Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 10 September 2026

98 yards, and the number is a joke. The green is on a shelf cut into the canyon wall, a small closely mown surface with one bunker at its front and a dry stone parapet along the outer side, and past that parapet the rock goes straight down in one clean face with no ledge or bench to break it. At the bottom of that wall is another green, another fairway, another flag, part of the same course. You stand on the tee looking at one hole sitting directly above another, with nothing but air between them. The cart path is the other thing nobody mentions twice. It runs in along the very lip on the same level as the green, so you drive with the drop a wheel's width to your side the whole way, and there is a buggy wedged against the parapet on the day we shot this that tells you everything about how much room for error there is. The shot itself is a wedge. That is genuinely all it is, a stock wedge to a green with plenty of room on it, and the miss that costs you is not the one you are worrying about. Nobody hits it over the back here. They quit on it, leave the face open and lose it right, because the eye keeps going to the edge instead of the flag. Pick the number, look at the middle of the green, and swing at it the way you would off a mat. The parapet is doing more work than you think.

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.

More imagined holes

See all

A par 3 played across the flat water of a reservoir, past an enormous circular concrete bellmouth overflow standing clear of the surface with water pouring over its whole rim into the shaft inside, to a green on a grassy promontory on the far bank with one pale bunker and a single flag

The Spillway

Par 3 · 159 yards

A par 3 played into the middle of a motorway interchange, from a striped tee outside the loop, along a cart path that drops through a concrete underpass beneath the loop ramp embankment, to a green on the island of mown grass enclosed by the curving ramp, with the dual carriageway and a plain overbridge beyond and open fairways in the distance

The Interchange

Par 3 · 155 yards

A short par 3 played entirely across water, down a long rectangular canal with a stone kerb along each side, running between two facing rows of contemporary houses whose terraces and gardens come almost to the water's edge, to a green with one bunker at the far end

The Neighbours

Par 3 · 138 yards

A short par 3 played from a striped tee on a valley floor straight up a four hundred foot limestone wall to a green on the clifftop, a cut stone stairway with an iron handrail zigzagging up the rock face beside it, and beyond the green the land falling away again into open sea

The Back Edge

Par 3 · 100 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 10 September 2026.

The Precipice

More imagined holes

The Spillway

The Interchange

The Neighbours

The Back Edge

Ready to play?

From the blog

Imagined holes