Golfweek caught up with Smith recently to talk Walker Cup, Cypress Point and amateur golf.
Nathan Smith was able to get some early scouting in last week.
Smith was in California at the Cypress Point Classic. Famed Cypress Point is hosting the 2025 Walker Cup, the 50th edition of the Ryder Cup-style battle between the best amateurs from the United States and Great Britain and Ireland.
Smith has played in three Walker Cups as a part of a decorated amateur career that included four U.S. Mid-Amateur victories. He’s also set to lead the squad at Cypress Point, No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best 2023 for top Classic Courses in the United States, in two years.
Golfweek caught up with Smith recently to talk Walker Cup, Cypress Point and amateur golf.
Colson Brown is thankful he was being nosy in the training room one day.
Colson Brown is thankful he was being nosy in the training room one day.
The walk-on true freshman quarterback at Georgia Tech was receiving treatment one day on his shoulder, and Yellow Jackets’ men’s golf coach Bruce Heppler was also in there talking with trainer Mark Smith. The duo were discussing golf and Brown chimed in.
“I can’t really recall when I found out I was playing at Cypress Point,” said Brown, who won a state championship in high school at North Augusta, South Carolina. “I think it sunk in the day before we left where I was going to play.”
Once Brown introduced himself to Heppler and heard of Heppler needing another player for a tournament this week, Brown expressed his interest in playing. Georgia Tech was committed to two tournaments and needed 11 total players while only having 10 available due to one redshirting.
Brown showed the coach videos of his swing and gave him his number. A couple weeks later is when Heppler called, saying he cleared everything with the football coaches for Brown to join the golf team in California earlier this week.
“I started going to practice at their facility on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Brown said. “I knew my swing was in a good spot, but I just didn’t want to go out there and embarrass myself.”
The Georgia Tech golf team took him in. He practiced with the likes of Christo Lamprecht, No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, and others from the 2023 national runner-up squad. All of this while having football practice and classes.
“The guys took me in and made me feel really comfortable,” Brown said.
A couple days before leaving, Heppler called Brown into his office and provided him with all the gear he would need for the tournament: a golf bag, travel bag, shirts and hats, and even more.
Colson Brown at the 2023 Cypress Point Classic. (Photo: Georgia Tech)
Brown hopped on a plane and traveled to the Monterey Peninsula. The tournament consisted of six players from each team playing match play in three sessions: foursomes, four-ball and singles.
The first day was 36 holes, starting with foursomes. Brady Rackley was paired with Brown, and though the duo fell 4 and 3 to Texas’ Tommy Morrison and Jacob Sosa, it was a memorable morning.
“Tommy and I talked a lot during the day,” Brown said. “Everyone sort of knew the circumstances, and everyone was great to me the whole time.”
The duo was paired again in four-ball but fell 2 and 1 to Auburn. When he finally looked at his phone after the long day, he couldn’t believe the thousands of notifications waiting for him.
“People were so jealous of me and calling me the luckiest man in America,” Brown said. “I guess it still hasn’t set in.”
On Tuesday was singles, where Brown faced Illinois’ Piercen Hunt. He fell 9 and 7, but again, said Hunt was great to play against and provided great commentary through the round.
Brown returned and got back into his routine Wednesday, and his football teammates had nothing but questions for him when he returned.
Brown said he enjoyed getting to see the difference in how the golf team and football team interacted with each other, but he is thrilled with how supportive the golf team was of him stepping in and how accepting the football team was of him being gone.
Now, Brown has one heckuva story to tell for the rest of his life, and he’s got plenty of Georgia Tech golf equipment (that Heppler let him keep) to prove it.
“I really cant say that I was Tiger Woods out there,” Brown said, “but I hit the ball about as well as I could’ve considering the circumstances.”
Colson Brown traded in his shoulder pads and helmet for his golf clubs.
Georgia Tech freshman quarterback Colson Brown hasn’t played a snap for the Yellow Jackets this fall. However, he did participate in the starting lineup for the Ramblin’ Wreck at one of the most famed venues in the world.
This week, he traded in his shoulder pads and helmet for his golf clubs.
Georgia Tech committed to two events this week, the first being the East Lake Cup at Atlanta Athletic Club. The other being the Cypress Point Classic at, you guessed it, famed Cypress Point, No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best 2023 for top Classic Courses in the United States.
The Yellow Jackets needed five players for its lineup at the East Lake Cup, which is where their top five went. In California, Georgia Tech needed six, however, with junior Ben Reuter redshirting this season, there were only five available bodies.
Enter Brown, who played high school golf at North Augusta High School in South Carolina, just across the river from Augusta, Georgia. The 6-foot-4 Brown stepped in so Georgia Tech didn’t have to withdraw from the tournament it won in 2019.
The Cypress Point Classic is a two-day, Walker Cup-style event with foursomes and fourball sessions on Monday and singles Tuesday.
