team has overseen the renovation of more than a dozen courses to Bermuda greens, which he said provide a better putting surface year-round without suffering as much stress as do bent greens in Alabama’s hot summers.

“We know we can build high-quality Ultradwarf greens that our customers will appreciate all year round, and at the same time while we’re closed we have the opportunity to do some other projects,” Cannon said. “That’s our final goal in this project, and it’s not about what already happened but what we can make out of it that’s the most important to us. …

“This is the biggest accident we’ve ever had to any of the golf courses on the Trail in my 25 years, and things like this happen, but we’re going to make the most of it and we’re going to improve Ross Bridge.”

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Photos: The Lido at Sand Valley nears completion of stunning historic recreation of New York masterpiece

Strategy, difficulty and beauty on full display in these photos of Sand Valley’s new Lido course.

NEKOOSA, Wis. – You can’t let your mind wander on a single shot at the new Lido course at Sand Valley in Wisconsin. Not on a putt. Not on a chip or pitch. Not on a single approach, and certainly not on a tee shot. Every swing demands your attention, and there might be no greater compliment for a golf course.

Built as a recreation of the famed Lido on Long Island in New York that was purchased and then demolished by the U.S. Navy during World War II, the new Lido is a stunning test of every aspect of a golfer’s game, especially the mind. It’s no exaggeration to call it the most strategic course – at the very least among a handful of contenders – in the United States.

The original Lido was designed by Golden Age architects C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, with several individual holes designed by contestants in an architecture contest that included Alister MacKenzie. It was built along the shore on soil dredged from the sea floor, then shaped by teams with horse-drawn equipment. The new reproduction and its many template holes were meticulously laid into place by Tom Doak with a giant assist by Peter Flory, a Chicago-based banker (and Golfweek’s Best course-rater ambassador) who used old photography to generate a digital replica of the New York original. Doak used those digital models to recreate the old layout as closely as possible.

Judging by two rounds this author played with Flory in early September, it’s easy to guess the hickory-equipped golfers of the 1920s had their hands full on the original.

Bunkers seemingly are everywhere. The Lido offers plenty of width, with fairways sometimes playing more than 100 yards wide as they overlap, but the traps appear to be unavoidable, especially the first time a player goes round. Woe to any golfer who gets out of line.

Sand Valley Lido during grow-in
The 11th fairway (center) of the Lido at Sand Valley is flanked on either side by No. 17 (left, in the opposite direction) and No. 2 (right, playing in same direction as 11 with the green in the upper right). With several options for avoiding all the bunkers, the 11th effectively plays more than 100 yards wide. (Golfweek)

Players must stand on each tee and plot their way to the flag. It’s an exhilarating exercise that every course designer should strive to produce, but nowhere is such strategizing more important than at the Lido. A well-struck shot on the wrong line, even one that finds short grass, might as well have found a bunker closer to the proper line. It’s an awkward moment when you realize you picked the wrong angle off the tee – you can see the flag ahead on the green, but you can’t even begin to imagine how to get close in regulation when playing into the new and bouncy putting surfaces.

But if players take the time to study the various pathways offered for the tee ball and choose wisely, then the greens open up. That flag that appears tucked from one side of the fairway probably is reasonably approachable from the opposite side. You have to play the holes backward in your mind before you ever swing.

It’s all complicated by the bunker design. Many of these fairway traps would be better described as trapdoors, with their tops even to the surrounding grades. Most modern course designers flare their bunkers into hillsides or manufactured inclines, giving the players visual clues as to where they should play and what they must avoid. Many of the fairway bunkers at the Lido, by contrast, are flat on the ground and often hidden beyond rolling terrain. It’s hard to stand there and know exactly where all the trouble waits because you can’t see half of it. If your caddie tells you to avoid an area, even if it appears safe from the tee, take that advice to heart. Flory pointed out that the best well-known example of similar bunkering is the Old Course at St. Andrews, where nasty traps often lurk just out of view.

