In looking at the noteworthy new layouts due to formally come on line in 2025, there is one obvious conclusion: the second golden age of course architecture, which for all intents and purposes started three decades ago with the opening of the Sand Hills Golf Club in Mullen, Nebraska, continues in full force.
The artistry of these neoteric designs, whether by old masters Tom Doak, David McLay Kidd, Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw or less heralded but extremely talented craftsmen such as Jim Craig, Lester George, Beau Welling, Kyle Franz and Scott Hoffman, is something to behold. So is the playability of these tracks, the majority of which deftly meld Old World attributes with modern-day twists. The results are courses that for the most part boast ample fairways, interesting but not overly penal bunkering, big greens that possess just the right amount of spice, multiple tees and holes of varying length and layout.
Truth be told, I have only been able to play a handful of the nascent tracks to date. Others I have walked or ridden around while they were under construction. And when I was not able to visit actual sites, I turned to trusted sources who had been able to do so for their thoughts. Collectively, that reporting gave me a solid sense of what layouts are worth checking out.
Along the way, I also learned about a handful of courses that will be offering preview play in 2025 in advance of official unveilings the following year.
One of the newbies is the Scarecrow layout at Gamble Sands. Designed by Kidd, it is due to open in the summer. And when it does, this resort in the fruit orchard country of north central Washington will have a second 18-hole track to go with the one dubbed Sands and a 14-hole short course called Quicksand.
Scarecrow is built on sandy soil and features fine fescue turf, both of which promote firm and fast conditioning. The sweeping views of the Columbia River Valley are another draw, and so is the rolling terrain.
Kidd is also opening his first course in Texas this year, at Loraloma, a private community in the Hill Country near the state capital of Austin. Part of it is constructed on bluffs overlooking the Pedernales River, with several holes running along – and above – the waterway.
That will be another welcome addition to the Lone Star State, for as strong as the golf heritage may be in the place that gave us Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Jackie Burke and Jimmy Demaret, it is only now coming to be known for its courses. Loraloma will certainly help in that regard, as will a Welling creation just six miles away from that property, called the Travis Club. And tongues are wagging about the layout at Luling Sport that Franz is crafting on expansive, well-contoured land between Austin and San Antonio – and the usually dry arroyos and barrancas that he is incorporating in the design.
Doak has also cowboyed up with his first Lone Star course, the Upper at Childress Hall. Routed across prairie and dunes land on an old cattle ranch, it lies just off of Highway 287 between Amarillo and Wichita Falls, near the Oklahoma border.
Per usual, Doak has been quite busy with his design work and has other courses debuting in 2025. One of those is Sandglass, a very under-the-radar club in Martin County, Florida.
Another is High Pointe in northern Michigan. The original course bearing that name came on line in 1989, when Doak was just 28 years old. It was his first solo design and received rave reviews upon its opening. But High Pointe closed down in the throes of the Great Recession in 2008. All these years later, Doak has brought this relic from his past back to life, restoring six of the original holes and adding 12 new ones, demonstrating in the process that sometimes you can go home again.
In many ways, President-elect Donald Trump is going back home with the unveiling of a second course at his Trump International resort near Balmedie, Scotland. Called MacLeod (after his Scottish-born mother), the course is located to the south and west of the original track, which was designed by Martin Hawtree. Hawtree was involved in this creation as well, working with a design team that included Christian Lundin and Christine Fraser. The track boasts expansive vistas of the North Sea as well as huge (pronounced “yuge”) sand dunes and swaths of heathland replete with heather.
Franz has a couple of other new layouts this year in Broomsedge in South Carolina, which he designed with Mike Koprowski, and the Roost at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida.
One of the most intriguing attributes of Broomsedge is how par may be changed on several of its holes day-to-day, depending on tee locations and weather conditions. And the architect has constructed 20 green sites for 18 holes on this sandy-soil track, providing in the process alternate and shared green sites.
What else? Architect aficionados are gushing about the Lester George-designed course at Contentment Golf Club in the North Carolina mountains as well as the Dana Fry and Jason Straka track at the Miakka Golf Club in Florida and the Mapleton Golf Club in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where Scott Hoffman, a longtime associate of Tom Fazio, is working his magic on a massive piece of prairie that seems perfectly suited for golf.
At Roost, Franz shares design credit with Mike Nuzzo; Ran Morrissett, the golf architecture critic and founder of the Golf Club Atlas website; and one-time Golf Digest architecture editor Ron Whitten. Golfers there will find holes routed through sandy, scrubby areas and along stands of live oaks, their gnarly branches draped with Spanish moss. The course takes its name from the rafters of turkeys who wander the property – and often roost in the trees. And it feels decidedly un-Floridian with some 50 feet in elevation changes.
Other new arrivals include Brambles, a Coore-and-Crenshaw creation in Lake County just north of Napa, Calif., that one of their longtime design associates, James Duncan, spearheaded, and the North Course that Kyle Phillips is creating at the Apogee Club, the uber upscale club that developers Michael Pascucci and Steve Ross have been nurturing just north of Hobe Sound, Florida. Apogee already has a pair of fully operational and rather stunning 18-holers by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner (the West) and Mike Davis and Tommy Fazio (the South).
Then, there is High Grove, another Hanse/Wagner effort on a central Florida site that is endowed with the sort of rolling hills and sandy soil that makes course designers swoon.
Proving that big things often come in small packages, 2025 is also giving golfers some new short courses. Perhaps the most interesting of those is the 18-hole, par-3 layout at Big Cedar Lodge in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. Called Cliffhangers and designed by resort founder and Bass Pro Shops impresario Johnny Morris and his son, John Paul Morris, it is routed in the limestone hillside alongside the Payne’s Valley course that Tiger Woods designed.
Then, there is Doon Brae, a nine-holer at Boyne Golf in northern Michigan. Wolverine State native Ray Hearn handled the design, routing what is the 11th layout for this resort on part of a hill that doubles as a ski slope in the winter, being sure, he says, to minimize the walking uphill. For the putting surfaces on this track, which measures a tick under 1,000 yards from the tips, Hearn drew inspiration from the template greens that Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor famously fashioned on their courses.
There are also a number of courses coming on line this year for various forms of preview play. Such as Old Petty, a Doak creation at Cabot Highlands in Scotland. Located next to the acclaimed Castle Stuart course that is part of the same property, it features several holes on the Moray Firth as well as a tidal estuary and has the first and 18th holes sharing a massive fairway.
The Keiser brothers are slated to give “first looks” to a couple of their Dream Golf endeavors in 2025. One of those is Rodeo Dunes in Colorado, the much-anticipated Coore/Crenshaw design, and the other The Commons, a 12-hole course by Craig at the Keisers’ ever-expanding Sand Valley resort in Wisconsin.
For Coore and Crenshaw, 2025 will be an especially busy year as far as preview play is concerned, with their layouts at Crazy Mountain Ranch in Livingston, Mont.; Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton, S.C.,; and Torch Cay in the Bahamas also welcoming golfers for the first time.
Clearly, the golden age continues to glow.