Brown lost both his matches on Monday. Playing with Brady Rackley, they fell 4-and-3 in foursomes to Tommy Morrison and Jacob Sosa from Texas and then lost to Auburn’s Brendan Valdes and Reed Lotter in fourball, 2 and 1.
On Tuesday, Brown will lead off for the Yellow Jackets, taking on Illinois’ Piercen Hunt in singles.
While the rest of Georgia Tech’s football team is preparing for its game against Virginia, its freshman quarterback is playing one of the most famous courses in the world while representing his school. Not a bad start to the week.
Golfweek’s experts have ranked the Top 200 courses built before 1960, such as Augusta National, Pebble Beach and more.
Are you a big fan of Golden Age golf architecture? You’re in the right spot. Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of the Top 200 Classic Courses opened before 1960 in the United States.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings. The top handful of courses in the world have an average rating of above 9, while many excellent layouts fall into the high-6 to the 8 range.
To ensure these lists are up-to-date, Golfweek’s Best in recent years has altered how the individual ratings are compiled into the rankings. Only ratings from rounds played in the past 10 years are included in the compilations. This helps ensure that any course in the rankings still measures up.
Courses also must have a minimum of 25 votes to qualify for the Top 200 Modern or the Top 200 Classic. Other Golfweek’s Best lists, such as Best Courses You Can Play or Best Private, do not require as many votes. This makes it possible that a course can show up on other lists but not on the premium Top 200 lists.
Each course is listed with its average rating next to the name, the location, the year it opened and the designers. The list notes in parenthesis next to the name of each course where that course ranked in 2022.
After the designers are several designations that note what type of facility it is:
All eyes are on Augusta National, but how does the Georgia stalwart stack up against Alister MacKenzie’s other layouts?
The golf world’s attention is focused on Augusta National Golf Club this weekend, bringing plenty of attention to famed golf course architect Alister MacKenzie. But the annual home of the Masters, as great as it is, isn’t even MacKenzie’s top-rated layout.
Golfweek’s Best ranks courses every year based on the input of more than 800 raters worldwide, and Augusta National in 2022 ranked No. 3 among all classic courses in the United States built before 1960. Golfweek’s raters judge each course on a scale of 1 to 10, with only the top handful of courses in the world surpassing an average rating of 9.
Augusta National – which has been heavily modified over the decades – comes in at 9.51 out of 10, so clearly MacKenzie and the architects who followed with renovations at Augusta National did great work on the old tree farm. Funny thing, though, it’s not even the best course in the U.S. designed by the Scottish surgeon.
Alister MacKenzie
That honor belongs to a club out west. Click through to see MacKenzie’s top courses in the world, as rated by Golfweek’s Best.
It’s worth noting, MacKenzie laid his hands and intellect on many courses. The ones below include tracks that were MacKenzie originals or received substantial MacKenzie input, often with help from other designers. Several clubs he worked on, such as California Golf Club, were not included in the following calculations because much of his work has been redone in subsequent renovations or he didn’t have the majority of the design input.
Monterey Peninsula and its famed golf courses are pounded by extreme weather steered by an ‘atmospheric river.’
Northern California has been battered in recent days by strong winds, rain and even snow, and there is more extreme weather on the way, according to Weather.com. Two people have died in the storms so far and more than 176,000 are without power as of Thursday evening, the site reported.
The area’s famed golf courses are not immune to what is called the atmospheric river that’s driving the storms. That’s especially so for the layouts close to the Pacific Ocean coastline as massive waves and flooding threaten golf holes. Even inland, many course operators are dealing with flooding and the effects of winds that reached 80 mph at elevation and 50 mph in San Francisco and Sacramento. It will be days before the full effects of the storm can be tallied.
Sometimes called “rivers in the sky,” atmospheric rivers are a major factor in extreme rain and snowfall in the West.
Long, narrow corridors of air heavy with moisture form when warmer air from the tropics moves toward the poles ahead of powerful storm fronts. They can carry huge amounts of water over thousands of miles.
Atmospheric rivers function much like rivers on the surface but can carry even more water than the Mississippi River.
One coastal golf club that appears to have been hit hard is Monterey Peninsula Country Club, home to two layouts – the Dunes and the Shore – that both are ranked by Golfweek’s Best to be among the top 10 private clubs in California. Several posts to social media and other clips sent to Golfweek have shown apparent damage to the club’s Dunes Course along the water.
It’s worth noting that despite the tweet’s reference of Chernobyl, the full extent of the damage isn’t clear, though it certainly is eye-opening. A call to the operators at Monterey Peninsula Country Club went to voicemail Thursday afternoon.
Alan Shipnuck of Fire Pit Collective reported later in the day that the club anticipates being able to repair the damage to No. 14 on the Dunes Course and that the hole will be closed “for just a little while.”
