Noordwijkse Golf Club - Netherlands

The Netherlands is known as a land of dikes and pancake-flat terrain, but the Dutch coast sports three links courses-Kennemer, Royal Hague, and Noordwijkse-that are every bit the equal of their cousins on the English side of the North Sea. Of the three, Noordwijkse has the most distinctively seaside character. After a stretch of holes on the front nine that funnel through a forest of pines, the holes positively prance through the dunes. Designed by the English architect Frank Pennink in 1972, the course is near the elegant seaside resort of Noordwijk aan Zee, just across from the brilliant bands of tulip bulbs that paint the countryside. Every spring the dizzying kaleidoscope of colored tulips is on display at the Keukenhof, or "kitchen garden," where Countess Jacoba of Bavaria grew vegetables for her kitchen when she lived on the property in the 15th century.

Royal Hague Golf Club - Netherlands

The Royal Hague Golf Club, or Haagsche, located in the beautiful old wooded suburb of Wassenaar, is the oldest golf club in the Netherlands, having been founded in 1893. Like several other Dutch courses, the original course was badly damaged by the German army during World War II and had to be rebuilt. Haagsche has an aristocratic air about it and it shares the pedigree with several of the fine heathland courses outside London of having been designed by Harry Colt. The course is an entrancing hybrid, for it is not literally a seaside course and yet it is hard to imagine more billowing fairways, with rolling green waves of turf that crest so high it is impossible to see over them from the troughs. The holes are artfully arranged and framed by a palette of greens that range from the yellowy-green river birch to the bottle-green firs. The clubhouse has a traditional thatched roof and red-and-white shutters with a grass patio that runs out to the 18th green.