Water, water everywhere

Beautiful to behold but fraught with danger, water is the stuff of both golfing dreams and nightmares.

- 

Golf is reliant on and inextricably linked with water for many reasons.

Obviously, the playing surfaces and all other flora and fauna associated with our courses couldn't exist without it. But crucially, in its many guises, to a greater or lesser degree it is a feature of the design and strategy of most courses all over the world.

Few courses of note don't have some form of water that the golfer must consider at some point in the round, whether it's an innocuous-looking burn or ditch, or an in-your-face lake that could fit a pod of blue whales. Our oldest and most revered links nestle by the sea, and while the water itself may come and go, the coastal margins are still a source of both wonder and anguish for most of us.

• Why have water on a course?

Given that playing a ball from water is nigh-on impossible, why is it such an important and regular feature in course design? The answer falls into three overlapping categories - strategic, visual and psychological.

First, strategy. Courses need obstacles to challenge the golfer. The most obvious is everyone's favourite (not!) - the bunker. Then you have rough, trees, other foliage and, of course, water. Water is the trickiest of all as an unsuccessful encounter will not only lose you a shot, but usually also your ball.

However, particularly on sites lacking trees, water is an obvious and relatively low-maintenance strategic challenge which can often define the ethos and feel of the place such as the Albatros Course at Le Golf National near Paris, host of the 2018 Ryder Cup. Moving on to visuals, there is no doubt that judicious use of lakes and ponds can help to turn a pig's ear into a silk purse. Rather than a succession of sand-protected holes that can look very similar, water features can be as subtle, soothing, scary or over-the-top as the architect desires and the budget allows.