I just talked to J.J. West, the general manager at MPCC, and he says the damage is repairable and the 14th hole of the Dunes will be closed “for just a little while.” But to understand the waves that hit Pebble this morning, the top of the Lone Cypress is 150’ above sea level! https://t.co/XpWKbWCTnCpic.twitter.com/fhxYP8KcYg
There are several other famed courses exposed to the weather pounding Monterey Peninsula, including Cypress Point, Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill, the Links at Spanish Bay, even the popular municipal Pacific Grove Golf Links. Golfweek reached out to several course operators without hearing back. California Governor Gavin Newsome has declared a state of emergency, and evacuations have been issued in parts of Monterey County and other areas.
Any damage – with none reported so far – to Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill or Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course could prove problematic for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the annual PGA Tour event scheduled Feb. 2-5. Pebble Beach also will be host to the U.S. Women’s Open in July.
USA Today’s Janet Loehrke, Ramon Padilla and Dinah Voyles Pulver contributed to this article.
If I ever play Cypress Point, I want it to be with this guy.
On Nov. 4, SMU golfer Christian Clark aced the iconic par-3 16th hole at Cypress Point — and it was caught on camera.
The video made its way around social media, even grabbing the attention of the GOAT, Tom Brady, who commented “amazing” on Instagram.
Then, just over a week later, another ace at the 16th was caught on camera and there’s one spectator who’s green with envy.
The same Cypress Point member who hosted Clark had a group of friends out for a laid-back 18 when one of them canned a hole-in-one at the breathtaking seaside par 3.
The best part — he used a driver from the back tee box!
A #CypressPoint member brings out an SMU player & he made an ace on 16 from the back tee.
A week later the SAME member brings a group of friends & one of them makes another ace on 16 from back tee!
An ace at the iconic 233-yard par 3 16th hole at Cypress Point? That’s priceless.
There are hole-in-ones and then there is making a hole-in-one at one of the great cathedrals for golf.
It doesn’t get much better than what SMU freshman golfer Christian Clark accomplished on Friday, making an ace at the iconic 233-yard par-3 16th hole at Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, Calif.
“Is it the holy grail of 1’s?” tweeted golf broadcaster Gary Williams.
No less than NFL legend Tom Brady labeled it “amazing!” in a comment on Instagram.
Indeed, it was.
The only thing better than a hole-in-one at 16 at Cypress? Having video of said ace.
SMU freshman golfer Christian Clark, a Highland Park alum, had a hole in one on 16 at Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, Calif.
Casual 230-yard Par 3 over water on the signature hole.
You can hear the waves crashing against the jutted Pacific coastline below, which must be drowning out the sound of Clark’s heart pumping with anticipation.
It doesn’t look as if Clark, a Dallas resident whose SMU team played in the Cal-Poly Invitational in Carmel, California this week, ever considered bailing out left and boldly took a fairway wood and dead aim over the chasm and at the green.
“Go in,” someone said, shortly before it did just that, and Clark and everyone on the tee lost their minds. (I love how Clark is jumping up and down, his mind is blown. Note: there are a few F-bombs dropped in the video. Earmuffs, kids!)
This is how famed sports writer George Plimpton once described the tee shot at 16: “The golfer stands on a small elevated tee facing the Pacific Ocean that boils in below on the rocks, its swells laced with long strands of kelp. Occasionally, a sea lion can be seen lolling about, turning lazily, a flipper up, like a log in a slow current. It would be a clear shot to the horizon if it weren’t for a promontory that hooks around from the golfer’s left.”
Plimpton noted that at the1952 Crosby the average score of the entire field on the hole was five, an average bolstered by Lawson Little getting a 14 and Henry Ransom an 11. Ben Hogan got a seven. A year later, Porky Oliver famously made a 16 at the 16th.
But not, young Christian Clark of SMU. He made a one at one of the signature holes in golf for his first hole-in-one. An ace at No. 7 at nearby Pebble, the 12th at Augusta National, the 17th at TPC Sawgrass are also in the conversation for signatures holes to make an ace. But Clark’s arguably is as good as it gets, and so cool to have it and the celebration that followed on video for posterity. As one of the people on the tee put it, “That’s awesome.”
Pebble Beach is an obvious No. 1, but how do the rest of California’s course rankings shake out?
California’s lineup of public-access golf courses is one of the strongest in the U.S., with more than a few that even casual golf fans will have heard of. Pebble Beach Golf Links tops that list, of course, but which layouts follow?
With so many miles of staggering coast, it’s a lock that many oceanside courses will land on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access layouts in California. But it certainly isn’t a requirement. Keep scrolling to see them all.
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.
(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.
The best of the best. State-by-state rankings of the best U.S. private golf courses in 2022.
Welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2022 list of top private golf courses in the U.S., as judged by our international panel of raters.
The hundreds of members of that ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings.
All the courses on this list are private and don’t accept daily-fee or resort play.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern and classic courses in the U.S. Also included with many courses are links to recent stories about that layout.
