Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 16 September 2026

120 yards across a working canal, and the lock is lying the wrong way. Most water holes ask you to carry a pond that sits there and does nothing. This one asks you to carry a navigation that is still in use, a level band of water running edge to edge in front of the tee with a lock chamber built broadside into it, seventy feet of dressed Victorian stone and engineering brick with tall black and white timber gates at either end, ferns in the joints, iron rungs set into the wall and thin white threads of water seeping through the seams because the level on one side is higher than the other. The green beyond it is an island. A narrow channel branches off the canal, runs right the way round the putting surface in a closed loop and rejoins it, so there is water on every side and one plain timber footbridge at the back is the only way on. One bunker, one flag, nothing else. The cart path leaves the tee and crosses on the old brick arch away to the right. What makes it hard is that there are two hazards at different distances and the eye only wants to look at the near one. Players stand on the tee measuring the carry over the lock, which is the shorter of the two problems, and then leave the ball on the front edge or in the near arm of the moat. The number on the card is to the middle of the green, and the middle of the green is past both. Take the club that gets you comfortably to the back half and swing at it properly. Short is wet and long is dry.

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.

The Lock

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The Approach

The Top Geyser

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