Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 4 October 2026

148 yards, out to a green on a flat slab of bedrock in the middle of a tidal race. What makes this one unusual is that the hazard is not water you can read. It is not waves and it is not a lake. It is a whole body of sea being pushed through a gap by the tide, and the surface tells you so: long smooth seams where two speeds shear past each other, boils welling up from the bottom and flattening out, ropes of foam dragged into curves, and two or three slow whirlpools turning with dark centres. The water looks almost calm and it is moving at walking pace or faster. There is a fitted stone causeway out to the back of the green so you can walk it, which matters, because anything that goes in is not coming back and nobody is wading in after it. The shot itself is a straightforward one as long as you commit to the number, and the trap is that the green sits low and dark against moving water, which makes it very hard to judge how far away it is. Pick the club off the yardage and not off what your eyes are telling you, aim at the middle, and take the three. The tide runs hardest halfway between high and low water, so there is a window in the middle of each tide when this is the most intimidating shot on the course, and an hour either side of the turn when it is merely a nice one.

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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AI-imagined golf hole: a par 3 played along a narrow pale sand spit with open ocean on the left and a calm lagoon on the right, cut clean through part way along by a fast green channel pouring from the surf side into the lagoon, a timber footbridge on piles crossing it, and the green out on the far piece of the spit

The Breach

Par 3 · 155 yards

AI-imagined golf hole: a short par 3 to a green on top of an enormous flat topped boulder splitting a mountain river in full flood, heavy white water driving past both sides of it in two chutes, a timber footbridge on stone piers crossing from the right bank, and steep forested valley sides rising on both sides

The Rapids

Par 3 · 121 yards

AI-imagined golf hole: a short par 3 played to a true island green on a small bare rock in a mountain lake so deep the water reads black, with no beach or shallows anywhere, two thousand foot vertical cliffs rising straight out of the water all round, and a timber jetty with a small moored rowing boat as the only way out to it

The Deep

Par 3 · 123 yards

AI-imagined golf hole: a par 3 played from a striped tee on the rim of an enormous limestone pit straight down into it, the near half of the pit floor filled wall to wall with deep blue green water, the green sitting on a low rock shelf on the far side with two pale bunkers, a dark cave mouth at the foot of the right hand wall with a gravel cart path running out of it, and dense jungle crowding the rim above

The Sinkhole

Par 3 · 170 yards

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 4 October 2026.

The Maelstrom

More imagined holes

The Breach

The Rapids

The Deep

The Sinkhole

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