Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 30 September 2026

155 yards, played from a high tee straight across a river and into a canyon. The green sits on a shelf built out of stacked red sandstone with the water curling around the front of it and all the way down the left, one bunker on the right, and walls of banded rock rising a thousand feet on either side. There is a timber footbridge and a gravel path in, so you can walk to it, but there is no way of playing to it along the ground. The thing that gets people here is the wind, and it is not the wind you can see. Down in a corridor like this the air runs along the canyon rather than across it, so the flag can be lying dead still while the ball is being pushed hard the whole way. Standing on a tee this high you also get the usual problem of a drop: the ball hangs for longer than you expect and the number plays short, so the two effects can either cancel out or stack up and you will not know which until it lands. The safe miss is right, where the ground runs on past the bunker and gives you a chip back. Long is survivable. Short and left is in the river and stays there. Take the club that gets you comfortably past the front edge, aim at the right half of the green, and let the slope feed it back. A three here is worth more than it says on the card.

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 30 September 2026.

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