Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 11 September 2026

155 yards across the clearest water you will ever hit a golf ball over. The green sits on a low spit of white sand reaching out into the bay, closely mown with one bunker at its front and a collar of marram grass around the edge, and the tee is on the shore with a channel of pale jade water in between. Behind the green the sea turns deep blue and a wall of black granite comes straight out of it, sawtooth peaks with snow still lying in the gullies in the middle of summer. That contrast is the whole hole. The water looks tropical and the mountains do not, and standing on the tee your eye cannot quite make the two of them agree. This is the Arctic, several degrees north of the Circle, where the sand really is that white and the shallows really are that colour, and in high summer the sun does not set at all. The shot is a mid iron and the number is honest, but the ground is flat and open and the wind comes off the sea with nothing to break it, so the club you need is rarely the club the yardage suggests. Take the extra one. The miss to avoid is short, because short is water and the beach in front of the green will not hold a ball that lands on it running. Aim at the middle of the putting surface, let the wind move it, and do not try to be clever with a flag tucked near the sand.

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 across the top of a waterfall that pours off a green clifftop straight into the Atlantic, from a tee on one side to a green with one bunker on the headland opposite, with black basalt cliffs dropping sheer to the sea below and a pale path crossing the river upstream on a stone slab bridge

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A short par 3 played from a tee on a headland of blinding white marl, across two great weathered steps of white rock, to a green laid on a lower terrace with one pale bunker and a dry stone kerb along its seaward edge, with clear turquoise Mediterranean water breaking white at the foot of the rock

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Par 3 · 120 yards

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

Par 3 · 135 yards

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 Shallows

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The Falls Edge

The Scala

The Viaduct

The Precipice

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