Yeamans Hall Club - South Carolina, U.S.A.

Yeamans Hall Club, near Charleston, is one of the most fascinating courses in the United States, both in terms of its design and its social history. It occupies what had once been the 1,000-acre plantation granted by the Lords Proprietors of Carolina in 1674 to Lady Margaret Yeamans, widow of Sir John Yeamans. The club was founded as a winter resort by well-to-do northerners, with 10 gentlemen holding an organizational meeting at the Downtown Association in New York on April 20, 1925. By the spring of 1926, the Yale golf team made the journey from New Haven to Charleston to play the inaugural rounds. Yeamans Hall was one of the last designs of Seth Raynor, who designed many of the courses of the high-society clubs of the 1920s. The juxtaposition of traditional cross-bunkers and huge, squared-off greens in the midst of the low country landscape of marsh and live oaks is particularly striking. Over the years, many of the distinctive features of Raynor's design were lost, but in 1998 the club hired course architect Tom Doak, an admirer of Raynor's work, to return the course to its original design, right down to the sunken bathtub contour in the middle of the par-three third hole. The overall plan for the club was developed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., who described the grounds as "diversified and picturesquely undulating." The clubhouse and several quadrangles of cottages to house the visiting members were designed by James. Gamble Rogers, the architect of Yale's Harkness Quadrangle and of the Yale Club in New York.

The Ocean Course At Kiawah Island - South Carolina, U.S.A.

The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, near Charleston, is one of the few truly great links or duneland courses in the United States and one of the few great links courses to be constructed, rather than routed through the natural hollows and bowls. The Ocean Course also has the distinction of having been awarded the 1991 Ryder Cup before it was even built. Pete and Alice Dye began work on the Course in 1989 and despite the fanfare and pressure that went with it, they produced a bold and dramatic layout that remains true to the Scottish linksland ideal. The course is laid out in a figure eight, with the front nine looping clockwise and the back nine running counterclockwise as it hugs the shoreline. The first few holes are both excruciatingly difficult and exciting, followed by a series of holes that saunter along the salt marsh. The back nine is uninhibited seaside golf, with a string of fairways that tumble along the ocean before arriving at the famous par-three 17th, with its petrifying carryover the eight-acre lake that was created at the suggestion of Alice Dye. The Ocean Course produced one of the most epic encounters in the history of the Ryder Cup, with the U.S. winning the "War by the Shore" when Bernhard Langer missed an agonizing six-foot putt on the 18th hole of the final match that would have given him a win over Hale Irwin and the point the Europeans needed to keep possession of the Cup.