Island Hole, Himalayan Golf Course, Nepal

Par: 5

Architect: Maj. RB Gurung, MBE

Back tee*: 550 yards

Joe Average tee*: 550 yards

Green fee: $50 (US).

How she looks  (The tee is to the right of the lower of the two greens in the foreground. The island green is visible at the top of the photo.) The image above right shows the hole from behind the green.

*Distances taken from club website or, if unavailable there, from Swingu.

There's a saying that good ideas don't care who has them, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that a course scoring 11 out of 10 in Tom Doak's merciless Confidential Guide to Golf Courses series was designed by a Sandhurst-trained ex-Ghurka.

Maj. Gurung created one of the game's unlikelier outposts in a water-gouged valley with a 250ft. drop from the clubhouse to the valley floor, where the best of the course's nine holes are situated.

Not only do the drop-offs from certain tees to the greens, set against a Himalayan backdrop, make this an unforgettable experience but budgetary constraints have also made it a step back in time.

Coarse grass, cropped by sheep, and boulder-dotted fairways evoke golf's early days, before country club beautification turned it into a French poodle. Enjoy the walk, play it where it lies, and no griping.

And the star turn is the Island Hole. I'm leaving numbers out of it, as various sources I've read seem unsure whether it's the 4th, 5th or 6th hole. What it definitely is is a fine par 5. 

Your drive must clear the Bijaypur River and avoid exposed rock outcrops that dot the fairway. If you flirt with the river and leave your drive on the left side of the fairway, you open up the green and bring it more within reach of your second shot. 

Believed to be the world's only island green set within a river, it is fronted by a generous tongue of fairway to tempt such a bold approach.

Those unsure of their long game, meanwhile, can play further up the main fairway, leaving them with a short but challenging pitch across the river for their third shot. Because of this escape route, the Island Hole gets a pass that I don't give to all-or-nothing island greens (see 'Perception' 6 here).

If you do decide to go for the green in two, you should know that some players believe the sheer valley side and majestic mountains in the background can affect your perception of distance.

A purely coincidental architectural quirk, you might think, although given Maj. Gurung's vision in putting this incredible course together, you wouldn't bet on it.

5th hole, Royal Worlington & Newmarket, Suffolk, England

Par: 3

Architect: Tom Dunn

Back tee*: 154 yards

Joe Average tee*: 154 yards

Green fee: £48.50 after 4pm. Handicap certificate required.

How she looks

*Distances taken from club website or, if unavailable there, from Swingu.

 

By the time you’ve skimmed through the reviews of this hole…

·       “Perhaps the greatest one-shot hole outside the United States” – Golf Club Atlas   

·       “…all-world fifth green” – ibid.

·       “Outside of the otherworldly USGA greens prepared for US Opens…the leader-in- the-clubhouse for the par three with the ‘green-most-impossible-to-putt-on’” – Golf’s Finest Par Threes

…you could be forgiven for expecting a cross between Pebble Beach’s seventh and Augusta National’s twelfth.

Which makes Worlington’s fifth a monument to English under-statement. From the tee, it offers none of the wow factor of its aforementioned American counterparts. Its greatness is tactile rather than visual: you must play it to understand.
Before you even address the challenges of the green, you must negotiate its surroundings. Too far right and there's a chance your ball tumbles all the way down the bank into a stream. Too far left, meanwhile...
They say Mog's Bog/Hole/Hollow (I've seen it called all three) was once a water hazard. Were that still the case, RW&N's 5th wouldn't have made this blog, for water would have been overkill and—on this hole—just as vulgar as a bunker (of which there are none).
Instead, it is a deep grassy pit, that you must golf your way out of, with a pitch to a narrow putting surface. 
A better approach, it's said, is to bump-and-run your ball firmly into the slope leading up to the green so that it just bobbles onto the short grass. Part of the folklore of this hole are the many golfers whose shaky short game has led to them chipping from one side of the green to the other and back again.
The green, meanwhile, is a challenge in itself, an undulating 35 yards in length, it rises towards the rear in a series of steps and has been described by one visitor as "one of the most diabolical greens in the world".
Although I think he meant it in a good way.

