Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 11 September 2026

120 yards across a staircase of white rock. The headland here has weathered into enormous smooth steps of chalk white marl, wind polished into flowing curves and dropping away in great terraces to the Mediterranean, and the whole thing is so bright in the sun that it hurts to look at without sunglasses. The green is laid on one of those terraces two steps down from the tee, closely mown with one bunker at its front, a low dry stone kerb along the seaward edge and the water washing the step directly below it. Between you and it the rock falls away in two great white ledges, so the shot is played across open air rather than across ground. A pale ramp is cut down the face of the rock from the tee terrace to the back of the green, which is the only way on. It is only 120 yards and there is no wind to speak of in the lee of the headland, so on paper this is the simplest shot on the card. What makes people miss it is the glare. White rock in Mediterranean sun throws light back up at you from below, the green reads closer than it is against all that brightness, and almost everybody who has not played it before comes up short into the step. Trust the number rather than your eyes, take the club the yardage says and not the one the view suggests, and aim at the middle of the putting surface. Short is the step and the sea below it, and there is no getting that back.

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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A par 3 played from a shoreline tee across a channel of clear turquoise water to a green on a low spit of white sand ringed by marram grass, with the sea turning deep blue behind it and a wall of black sawtooth granite peaks streaked with snow rising straight out of the water

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A par 3 played along the top of a Victorian stone railway viaduct, the old track bed laid to mown turf from parapet to parapet with a cart path down one side, the arches and piers marching away below to a valley floor and stream, and a green with one bunker on the deck at the far end with open parkland fairways beyond

The Viaduct

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A short par 3 played from a canyon rim tee to a green on a narrow rock shelf, with a sheer vertical wall of banded rose and cream sandstone dropping away beneath the putting surface to a second golf hole on the canyon floor, and a golf buggy wedged at the edge of the cart path with two men beside it

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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 11 September 2026.

The Scala

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