What is a links golf course?

More about Links Golf Courses

• One popular theory with regard to the origins of golf is that of shepherds, bored with tending their sheep over those sand dunes, striking stones with their shepherd’s crooks.
• Generally accepted as the best example of a links course is the Old course at St Andrews on the East coast of Fife in Scotland.
• There are courses built in the links style that are not situated in land that links agricultural land to the sea. Given the prestige associated with a links course some ‘links’ claims are somewhat dubious.
• Scotsman David McLay Kidd, the designer of the acclaimed Bandon Dunes, site of the 2020 US Amateur Championship affirms the concept of involving land that “links” agricultural land to the sea.
• Kidd, born and raised in Scotland and the son of a greenkeeper, has built an impressive array of golf courses around the world. As a teenager, he worked on his father’s golf courses, absorbing the learnings from debates between his father and his peers at St Andrews, Carnoustie, Turnburry and others of the best practices to manage their courses.
• Whilst Bandon Dunes is his best known work, we’d also love to play the golf course he designed for Austrian billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz on the Fijian island Mateschitz acquired and developed into a 7-star resort, Laucala Island.