Even those traps you can see aren’t necessarily easy to avoid, and many of the greenside bunkers in particular have fearsomely steep faces – nearly vertical and more than 8 feet high in some cases. Just the intimidating sight of such bunker faces will send some players wayward.

The trouble doesn’t end with the tee shots and bunkers. The waste areas and steep grassed banks surrounding many of these greens present incredibly difficult chips, pitches and blasts to elevated putting surfaces that feature beautiful tiers and ridges. From short and center of many greens, the flags are reasonably approachable to players with solid short games, but most attempts from pin-high or long grow exponentially more difficult. The more you challenge the course in an attempt at a low score, the more the course challenges you back.

So yes, the Lido is difficult. It’s also beautiful, fascinating and incredibly fun. It’s in no way impossible to play, so long as golfers think. As soon as a round ends, most players will want another shot at it to try different routes. A golfer could play it a dozen times and never replicate all the same routes.

Key examples are the fourth, a par-5 that offers a safer route to the left or a risky drive rightward to a small patch of fairway flanked by sandy waste areas. Players who pull off the riskier tee ball are rewarded with a reasonable chance to reach the green in two shots, but those who miss into the sand are faced with a tough second shot over water just to reach the safety of the main fairway.

Sand Valley Lido during grow-in
The tee shot at the par-5 fourth of the Lido provides for a longer, safer route to fairway on the left or a tougher, longer carry to a small patch of fairway to the right that significantly shortens the hole. (Golfweek)

The par-4 11th is another great example of width providing options. Flanked by the 17th fairway to the left and the second fairway to the right, players have a choice of vectors over, around and short of a minefield of bunkers and scrub. In our first round together, Flory went well right off the tee while I fired one off to the left just to be obstinate. We both hit solid tee shots, and our golf balls finished 118 yards apart as measured by laser rangefinder. Flory’s line paid off with a birdie 3, his first on the Lido, while I made a 7.

There are plenty of such examples, especially as the wind and its directions changes. On the wide-open, treeless expanse upon which this Lido was built, the breezes tend to be stronger than at the resort’s other two existing courses, Mammoth Dunes by David McLay Kidd and the eponymous Sand Valley by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.

We wanted to share some of the photos of our two days at the Lido. Keep scrolling for those, but first the answers to several frequent questions in the days after our trip:

  • The Lido is still growing in, and the course will not officially open until the summer of 2023.
  • The resort is allowing small groups of members to play nine-hole preview rounds now while the grass is still taking hold, but many of the bunkers do not yet have sand (as you will see in the photos below). It is still very much a work in progress.
  • The Lido will accept very limited resort play. It will be a private course operated by the resort, but don’t expect to just show up as a guest and play on a weekend. Details on how to obtain a round on the Lido are still forthcoming. Plan to stay at the resort for any chance, and book earlier as excitement about the Lido builds among golf architecture fans.
  • Golfweek will present plenty of more coverage on the Lido before it opens, including Flory’s take on how it all came together. We just want to provide a sneak peak on how it all looks and plays.

Now, for those photos:

Golfweek’s Best 2022: Top public and private courses in Colorado

Red Sky offers private experiences to resort guests, and the rest of Colorado offers more great courses.

Looking for a chance to play two highly ranked private golf courses without paying an initiation fee and annual dues? Colorado might be your shot, as Red Sky Golf Club in Wolcott is for the most part a private club that allows resort guests to play its two courses on alternating days.

Red Sky’s Tom Fazio and Greg Norman courses are both in the top five layouts in Colorado on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access courses in each state. Want to see how the rest of the state’s public courses shake out? Keep scrolling.

Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses in each state among the most popular. All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Also popular are the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top private courses in each state, and that list is likewise included below.

MORE COURSES: Best Modern | Best Classic | Top 200 Resort|
Top 200 Residential | Top 100 Best You Can Play

(m): Modern course, built in or after 1960
(c): Classic course, built before 1960
Note: If there is a number in the parenthesis with the m or c, that indicates where that course ranks among Golfweek’s Best top 200 modern or classic courses.