Golf Travel by Design : How You Can Play the World's Best Courses by the Sport's Top Architects

The Golf Insider is the leading critical golf travel publication in the world, a newsletter devoted entirely to the topic of golf travel, without any advertising. Editor Larry Olmsted has written hundreds of articles on golf for both the newsletter and other major publications. The Golf Insider publisher and west coast editor Robert Pedrero regularly visits top courses, new and old, around the world to help keep readers up to date on the best of golf travel.
Also contributing is women's golf editor Nancy Berkeley, who regularly provides a design perspective from the forward tees.
An introduction has been provided by Greg Norman, who has enjoyed one of the greatest careers in golf history. Norman, whose nickname is the Great White Shark, has designed golf courses around the world, including the United States, Ireland, the Bahamas, Australia and the Far East.

More than any other designer, Ross' layouts have extremely broad appeal to all types of players. Time and time again he managed to walk the finest line in golf architecture, crafting routings that were not daunting on the surface and thus fun for lesser players, but challenged the world's best golfers to score well. Anyone can make a difficult golf course, but only the most talented designers can create a course that is both extremely challenging and extremely fair. No public course is as good an example of this balance as Ross' masterpiece, Pinehurst Number Two. It is for this reason that the course continually makes the Top Ten list of almost every golf publication. From a travel perspective, Number Two is a true must-play course that resides at the grandest of all American golf resorts. From a design perspective it is a masterpiece, showcasing all the traits Ross is known for. Almost every designer has trademarks, but few are as recognizable as Ross'. These include:

** An easy opening hole.
Ross knew that golfers were often unprepared to hit a heroic shot off the first tee, where they may have arrived harried or unable to warm-up properly. He felt the first hole should provide this warm-up, and welcome the player to the course in good spirits. In many cases, his first would be the course's easiest, but at the very least it would be of moderate length, with a wide, receptive landing area, and an absence of penal hazards.

** Bunkering as the hazard of choice.
As a member of the strategic, rather than penal school of design, Ross presented hazards that could be seen and avoided with well struck shots. But in the event that these hazards were not skirted, they would allow an opportunity for a heroic recovery, or in the worst case, cost the player one, not two shots. For this reason his courses are amply bunkered but tend to lack water, thick rough and other ball swallowing hazards.

** Small, domed greens.
No other facet of Ross' design aesthetic is as well documented as his demanding greens, which are often described as "inverted saucers" or "turtle backs." While the stereotypical mental image of a Ross green is a circle that is higher in the middle than anywhere else, falling off to the edges in every direction, this is a bit of an oversimplification. Ross did indeed use such designs liberally, but he had many variations, including more standard oval or kidney shaped greens that would be divided into two parts by a "hogback" ridge running through it. He often honored his Scottish roots by leaving the front of the green open and accessible, flush with the fairway, to welcome a running shot. In these cases it would be the back and sides that would fall away dramatically, punishing shots hit long more than those left short. Rather than adding extensive greenside sand bunkers, Ross often chose simple grass bunkers or hollowed out collection areas, thereby leaving tricky chips, pitches and putts back to the putting surface.
(excerpt from book)