18th hole, Leven Links, Fife, Scotland

Architect: Old Tom Morris 

Back tee*: 457 yards / 418 metres

Joe Average tee*: 456 yards / 417 metres

Green fee: £40, Nov.–Mar. at selected times

How she looks

*Distances taken from club website or, if unavailable there, from Swingu.

It might not look much from the tee but the more you progress down the fairway, the more you begin to realise why this is regarded as one of the harder closing holes in golf.

Rough, gorse and concealed bunkers await the errant drive, depending on which side you miss but the reward for finding the narrow fairway, if you're long enough and game enough, is an exhilarating approach.

Good news: the green is the size of a dance floor. Bad news: the prevailing wind (and any winter sun) is in your face and Scoonie Burn guards the front and right side of the green.

Yes, for those of you whose budget or schedule doesn't run to playing the real thing, 35 miles further north, this corner of Leven Links is 'Carnoustie Lite'. As with its more famous counterpart, what's more, the word 'burn'  does little justice to the pronounced trench separating you from the putting surface at Leven.

Scoonie makes this hole, whether you're going for the flag with a medium iron or with a pitching wedge, having laid up with your second shot. Yet even if you stay dry, the Links aren't done with you just yet.

Many golfers get little practice at the kind of expeditionary-length putt that double or single greens of linksland routinely call for, so you'll have done yourself a favour if you considered accuracy as well as survival when executing your approach.

Viewed from the fairway, the 1,200-yd² green falls more than three feet from the back-left to front-right corners and should be carefully assessed for future reference earlier in your round, while you're waiting to drive from the adjacent first tee.

One footnote concerning your approach shot. The wall to the right of the putting surface surrounds the local bowling green. Tempting as it might be to attempt a recovery shot for the ages from the next-best manicured piece of turf in the neighbourhood, I'm pretty sure it's OB. 

1st hole, Holyhead Golf Club, Isle of Anglesey, Wales

Par: 4

Architect: James Braid

Back tee*: 277 yards / 253 metres

Joe Average tee*: 265 yards / 242 metres

Green fee: £50 Nov. 25-Jan. 31

How she looks

*Distances taken from club website or, if unavailable there, from Swingu.

Short and bunkerless, Holyhead’s first could be accused of taking the ‘gentle start’ philosophy* of opening holes to extremes.

And then you begin to play it. And learn how quickly this seeming ‘gimme’ of a hole can start to growl.

Clubhouse proximity might not be an official hazard but we’ve all experienced the dread of teeing off with a roomful of people just a few yards away and it’s a very real spectre here.

Bushes and OB down the left await anything drastically hooked or pushed, depending on which way round you play, and the hole’s inviting shortness is tempered somewhat by a flat-topped mound between you and the green, with just the top few feet of flagstick visible to indicate your target.

While some will take their chances and try to drive the green, Many will leave their drive on the top of the mound, hoping to avoid the patches of gorse that guard it on either side.

Architect James Braid isn’t done with you yet, though. The green is small, slopes from front to back, has a ridge running diagonally across it and is guarded by gorse on the left.

It is rammed with subtle breaks galore, while its raised location makes it particularly vulnerable to the wind. That simple little approach from the mound suddenly carries an increased accuracy tariff if you’re not to leave yourself looking down the barrel of a three-putt.

*There's a theory in golf course design that the first hole on any course should be a relatively gentle introduction, partly as a courtesy to players who are only just getting into their stride, and partly to get everyone into their round asap should the course be busy. 
Severiano Ballesteros was one course designer who had no time for such niceties, however, insisting that a course that grabbed you by the gonads from the outset was a far greater value-for-money proposition. There's a reason why his solitary UK design kicks off with a 175-yard par 3 across a lake to a peninsula green.
If you're ever booked in at The Shire behind two four-balls of high handicappers, I wouldn't bother rushing your coffee.

