18 Holes

18 Holes

Brent Kelley is an award-winning sports journalist and golf expert with over 30 years in print and online journalism.

Although there are also many 9-hole golf courses, 18 holes is considered the standard length of both a golf course and a round of golf. The standardization of 18 holes began in the mid-1700s at the links of St. Andrews in Scotland. Eighteen holes was firmly established as the standard length when the R&A, today one of the two governing bodies of golf, wrote it into the rules in 1858.
Why Is the Golf Hole Size 4.25 Inches in Diameter?
The Old Course at St. Andrews Pictures
The Different Types of Golf Courses
Defining the Green (or 'Putting Green') on Golf Courses
Golf's Rule 1: The Game and Player Conduct
The Lowest 18-Hole Golf Score Ever Recorded
Open de Espana (Spanish Open) Golf Tournament
6 Great Golfers Who Suddenly Lost Their Games
Pebble Beach Golf Links: Images and Facts You Need
17 of the Best Golfer Nicknames of All-Time

LiveAbout is part of the Dotdash Meredith publishing family.

We've updated our Privacy Policy, which will go in to effect on September 1, 2022. Review our Privacy Policy

The standard length of a golf course is 18 holes. Why is that? How did 18 holes come to be recognized as the standard for a course, and for a round of golf ? Like so many other developments in golf history , 18-holes-as-standard traces to The Old Course at St. Andrews .

The standardization of 18 holes as the length of a "regulation" golf course did not happen as the result of a momentous decision agreed upon by many. It was more happenstance and somewhat haphazard developments over time.

The links at St. Andrews, Scotland are the oldest in the world. It's not called "The Home of Golf" for nothing. They were playing golf at St. Andrews as far back as the 1400s. But nobody built a golf course — it just developed naturally on the seaside linksland. Locals played from dune to dune, and those became putting greens; the grassy paths between dunes that existed naturally became the fairways. That's how links golf developed.

So the number of holes at St. Andrews changed through the centuries. By the mid-1700s, the links at St. Andrews had 22 holes. Then, around 1764, the four short holes that started the course were combined into two longer holes. And the four short holes that ended the course were combined into two longer holes. In so doing, the St. Andrews links (what we now call The Old Course) went from 22 holes to 18 holes.

Eighteen holes did not become the standard for golf courses until the early 1900s, but from 1764 onward, more courses copied the St. Andrews 18-hole model. Then, in 1858, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews issued new rules.

"In 1858, the R&A issued new rules for its members," explained Sam Groves, curator of the British Golf Museum. "Rule 1 stated 'one round of the Links or 18 holes is reckoned a match unless otherwise stipulated'. We can only presume that, as many clubs looked to the R&A for advice, this was slowly adopted throughout Britain. By the 1870s, therefore, more courses had 18 holes and a round of golf was being accepted as consisting of 18 holes."

And that's how 18 holes became the standard in golf.

Prior to the mid-1760s — and right up until the early 1900s — it wasn't unusual to find golf courses that were comprised of 12 holes, or 19, or 23, or 15, or any other number. Then the St. Andrews- and R&A-led standardization of 18 holes took hold.

It has always been common, however, to find 9-hole golf courses. You can think of golf's 18-hole standard of being comprised of two 9-hole sets. We call these the front nine and back nine .

If a club doesn't have a lot of room, it might build only one of these 9-hole sets, making for a 9-hole golf course. Nine-holers are also common in small towns, or as the length of executive courses or par-3 courses .

Today, there is more experimentation going on in the size and shape of golf courses, driven mostly by a desire to provide shorter, faster options for golfers. Twelve-hole courses and even 6-hole courses are popping up now.

But 18 holes remains the standard for golf courses, and is considered a regulation round.

Sometimes one golfer will try to tell another that the reason for 18 holes is that there are 18 shots in a bottle of Scotch whisky. And it's possible — perhaps it is even likely — that some golfers, somewhere, downed one shot of Scotch for every hole they played. But the story about 18 holes and 18 shots of whisky is just that: a story, a legend, a myth.

Newsletter Sign-up

Golf Digest Schools Live

Golf Digest Handicap

Digital Edition

Tee Times

Contact

Privacy & Cookies Notice

Visitor Agreement

California Don't Sell My Info

By

Derek Duncan

and

Ron Whitten

captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected
Error Code: MEDIA_ERR_SRC_NOT_SUPPORTED
No compatible source was found for this media.
Session ID: 2022-10-14:133e89bf7697758c84bad5a9 Player Element ID: video-6235334369001
Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque
Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps
Reset restore all settings to the default values Done
Will be used in accordance with our
Privacy Policy

