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A question plaguing designers of golf courses all over the world is what makes a good golf course? The answer, simplified greatly, is the lay of the land it is being built on.

A good golf course needs to have rolling hills, preferably a pond or two, or three, or four, or five, trees, an area that can be used as a fairway, an area for a rough, and enough room for sand traps. However, there are a lot of so-called golfers who don’t think a course should have any sand traps at all. They are wrong and the minority. Sand traps can improve both the course and the skills of the golfers who play them.

A good golf course should be designed so as every hole is different and unique unto itself. If every hole was straight and four hundred and twenty yards, the course would be boring to play. A good golf course should have holes that dogleg right and dogleg left, with enough obstacles so the flag cannot be seen from the tee box.

Good golf courses have elevated tee boxes to help the golfers get more elevation on their drives. Once the ball hits the fairway, the elevation will depend entirely on the skill of the golfer.

Another thing that makes a good golf course is the people who work to maintain it. Some courses have professional groundskeepers who have the job of keeping the fairways smooth, the roughs rough and the greens closely cropped. This can make the all the difference in the world to golfers, as can the type of grass used on the green.

Speaking of grass on the green, the better golf courses have bent grass greens. This helps keep the ball from rolling off the green once it hits, whereas a green with bermudagrass, while still a good green, will not have ability to slow the ball down once it hits. Of course, the bent grass greens will wind up with more divots than those with bermudagrass as the ground tends to be softer beneath them.

The attitude of the grounds crew and the personnel in the clubhouse has a great deal to do with whether a golf course is good or not. If the people working there have bad attitudes, the golfers will not be able to focus on their game, as they remember how they were mistreated, or thought they were mistreated. But, a helpful, friendly staff, will make the golfing experience pleasant and enjoyable.

Well maintained golf cart paths are also important to having a good golf course. A broken and rough cart path will beat the golfers to death, forcing them to drive on the fairways. While this is not a major problem, it can be a headache.

One of the things that makes a poor golf course, is rough terrain. Some golf courses have rocks all over the place. This has a negative affect on the balls once they hit the ground and damages the player’s golf clubs.

Tags: Golf Training, Golf Course, Golf Courses

Arguably golf’s interesting origin began five centuries in the past. It is a historical fact that due to the interference of golf with much more serious combat drills James II of Scotland banned golf in an act of Parliament on March 6 in the year 1457.  There is general agreement among historians and golf fans alike that the Scots were the first golfers who became somewhat addicted to the sport. However the persons responsible for the invention of golf is open to debate. And debate will ensue if you breech the subject with the right persons.

It has been suggested that bored sheepherders became quite exceptional at knocking round shaped stones into rabbit holes with their wooden shepherds staffs. Making a competitive game of the boredom seemed inevitable. After all women’s lib was not yet even considered so that means the shepherds were men. Lets face another fact of history, men tend to be more of a competitive nature. Various forms of golf were played as early as the fourteenth century. These games were played in Holland, Belgium, France as well as in Scotland, thus the debate of golf’s origin is rightly fueled.

There is another historical fact that Scottish Baron, James VI, was the man who delivered the game we know today as golf to the English. For many years the game was played on severely rugged terrain, where no proper upkeep was required. In most accounts golf was played with crudely cut holes in the ground where the earth was reasonably flat.

It was a group of Edinburgh golfers who first formed an organized club. In 1744 the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers was established. At this time in history the first thirteen laws of golf were drawn up for an annual competition. This first competition consisted of players from any part of Great Britain or Ireland.

One of the earliest golf clubs that were formed outside golf’s debatable native home of Scotland was the Royal Blackheath Golf Club of England. Blackheath came into existence in 1766 and the Old Manchester Golf Club was founded on the Kersal Moor in 1818.

By the late 1800’s the Royal Montreal Club and the Quebec Golf Club were to become the first in North America. It wasn’t until 1888 that golf resurfaced in the United States with more fervor than each prior surfacing. Even then it was a Scotsman, John Reid, who first built a three-hole course in Yonkers New York. St. Andrews Club of Yonkers was built in a thirty-acre site near to the original three-hole course.

From the hesitant and fitful start golf grew rapidly as the new national pastime in America. Modern for its time the golf club, Shinnecock Hills was founded in 1891 and in the nine years left in that century more than one thousand prestigious golf clubs opened in North America.

 The historical value of golf is as interesting as any part of our heritage. Following the path that golf took to get from a shepherds field to the amazing golf courses that dot our culture today it is no wonder golf remains a popular pastime in all parts of the world.