Extinct volcanoes, sweeping glaciers, Big Five sightings and moon landing myths — who said golf was boring? Here’s our guide to the very best golfing holidays, courses and places to visit over the next 12 months.
Whistling Straits, Wisconsin, USA
Unbridled hedonism, unsporting behavior and flag-waving bordering on the ludicrous: the usual norms don’t apply during Ryder Cup week, and both the legends and reality of this biennial match-play are deeply woven into the international golfing community. In 2020, the Europe vs. USA head-to-head takes place at Whistling Straits, a Scottish-style links course overlooking Lake Michigan (25-27 September). While tickets in the lottery are sold out, there are plenty of packages available through the event’s partners — and the timing couldn’t be better. The World Cup of golf is many things — impossibly competitive and irresistibly addictive (even to non-golfers) — yet this time it may be best remembered for Lake Michigan’s fall colors and hanging autumn leaves.
Dumbarnie Links, Fife, Scotland
By nature of Scotland’s design, with a coastline cut-up by rippling dunes and machair-topped ridges, there are enough courses for every day of the year. This is golf country, and the topography gives rise to impeccable big-hitters like The Old Course at St Andrews, Muirfield, Turnberry, Carnoustie and Royal Dornoch. The latest links course to add to the bucket list is Dumbarnie Links, 15 miles south of the home of golf, St Andrews, and opening in May. The 18 holes, mapped by former Ryder Cup player Clive Clark, sprawl along the Firth of Forth shoreline to eyeball Edinburgh and Scotland’s Golf Coast in East Lothian across the estuary to the south. The trick, this close to the ocean, is learning how to beat the unpredictable Scottish weather.
Midnight sun golf, Iceland
A smoking volcanic cone breathes across the horizon. An Atlantic gale blows across a black sand beach and the occasional sheep runs for cover, watchful for whizzing balls. This is golf under the midnight sun in Iceland, a surreal sight for first-timers, yet where the game is played around-the-clock during the short season from May to September. Among the 65 courses, most of which are nine-holers, consider Akureyri Golf Club, where the Arctic Open tournament (24-27 June) fields four-balls up to 1am, or Westman Islands Golf Club, which ebbs and flows on a volcanic island reached by a ferry.
Winged Foot Golf Club, New York, USA
If greens could talk … Remember Phil Mickelson blowing hot and cold in 2016? Or Fuzzy Zoeller’s eight-stroke victory over Greg Norman in 1984? The 120th U.S. Open Championship (15-21 June) is returning to the treacherously-difficult Westchester course with giants of the game Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy already in the line-up. Outside competition time, golfing in a place with this much history is an almost transcendental experience for amateurs: experiencing it in the rough is utterly different from seeing it on TV.
Royal St George’s Golf Club, Kent, England
Take a 90-minute trip east from London, then follow farm roads after Canterbury. Two miles on from Sandwich, the rolling fields surrender to wild flowers and wilder dunes, revealing the most famous 18-holer in southern England: Royal St George’s. By any measure, it’s a throwback to when players kept an appointment with the dawn and a drink in the members’ bar (note: jacket and tie still mandatory). With a handicap below 18, you’re welcome to play in the run-up to this summer’s Open Championship (12-19 July), the oldest golf tournament in the world, but you’ll have to be wary of the 470-yard, par-4 4th hole. Its bunker is the UK’s tallest and deepest, scything into a vast bank of tussocky dunes.
Phil Mickelson courses, Canada, China and USA
US golf superstar Phil Mickelson, aka “Lefty,” cuts a divisive figure on the tour. He’s had plenty of high profile spats, most famously with Tiger Woods, and is known for often sneery off-course banter. What doesn’t split opinion is his ability to sink a ball and the impressive portfolio of courses to which he’s added his name. There are eight easy-on-the-eye Phil Mickelson Golf Properties scattered throughout his adopted state Arizona, but his latest venture is in Calgary, Alberta. Parked west of the city, Mickelson National opens this spring and is enhanced by vivid views of the Rockies, the mountains turning fairway green in summer, golf ball white in winter. To extend a trip, it’s hardly a tough sell to mention Banff National Park, Lake Louise and the Icefields Parkway an hour away. As for Lefty? He’s building a follow-up course in Shanghai.
Golf safaris in Limpopo, South Africa
Close shot: you’re standing in the bush, nervously keeping an eye out for a big cat amid the springboks. A wider cut reveals a well-groomed fairway, with kudu on one side and a giraffe poking its head onto the green in the distance. This is a standard tee-shot scene at the Legend Signature Golf Course in Limpopo province, the self-billed golf and safari capital of Africa, where vast and luscious African plains inhabited by the Big Five marry with some of the world’s most picturesque fairways. At Koro Creek Bushveld Golf Estate, to complement the golf, there are horse safaris into Lion King territory; at Elements Private Golf Reserve in the Waterberg there’s bird watching and game viewing straight from the tee. Hit a memorable three-iron at Hans Merensky Hotel and Spa and it may end up next door inside Kruger, South Africa’s largest national park.
Texas, USA
Occasionally, golfers end up in some pretty strange places. After leaving Houston behind nearly 50 years ago on 6 February 1971, golf enthusiast — and Apollo 14 Commander — Alan B. Shepard became the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon, shanking his first hit into a crater 40 yards away. Ever since, the Lone Star state has gone golf crazy and nowadays it’s home to more than 400 clubs. For out-of-this-world spectacle, there’s Bluejack National in Montgomery, Tiger Woods’ first signature U.S golf course; Whispering Pines in Trinity; and Dallas National, where Texan three-time major winner Justin Spieth is a member. But for diehards, there’s only one address in summer 2020: Houston’s Champions Golf Club, where, from 4-8 June, South Korean Lee Jeong-eun will attempt to defend her U.S. Women’s Open title.
Death Valley, California, USA
Part unlivable desert, part lunar-like landscape, part unfathomable record-breaker, California’s Death Valley National Park is wonderfully abstract at the best of times. The below-sea-level basin is the hottest, driest and lowest national park in the U.S, but it’s also the unlikely home of one of the world’s most challenging golf courses. The sun is never on holiday here, which makes the par-70 Furnace Creek Golf Course an intense, sweat-guaranteed workout, even when a bank of clouds rolls in. Playing golf where it feels as if hell has broken loose may seem crazy, but beyond the bucket-list brag it becomes the tipping point for other adventures. Namely, stargazing with zero light pollution, wildlife spotting for snakes, scorpions, coyotes and wolves and luxuriating at the newly-refurbished and quaintly-nostalgic Inn at Death Valley, where movie stars like Clark Gable and John Wayne once escaped Hollywood’s glare.
Winter golf, French and Swiss Alps
Amid the bluster of new golf resorts and once-in-a-generation tournaments each year, it’s worth remembering golf doesn’t always need grass. Snow golf, ice golf, winter golf — whatever you call it — is well-loved for a reason. Beyond the silver shock of mountains skirted by evergreens, the lungfuls of life-affirming glacial air, the apres-ski scene to rival any 19th hole clubhouse, there’s the unusual, slightly barmy, thrill of frozen fairways and frosted greens. It’s so popular nowadays, in fact, the annual Winter Golf Cup has grown to a four date event on the tour calendar, taking in the super-slick Alpine resorts of Courchevel, Megeve, Val d’Isere and Crans Montana. Other treats await, of course: how about some skiing?