Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 4 October 2026

121 yards to a green on a boulder in the middle of a river in full flood. The river comes down through a run of ledges and drops behind the green, so it arrives as a wall of white water, piles up against every rock in its way and splits into two chutes around the boulder before rejoining below it. There is a timber footbridge on stone piers across to the back of the green, which is the only reason this is a golf hole and not a dare. The thing that gets people here is not the water, it is the noise. A rapid in full flood is genuinely loud, loud enough that you cannot hear your own practice swing, and that does something to the tempo of almost everybody who stands on this tee. Shots get quick. The second thing is the spray, which hangs over the whole run and takes the carry out of the ball without ever looking like wind. Both faults push the same way and both of them leave you short, which is the one place you cannot afford to be. Club up, slow down, and make a conscious effort to finish your swing rather than steer it. A green surrounded by moving water on a still boulder is a very easy target to hit and a very easy one to under hit.

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

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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

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AI-imagined golf hole: a par 3 played from a striped tee out to a green on a flat platform of dark bedrock in the middle of a tidal race, the sea around it drawn into smooth shearing seams, boils and slow turning whirlpools, with a low fitted stone causeway running out from the right hand shore to the back of the green and bare rocky islands beyond

The Maelstrom

Par 3 · 148 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 Rapids

More imagined holes

The Breach

The Deep

The Maelstrom

The Sinkhole

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