Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 21 September 2026

150 yards over water that has no bottom worth thinking about. The green is built on a moored timber pontoon out in a Norwegian fjord, a closely mown oval with one pale bunker and a single flag, sitting a foot or two above a surface so still it holds a perfect reflection, with mooring chains running away into the dark and a narrow jetty from the shore as the only way out to it. Directly behind it the far wall of the fjord goes up eleven hundred metres without a break, grey and streaked, with snow lying in the high gullies and thin waterfalls falling hundreds of feet down the face, and against all that the green looks like a postage stamp. There is no rough, no fringe and no recovery. The ball is either on the pontoon or it is in the fjord. What makes it hard is the thing nobody accounts for: scale. Standing on the tee with a wall that size behind the target, the brain reads the green as much further away than it is, because every other time it has seen something dwarfed like that the distance has been huge. Almost everyone takes too much club and flies it. The number on the card is the number. Trust it, pick the club you would pick for 150 yards on a flat course with a hedge behind the green, and make an ordinary swing.

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.

Track your handicap and run live competitions on real courses with Golf Handicapp. Logging rounds and your handicap are free, always.

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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 21 September 2026.

The Fjord

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The Drum

The Wall

The Glass Deck

The Lock

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