The defining trait of good golf-course architecture? It’s not length

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“Nothing rolls like a ball.” That’s what a friend quipped as he watched my first putt trickle off the green on the 13th hole at the California Golf Club of San Francisco. While I wasn’t amused at the time, those words stuck with me as they underscore the game’s challenge — getting a round ball to behave and stop where you want it to!

A course needs a certain amount of length to force players to hit every club in their bag, but length is emphatically not the defining characteristic of good golf course architecture. Which begs the question: What design elements challenge athletic people with well-grooved, powerful swings? What features get inside their heads, pluck on their nerves, and create indecision?

The answer is that the course must turn the game away from a mere physical pursuit and make it a mental one as well by asking questions not posed on the practice range. When a course does that, it is amazing how often the titans of the game rise to the top.

The most obvious design feature that identifies the best player is great greens. Consider five cornerstone U.S. Open sites: Pinehurst No. 2, Oakmont, Winged Foot West, Shinnecock Hills, and Oakland Hills South. If someone asked me to list the five best sets of greens in the country, that might be my answer. Throw in those at Augusta National, and it is clear that great greens are any course’s ultimate defense.

Green surrounds also dictate what sorts of recovery shots are available. The more interesting and varied the possibilities, the better. Pinehurst No. 2 is famous for the questions it poses once your ball comes to rest at the base of its pushed-up greens. Presented with a tight lie on short grass, you can attempt any number of recovery shots, from a pitch or chip to a hybrid, hooded iron or perhaps even putt like Martin Kaymer did to such great effect at the 2014 U.S. Open.

By providing such options, the player now must noodle things over on the spot — and that is where things get interesting. And it becomes fascinating when the first attempt doesn’t go as planned. Bryson DeChambeau won the 2024 U.S. Open for all kinds of reasons, including his length, but his short game prowess on Sunday at Pinehurst No. 2 was especially otherworldly.

Sometimes, smaller features can have an outsized impact. Take the Road Hole bunker on the Old Course at St. Andrews and how it gathers in balls. Once in it, this pit of roughly 5 x 3 yards doesn’t guarantee a good stance or clean swing. That uncertainty is unsettling to the player back in the fairway. The same can be said for those narrow, greenside trench bunkers at Erin Hills that made the players take notice at the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open.

No doubt about it: the closer you get to a green, the nervier each shot becomes, and the more finesse plays a role. And the last thing a player in contention wants is nervy partial shots. Knowing that, the people in charge of setting up a course for an elite competition have the obligation to require such shots!

Take the 346-yard 2nd hole at Oakmont — analytics say to drive the ball as close to the green as possible, but this modest length par 4 still played in the top half of most difficult holes for the 2025 U.S. Open because it insists on requiring an accurate partial shot. Same for the 260-yard 15th at Erin Hills in the third round of the Women’s Open, when it played as the second-hardest hole. It forced players to make a decision: to lay back or to have a go at a challenging back-right hole location. To quote Bob Jones, “You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.”

Before reaching a green, however, you have to navigate past obstacles. Rough is certainly an important consideration because if you can’t get the clubface cleanly on the ball, then you aren’t in control. Dense rough is a mood setter. Remember Nicklaus using a 1-iron around Muirfield in the 1966 Open Championship to avoid the hay? One person who appreciates golf history is Tiger Woods, and he employed a similar strategy at Royal Liverpool in 2006 when he executed his low stinger to perfection over those rumpled, tawny fairways. Thick rough makes the player deliberate whether driver is the appropriate play off the tee — and that’s a decision that he doesn’t face most weeks.

Golf is all about the interaction of the ball and the ground, and how the architect captures the land within the hole helps shape that challenge. A reverse camber fairway like No. 4 at The Olympic Club’s Lake Course — its fairway swings right to left but the fairway slopes left to right — always bedevils, in part because it is such a rarity.

Same with the gloriously rumpled fairways at St. Andrews. Such ground movement forces constant, on-the-spot tweaks to your stance and setup. Flat courses simply can’t compete with courses laid over interesting landforms.

And guess what else forces the player to make real-time adjustments? The wind. While humans have no control over that element, having to flight the ball and play knockdown shots are fabulous ways to find out who is in complete control of their swing — and who isn’t. How do you know whether to land a ball 10 yards short of a green or 30 when downwind? The range doesn’t answer such questions.

That answer depends on the firmness of the turf underfoot. Extremely firm fairways and greens mean that the player cedes some degree of control as to where their (round) ball stops. Firm playing surfaces are the underpinning to an ideal test. The back-to-back 2014 U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open at Pinehurst will forever be a testament to that. Conversely, remember all the rain at the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional? Rory McIlroy battered the course with his driver to superb effect, and his total of 268 is still the lowest winning score in U.S. Open history.

In addition to fairway contours, man-made obstacles need to be incorporated within the fairways to make the player think. Steep bunkers, like those at Muirfield, Royal Lytham & St. Annes and numerous other classic tests, identify who is driving well.

Penalty areas clearly get the player’s attention and have provided riveting action since the dawn of the game. The 5th at Oak Hill will always be one of Donald Ross’s finest creations based on the way he incorporated a centerline stream on the right side of the fairway and on the left at the green. Yet, such features, while they may snuff out the life of a ball, also diminish the art of recovery. In the 1980s and 1990s, the par-4 16th hole at Oakland Hills that bends right around a lake was considered by many as its “signature” hole. Tastes and priorities have changed, and for those who value being able to play deft recovery shots, No. 16 may not even rank in the top half of that mighty course’s holes.

In fact, it is worth noting that while you see a lot of lakes and ponds on PGA Tour stops, the U.S. Open cornerstone sites rarely feature them. Give the USGA credit for prioritizing other obstacles over ubiquitous water features.

As for trees, one of the game’s most iconic holes relies on them, not that you would know it because the cliffs and ocean hog the spotlight. I am referring to No. 18at Pebble Beach. The pair off the tee make the hole a vexing driving test while the lone tree greenside makes your lay-up shot count. Put another way, imagine 18 at Pebble without those three trees and the hole would be much less interesting. Trees are seen as an enemy of firm playing conditions, but shrewdly placed ones like those at Pebble are a fine way to ask players to shape shots and/or control their trajectory.

Golfers want to assert dominance over a course, and the course’s obligation is to fight back. Anything that preys on the golfer’s mind and creates indecision — from firm surfaces to well-placed penalty areas to great greens — turns the test into equal parts mental and physical.

Sometimes the players — and you know the names — relish the challenge and rarely buckle. More often, doubt creeps in, and over 72 holes unpleasantries ensue. Just as in life, how you handle the worst moments does much to define your character. And that’s what the best events, played on the finest courses, are after: Show us what you are made of.