Mike Clayton is a throwback to a bygone tradition of golf figures such as Willie Park, Jr., Walter Travis and Max Behr, top players who later became both architects and men of letters. Clayton won the Australian Amateur in 1978 and played the European Tour from 1982 until 2000. He’s written extensively for golf publications…
Peter Kessler was the face and voice of the Golf Channel when the station first went live in 1995. Over the next seven years he commanded the show, mastering ceremonies and interviewing virtually every important figure in golf and instruction. In the course of that time period, and for years following hosting his show on Sirius XM’s PGA…
At first glance it might look like Team Norman mailed this one in. There doesn’t appear to be much to the course, especially against the backdrop of the property’s two overlord hotels, a Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott. Granted, Norman didn’t have great material to work with — essentially a flat, soggy wetland preserve in south Orlando’s Shingle Creek…
On paper, Shark’s Tooth Golf Club has the ingredients that can combine to make a great course. Located just off the breezy Gulf of Mexico west of Panama City Beach in Florida’s Panhandle, the holes sit on sandy soil, cut through a backdrop haunted by dense hardwoods and ominous undergrowth. The course stretches over some nice, gentle…
Sod-wall bunkers with crisp upper lips. Wall to wall fairways. Sandy areas bleeding into the underbrush. Greens that bubble out like last gasps of the fairways. When this describes a course in Australia, our mouths water thinking of clubs like Commonwealth, Victoria or Metropolitan. When they describe a golf course in Naples you start thinking “gimmick.” I suppose there’s no…
The International Course at this 36-hole complex a few miles southwest of Disney World was conceived to emulate the look and characteristics of Scottish and Irish links (there’s also the National course, designed in an “American” style). I’m not sure which links courses exactly, because I can’t think of any off the top of my…