Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 16 September 2026

108 yards, and on paper it is the least interesting hole on the course. Flat open links ground, pale sandy rough and marram either side of the mown corridor, a plain oval green with one bunker cut into its front and a single flag, and a gravel path up the right. Nothing rises, nothing falls away, there is no water and no rock. What there is, is an airport boundary fence twenty yards behind the green and a line of approach lights on short gantries marching off to the horizon, and every few minutes something very large comes down the glidepath directly over your head with its gear hanging and its flaps out. The shadow crosses the fairway before the noise arrives. Then it is gone over the fence and you are standing on a quiet tee again with a wedge in your hand. The golf here is a lesson in what distraction actually does to a short iron, and it is not what people think. The instinct is to concentrate harder, which means gripping tighter and slowing the swing down to stay in control, and that is exactly what produces the thin one and the pull. The players who score here are the ones with a pre shot routine they run at the same tempo every single time, and the discipline to walk away and start it again rather than stand over the ball waiting for quiet. Nobody has ever hit a good one while flinching.

This hole is not real. Like every hole in the collection it was conjured with AI, a golf daydream rather than a course you can go and play. The thousands of courses in the Golf Handicapp app, however, are very real.

This one is make-believe. The thousands of courses in the app are not.

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About the author

Claudia Laurent · Golf writer, Golf Handicapp

Claudia writes about the World Handicap System, golf scoring and getting more from every round for Golf Handicapp. She is a mid-handicap golfer who logs every card, the good ones and the ones she would rather forget.

This image is AI-generated. Published 16 September 2026.

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