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Peterhead is one of those courses I'm glad I played but probably won't be making a special trip back for. We'd done the proper Aberdeen-area itinerary already on this trip. Trump International, Royal Aberdeen, Murcar, Cruden Bay. Peterhead was the fifth round and at that point in the week I was both physically tired and spoiled by what I'd already seen. The Craigewan Links is a perfectly good course with a few genuinely outstanding holes and a few that are just there to fill

There are courses where the architecture is the star and there are courses where the land is the star. Cruden Bay is both at once. You walk off the 18th green and you can't tell whether you've just played one of the most brilliantly designed courses in Scotland or just spent four hours on the most spectacular piece of duneland nature ever handed to a golf course architect. The honest answer is both. Old Tom Morris laid out the original course in 1899.

Let me get straight to my conclusion. After playing both courses at Cabot Highlands on the same day in the first week of September 2025, Old Petty in the morning and Castle Stuart in the afternoon, my honest verdict is that Castle Stuart is the better course. By a clear margin. Old Petty is excellent and Tom Doak has built something that will rise up the rankings as it matures, and I covered all of that in a separate post.

Booking Old Petty was one of those things I almost talked myself out of. The preview window only ran through August and September of 2025 and you had to commit to playing Castle Stuart the same day, walking only, £190 a round, and the trip up to Inverness from anywhere outside Scotland is not a casual undertaking. I sat on the booking page for about ten minutes telling myself I'd wait for the proper opening in May 2026. Then I clicked book. I'm glad I did.

Dubai Creek was the second golf course ever built in Dubai. The Majlis came first in 1988, Dubai Creek opened in 1993, and everything you see on the current Dubai golf map came after that. I mention this because when you play Dubai Creek today you can feel it. The course has a patina the newer clubs don't have. The trees are mature. The water has that lived-in look you only get from thirty-plus years of the creek doing its tidal thing.

I count Greg Norman among my favorite designers. The Bluffs at Ho Tram Strip in Vietnam is one of the best tracks I've ever played. It's brilliant. If you're a real golfer and you haven't been there, you need to go as soon as you can. Norman's designs have become something I'm more aware of, and for the Earth Course at Jumeirah Golf Estates, it's the place where the Shark did his Dubai stuff.

The first thing that hits you about The Els Club is the colour. Not the skyline, not the bunkering, not the clubhouse. The colour. You stand on the first tee and look down the fairway and what you see is this ridiculously vivid green strip of grass cutting through waste areas of pale yellow sand, and the contrast is so sharp it almost looks like a photograph that's been oversaturated by someone who doesn't understand colour theory. Except it's real.

Usually I like Nick Faldo courses. The Cornelia in Belek is great. I've played his courses in Vietnam and Thailand and those were good too. Solid designs, proper bunkering, routings that make you think. So when I booked the Faldo at Emirates Golf Club in Dubai for the first time I was expecting more of the same. I was wrong.

I've played the Majlis a handful of times now and every time I leave the clubhouse I think the same thing, which is that this has to be one of the best golf experiences on the planet. Not the best golf course. I'll be honest about that. There are courses I've played that are better designed, better conditioned, better sited. But the Majlis isn't really about any of those things on their own.

On the western side of Yas Island, you can find Yas Links on your way to the course. You will get to see the Ferrari World and the Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit. As you drive, the sound of the cars will be heard before the course's clubhouse comes into view. This will be important later.

Every course has its unique attributes that define the character of the course. In the case of Southern Pines, there is a unique history worthy of a course review. Southern Pines has the privilege of being one of the earliest Donald Ross designs in the South. For almost a century, the Southern Pines Elks owned this property.

When an American golfer hears you’re traveling to the Sandhills of North Carolina, they automatically think of Pinehurst. Most golf enthusiasts are both surprised and impressed when they hear you’ve played Mid Pines. For me, that fascination perfectly encapsulates the culture of golf that exists beyond Pinehurst in the Sandhills.

After the pasting I took at No. 2 on day one, the idea of another Pinehurst round felt slightly ominous. I had a quiet expectation that every course at this resort was going to be a dressed-up version of the same experience — tight lies, crowned greens, sandy waste, and slow erosion of my self-respect. By the time we got to Pinehurst No.10 on day three, I was mentally braced for another walk through the pines wearing a defeated grin.

Pinehurst nr 2 deserves to be played in summer. I made a mistake playing it in March and all i got was brown fairways.

Robert Trent Jones Sr. supposedly said that Grand National was the single greatest natural site for golf he had ever seen. Now I don't know if he actually said that or if it's one of those quotes that gets attached to a famous person after the fact to sell green fees. But having played both courses here I'll say this. If he did say it, I understand why.

There's a granite stone next to the first tee box. It says "You Will Be Judged." I stood there reading it and couldn't decide if it was cheesy or genius.

It sits just south of Birmingham on old U.S. Steel mining land, about two miles from Ross Bridge. Same part of town, completely different feel. Ross Bridge is the resort experience with the big hotel and the waterfall and the tournament pedigree. Oxmoor Valley is the workhorse. Two full 18-hole championship courses called the Ridge and the Valley, plus a short course called the Back Yard. No hotel attached. No spa. Just a clubhouse and 36 holes of serious golf carved out of A

Muscle Shoals. The name alone is great. It sounds like it should be a blues song or a dive bar or both. Turns out it's a small town of about 15,000 people in the far northwest corner of Alabama, sitting on the Tennessee River, and it's home to one of the more remote stops on the RTJ Trail. Getting here takes commitment. It's over an hour from Huntsville, about two and a half from Birmingham, and there is not a lot happening in between.

We played the Highlands course as part of our RTJ Trail trip and it was fine. Good golf, decent shape, nothing wrong with it. But when I sit down to write this a few weeks later there is no single hole or moment that jumps out and grabs me. And I think that says something. Not everything on a golf trip has to be a highlight. Sometimes a course is just a course.

Silver Lakes has 36 holes across three separate nines called the Heartbreaker, the Backbreaker, and the Mindbreaker. There's also a par-3 Short Course that wraps around Lee's Lake. Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Roger Rulewich designed it all in 1993. The names are not marketing fluff. They are warnings.