Claudia Laurent

Golf writer, Golf Handicapp · 28 September 2026

122 yards up a hillside of rice terraces, and the number is the least of it. The green is a circle of closely mown turf on the flat top of the highest tier, propped up on a stone retaining wall, and below it the paddies drop away in long curved shelves, each one holding a still film of water that lies flat enough to mirror the sky. There is one pale bunker at the front of the green and a stepped stone path climbing the ends of the terraces from the tee. What makes it hard is that there is no front edge to work with. A ball pitching short does not check up on an apron and it does not roll back down a bank, because there is no bank. It drops into eighteen inches of standing water two levels down, and then there is another level below that. Everything about the shot also flatters you into taking too little club. It is played uphill, which people habitually underclub, and the air in a valley like this sits still and heavy so the ball simply does not travel. Take two more than the yardage asks for, aim at the fat middle rather than the flag, and let it finish long. Past the pin is a putt. Short is a walk, and a wet one.

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

AI-imagined golf hole: a short par 3 played across limestone pavement to a green on the edge of high Atlantic sea cliffs, with a natural rock fissure about a foot wide running straight through the middle of the putting surface and the flag on the far side of it, one pale bunker front right, a gravel cart path crossing the fissures on stone slabs and low rocky islands on the horizon

The Seam

Par 3 · 115 yards

AI-imagined golf hole: a long par 3 played down a wooded valley of Japanese maples at peak autumn colour, scarlet and gold layered up both hillsides, a clear stream running over dark boulders along the valley floor and crossing in front of a green with pale bunkers, and a mown fairway curving between the trees with fallen red leaves drifted along its edges

The Maples

Par 3 · 198 yards

AI-imagined golf hole: a par 3 played along the rim of a serpentine Icelandic canyon whose rounded rock fins and buttresses are upholstered in deep emerald moss, with a clear river winding over pale gravel bars on the floor below, a mown fairway following the curve of the rim and a green with one pale bunker on a promontory where the canyon bends

The Moss

Par 3 · 145 yards

AI-imagined golf hole: a short par 3 played from a striped tee across open mown fairway to a large circular green ringed by a clipped yew hedge, set at the centre of an enormous formal hedge maze inside an old walled garden, with a single narrow gap in the near hedge, a worn walking line in the grass leading to it, and a Georgian country house and the fairways of other holes beyond the wall

The Maze

Par 3 · 99 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 28 September 2026.

The Terraces

More imagined holes

The Seam

The Maples

The Moss

The Maze

Ready to play?

From the blog

Imagined holes