13th hole, Bandon Preserve, Oregon, USA

Par: 3

Architect: Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw 

Back tee*: 109 yards / 100 metres

Joe Average tee*: 109 yards / 100 metres

Green fee: $50 Nov. 25-Jan. 31

How she looks

*Distances taken from club website

No, you have not misread the yardage.

Shortness does not automatically preclude greatness. Nor does the fact that your principal reaction upon visiting the teeing area is, "What the hell is this...?!"

The latter, in fact, may well be a prelude to greatness. Any golf hole that spits in the face of convention and expectation, is at least off to a good start.

Such is the final hole (yes, even the hole count is unconventional) at Bandon Preserve.

One sentence in the course notes made me opt for the 13th over the 9th*. 'A bump and run or putt down the left side will funnel onto the green'.

I'm struggling to imagine anything that demolishes the paradigm quite like inviting the use of a putter for your tee shot.

Sure, professionals would eat this hole alive and even for you and me, it probably needs the wind dancing around the place to come into its own. 

But then this blog isn't aimed at professionals and according to those in the know, wind is precisely what Bandon gets, more often than not. Topping out at a frisky 30 mph, no less.

So let's say you get the gusts and everyone in your four-ball goes for the conventional pitch shot. Everyone save one maverick who, amid widespread ridicule, opts for a Texas wedge. And winds up 15 feet closer to the hole than anyone else.

Confounding norms and reminding everyone that the phrase 'more than one way to skin a cat' applies more to golf than maybe any other game. 

On a hole you'll all recall with a smile for years afterwards.

This isn't the Best Picture Oscar, where earnestness prevails over comedy. This is Cheap Golf's Greatest Holes, where just being great fun is sometimes enough to qualify.

* I was really close to choosing the 9th hole here, because it's so beautifully balanced. With the breathtaking backdrop comes an exposed part of the site that throws the hole wide open to the elements. Yet despite this, the safety/calamity equilibrium is nicely maintained by a generous putting surface. You might feel challenged on the tee in a howling gale, but you don't feel doomed.

7th hole, McCall Lake Golf Course, Calgary, Canada

Par: 4
Architect: Renovated by Wade Horrocks in 2019 
Back tee*: 376 yards / 345 metres
Joe Average tee*: 301 yards / 275 metres
Green fee: CDN$45 twilight rate
How she looks
*Distances taken from club website or, if unavailable there, from Swingu

Any golf architect looking for meaningful feedback on a hole he's created could do a lot worse than to install a GoPro camera behind the tee and film golfers' body language as they tee off.

If they ponder what's in front of them before addressing the ball, you succeeded. If they swing away on autopilot, you failed.

And that's what I like about the 7th at McCall Lake. All the options stop you in your tracks.

For brevity's sake, let's take one of them out of the equation and assume there isn't a stiff breeze ripping across that hefty body of open water (or, even worse, towards it).

The boomers among you can toy with the idea of going for the green from one of the forward tees but laying up isn't without its choices.

The short line on the left involves flirting with the water, while staying right brings two bunkers into play. 

If you like your chances of avoiding both water and sand and landing your drive beyond the traps, you'll pretty much take the water out of play for your approach but your drive must now negotiate a much narrower landing area.

Meanwhile, the ultra-conservatives can land their tee shots short of the bunkers on the right but there's now nowhere to hide with a tricky approach shot. And if you over-compensate in your anxiety to avoid the lake, there's a bunker awaiting you behind the green.

Even the greenkeeper has momentous choices to make. You'll notice that this becomes a very different hole when the pin is on the narrow left side of the green rather than the broader right.

Yes, there's a lot going on here. And I love it.