Then and Wow

The past 30 years have seen course design evolve in four significant ways

- DEREK DUNCAN

IT’S A COMMON SENTIMENT to believe things were better in the past—air travel, cinema, political discourse, french fries. In golf-course architecture, however, a conceit exists among designers, writers and ranking panelists that today’s best courses are functionally and artistically superior to those built from the 1950s into the 1990s. We’re in a “second Golden Age” of golf design, some say. Immodesty—and judgment—aside, there has been a distinct shift in tastes and architectural practices during the past 30 years. The catalyst was the opening of Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska in 1995. Scooped and seeded from relentless and rural sand dunes, the design was a breathtaking departure stylistically and philosophically from the architectural extravagance of the moment. Golf Digest’s annual Best New Courses lists illustrate the distinction between then and now. The 1989 private-course winner, Shadow Glen Golf Club in Kansas, is an archetype of formality reflecting that era’s precise architectural intent and careful assemblage of features. Florida’s Streamsong Black, 2018’s Best New Public course, is heir to Sand Hills’ wild nonconformity and penchant for found, holistic (or holistic-appearing) holes. In the voyage from the age of i