Golf Course


Parklands Golf Courses	Championship Golf Courses	Links Golf Courses
Park Golf Courses can offer great natural beauty for golfers to enjoy the breathtaking views each hole brings. A Park Golf Course will make the most of the natural hills and trees adding to the challenge of the course.	Play on the courses of the British Open, one of the oldest of the 4 major championships globally. It is also the only Golf Major that is held outside of the USA. The Open is held on an English or Scottish course on the third Friday of July each year.	Links Golf Courses are the oldest type of golf course, and are located in and around coastal areas. They usually have very little to no trees or water hazards, and are usually located on open land, and therefore open to the elements too.

Your local Golf Course is a place that a golfer could call his second home, and where many golfers come to gather and socialise in the club house.

Golfing is a historic past time with its origins being widely debated by many. It has been claimed that the sport started in Roman times, where players used a bent stick to hit a leather clad and stuffed ball.

Others claim that is was a Chinese game which was played between the 8th, and the 14th centuries, or a game known as cambuca that was played in England and France. However the most widely accepted account of the game that lead to modern golf, originated in the now St Andrews Golf Course in Scotland, where shepherds knocked stones into rabbit holes.

Golf Courses consist of 18 holes to play, which are played in the order determined by the overall layout of the course. Some courses offer a 9 hole course, which is sometimes used as a warm up before the 18 hole round.

There are several shots that can be used on your local Golf Course. When a long distance shot is required, this is called a drive, in order to hit the ball far down the fairway.

With shorter shots when the ball is much closer to the green, the golfer uses an iron and pitches, or chips the ball until it reaches the green. Once on the green, the golfer must select a putter where the ball is putted into the hole.

Golf Courses differ from area to area, and there are two major types of Golf Course; Links, and Park courses.

Links Golf Courses are the oldest style of course to play on. This type of course is coastal, with many sand dunes and sandy soil. A links Golf Course has little to no trees, with very few water hazards due to their location by the coast.

Links golf courses do however tend to have very deep sand bunkers. This is due to the weather conditions on such courses as it is an open area of land, and very blustery and windy.

The bunkers therefore tend to be very deep to stop the sand blowing all over the course!

These types of golf courses are found most commonly in Scotland and Ireland, although England and Wales have them too. The Open Championship is always played on Links Golf Courses, and this separates it from the other 3 golfing Majors which are held in the USA.

Park Golf Courses are very different to Links Golf Course. They tend to be situated amongst natural woodland and hills offering the golfer great natural beauty whilst playing a round. The Park Golf Course will use the hills and wave of trees to strategically place its greens.

The nature of these courses can make them very difficult to play. Park land Golf Courses often have thick patches of heather and gorse to steer clear of. These courses also have many water hazards, and sand bunkers to avoid. It is not the depth of these to worry about, but their placement within the course. They can just be waiting for the balls to drop into them!

The monthly golf magazine Golf Digest, which is published by Cond? Nast Publications, conducted a survey to find the countries with most Golf Courses per capita. They found that at the top was Scotland, followed closely by New Zealand then Australia.

Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Canada followed by Wales, the US, Sweden and England were bringing up the rear. The commonality within these was that within all these countries (except Sweden) was that the main language spoken was English. However the number of golf courses being built in new non English speaking territories is rapidly increasing.

There are a few variations on golf that have been invented, the most common known as Speed Golf. These can be played on your local golf course as it involves no extra equipment. It started in 1979 in California by the American runner Steve Scott. The purpose is to complete the Golf Course in the lowest combination of time and strokes. In order to achieve this, players often only carry between 1 and 6 clubs, and run between shots to cut down on time. The score is achieved by adding minutes taken to complete the course, to the number of shots taken. The record that is now held is by the Golf professional Christopher Smith, who completed a round of golf at the Chicago Speed Golf Classic 16th of October, 2005. He took 44.06 minutes, with 65 shots giving him a score of only 109.06. Speed Golf on your local Golf Course is a great way to keep fit and trim. It is also a great way to keep warm on those frosty mornings!

Most local Golf Courses have driving ranges so that golfers can practise their swings whether they be high, to drop the ball onto the green, or low to cleverly roll the ball onto the green. Golfers usually pay for a bucket of balls, and there are often professionals available to give lessons and tutorials which are often payable by the hour. The driving ranges can often be on grass, making it similar to you local Golf Course, or on mats resembling turf. Some Golf Courses often have sheltered ranges providing shade when rather sunny, and shelter for when the rain comes in.

Whichever course you fancy playing on, your local Golf Course is a great place to start to meet the local players who can offer invaluable advice and coaching before moving on to a various range of courses to test your skills.