Sections

News & Tours

Play

Instruction

Equipment

Courses

The Loop

Support

Contact Us

Accessibility Help

Media Kit

AdChoices

Cookies and Ad Choices

Services

Newsletters

Subscribe

Digital Edition

Give A Gift

International Subscription

Sign Up
Social

Facebook Logo

Twitter Logo

Instagram Logo

Youtube Icon

Sections

News & Tours

Play

Instruction

Equipment

Courses

The Loop

Support

Contact Us

Accessibility Help

Media Kit

Services

Newsletters

Subscribe

Digital Edition

Give A Gift

International Subscription

Social

Facebook Logo

Twitter Logo

Instagram Logo

Youtube Icon

Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club

I n 1965, the great Dan Jenkins picked an All-Star team of golf holes for Sports Illustrated, The Best 18 Golf Holes in America, selected by a committee of one, although he allowed Ben Hogan a nod or two. What set Jenkins’ list apart from other pretenders was a self-imposed restriction. His All-Star team, he said, couldn’t have five quarterbacks and three tight ends. Each hole had to play the position it occupied on the real course: best first hole from among all starting holes in America, best second hole, and so on. His article later became an influential book, and today each club he featured still treats Dan’s selection as a papal blessing.
Jenkins joined Golf Digest in 1985, and in the early 1990s it was suggested that he reprise his list, selecting from among golf holes that didn’t exist in ’65. He was lukewarm, partly because he hadn’t played many of the newly built country-clubs for-a-day, or the hundreds of O.B.-laden tract-home layouts or even any of the ultra-private, guard-gated, one-owner Augusta National wannabes. But he soon returned to the game with renewed enthusiasm and finally agreed to pick a new Best 18, this time with some help, as there were some courses he wanted no part of. His Second-Generation list appeared in this magazine in early 2000, covering holes built from 1965-’99.
Sadly, Jenkins is gone now, but a good idea remains a good idea, even if it has been milked twice before. As Golf Digest is celebrating its 70th anniversary, we believe an updated list seems appropriate, this time choosing from among golf holes built from 2000-’19.
Our approach was a bit different than Dan’s. His original list drew from the usual courses, the architectural classics like Merion and Pine Valley, spiced with a few “modern” twists like Champions in Houston (definitely not a Hogan thumbs up) and The Dunes in Myrtle Beach. Thirty-five years later, he searched for holes that looked great on calendars and gave tour pros heartburn, hence his embracing of holes like the 14th at Muirfield Village and the 17th at TPC Sawgrass.
In assembling version 3.0, we stayed true to the Jenkins requirement of comparing apples to apples. But we self-imposed two additional limitations: an architect or architectural firm could be listed only once, and a club or facility could not be represented more than once. Beyond that, no other strait jackets, no consideration of total par, hole length, scorecard balance, regional balance, grass type, bunker style or flag pattern. Ours was just a quest to identify the most memorable and meritorious holes that represent early 21st-century trends in golf architecture in America .
For instance, there’s a renewed emphasis on strategic lines and angles that incorporate far more width than 1990s housing-development courses could provide, so a couple of our holes are astonishingly wide. We mined rugged, far-flung regions of the United States, which is where present-day architects have been finding work. Sometimes it’s on great land, which resulted in a rustic aesthetic that’s represented in some picks, but sometimes it was marginal land, a landfill or abandoned quarry, where talented people rose to the challenge. But mostly, we focused on finding holes that are fun to play, because that’s the overwhelming trend thus far in this century.
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.
This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.
Speaking of fun, many of the most unique and fascinating holes built in the past 20 years have been short par 4s, those tantalizing, entertaining, match-swinging half-par holes: some days a cinch birdie, other days a hard par. That’s why four such creations made our 2020 list.
Our opening hole, with its 90-yard-wide corridor, would seem to be a comfortable par 5 to ease us into the round. The first hole at the private Kingsley Club, near Traverse City, actually has two fairways, a high-right avenue and a lower-left route, the two separated by a cluster of bunkers. But here’s where Mike DeVries messes with our heads (the goal of every great architect), by making us pick and choose on the first shot of the day. Do we play up the narrow right side? Can we reach the crest? Or do we aim at the wider left side, at the risk of rolling down into the trees? Or do we split the difference and try to carry over that frightful field of pits? Kingsley’s wonderful glacial domes and hollows provide brain teasers and aggravating options throughout the round, demanding that our mental game be focused on the shot in front of us and nothing else. Which is good, as golf is meant to be an escape.
The “drivable” par 4 has been a wildly popular architectural conceit the past two decades. But typically, they’re only drivable if you slug the ball around 300 yards or more. With flexible tees playing off an elevated bluff—and 10-mile views across central Washington’s broad Columbia River Valley—this downhill hole delivers on the promise, offering players of various abilities the chance to get home with one swing, providing they hit from the right markers. But it’s no lay-up. The tee shot must challenge a centerline bunker 40 yards short of the green, either straight over it or curving around it on the right and then rolling in on the helping contours. Gamble Sands is where David Kidd, after remembering that golf should be fun, introduced the concept of defending birdie but offering par, and no hole epitomizes that come-hither ethos better than this one.
Extremely rocky sites can produce dramatic golf scenery, but they can also produce extremely expensive headaches for architects who must clear and maneuver around the unwieldy obstacles. But at Tot Hill Farm, the late Mike Strantz did what he always did and went the opposite direction, embracing extremity by using the site’s ubiquitous rocks as large, outlandish garnishes. The par-3 third is the most triumphant example, a fiesta of stone that plays from hillside tees surrounded by boulders, across an avalanche of cascading rock, over a creek, and onto a green that boomerangs around an enormous flashed sand feature. Strantz enjoyed pushing golfers’ buttons, and temperatures certainly elevate here as hole locations migrate from the wide, accessible front lobe back toward the obscured rear finger of green that curls behind the raised bunker.
The “Cape hole” is revered i
Handjobs School
Freeporntube Pov Gagging Deepthroat Moms
Play Free Porn Game

18 Holes

Report Page