Links: Where the Turf Mimics the Surf

What is a links course?

If television commentators and press releases are to be believed, any dry, treeless or flat golf course within 50 miles of an ocean could be called a links. While those features may account for “links-style” golf, true linksland is found in only one area of the world.

“Linksland, the fine grasses, the wind-made bunkers that defy imitation, the exquisite contours that refuse to be sculptured by hand -- all of these were given lavishly by a divine dispensation to the British,” writes Robert Hunter, author of the 1926 book, “The Links.”

The British Isles were covered by glaciers 15,000 years ago. As those glaciers melted, the turbulent sea levels rose and fell, depositing sand along the immediate coastlines.

Over the last six centuries, these sandy areas were further exposed as sea levels dropped. Wind-whipped dunes were formed and covered in plant material or bent grasses spread through bird droppings. These coastline dune systems went untouched by nearby farmers who wanted no part of the porous, nutrient-depleted soil.

With golf at Scottish links such as St. Andrews and Prestwick becoming more popular, late 19th century golf professionals were hired to route courses over these odd grounds.

“Nature was their architect, and beast and man her contractors,” Sir Guy Campbell, a longtime British golf journalist, wrote of early links courses.

Rabbits living on the linksland became admired for their ability to maintain the natural bent grasses that popped up. Architect Alister MacKenzie praised the “sparse, dwarf, velvety” turf because balls sat up in a “remarkable manner.” The rabbits multiplied too rapidly and were replaced by mowers and fertilizers, though MacKenzie insisted years later that humans didn’t manage the turf nearly as well.

According to Robert Price, a geologist and author of “Scotland’s Golf Courses,” the links label should refer only “to land underlain by sand and gravel in the form of undulating plains, ridges, mounds and hollows immediately inland from the present coastline.”

Price’s definition puts the number of authentic links at about 160 courses dotting the coastlines of Scotland, England and Ireland. Cases could be made for assorted oceanside courses in Europe and Australia, but there are no authentic links courses in America.

Dictionaries suggest multiple origins for the term links. The early Scottish word lynkis means “ridges and hummocks or open rough ground,” though an ancient Oxford definition suggests that links is an old English derivation of hlinc, defined as “lean.” Not coincidentally, lean suggests the turfgrass characteristic most vital to fast, firm links golf.

Beyond semantics, the playing characteristics and lore created by linksland golf have further refined what earns a links its certificate of authenticity. Besides not having any features indigenous to an inland landscape, links are best defined by those intense fairway undulations that induce bounces good and bad, but rarely anything in between.

“The true links have an intimacy with the waves; they are much on the same level, in close relation, almost cousins and part of the ocean if you can imagine sea turned into land or the land suffering sea change into something rich and rare,” wrote H.N. Wethered. “After all, the wind is answerable for the foaming undulations of the seas as it is for the thin borderlands of the links. It is indeed not inappropriate to regard the greens as worthy symbols of the bluer undulations beyond.”

No links is complete without sod-layered bunker faces, native fescue grasses, splashes of gorse atop dunes, the occasional blind shot or a railway station nearby.

“Play it as it lies” remains the most important playing principle born out of links golf ... except right before St. Andrews plays host to the Open Championship. To reduce divots before tournament play, Old Course golfers are asked to lift balls in the fairway and place them on an artificial mat before proceeding with their approach. Most of the mats can be found hiding amid the dense shrubs just off the second tee.

The ever-present wind and potential for dramatic weather changes might explain why links golf is played quickly. A first tee sign at North Berwick links even warns “a round of golf should not take more than three hours.”

The evolution of links bunkering has long been debated. One theory insists that sandy pits were created by the wind, whipping up scratches abandoned by shelter-seeking sheep. Others believe -- at least at St. Andrews, where pot bunkers catch many tee shots -- that unrepaired divots were whisked into hazards by the wind.

“One must visit the seaside courses when a gale is blowing to realize the force of the wind and its power to toss about the sand and remold the landscape,” Hunter wrote.

This week’s British Open site has long been a controversial links, particularly when played during a warm, dry summer like this year. Royal St. George’s features pronounced dunes, severe undulations and more blind shots than most links used for major tournament play.

O.B. Keeler, Bobby Jones’ longtime traveling companion, wrote that the huge dunes created a “dizzy test,” while overemphasizing the “scampish finger of luck.” This surprised Keeler, who fancied that Americans were “trying too industriously to scientificalize the game.”

Keeler wrote that his opinion St. George’s “would be ill-received by the members, who rather fancy the course was laid out by St. Andrew himself.”

After playing Royal St. George’s, American Walker Cup player Jesse Guilford said, “You can’t see any of it but the hole you’re playing, and darned little of that.”

As similar as most links appear from outside the ancient stone walls that often indicate their boundary lines, a feature out of human control sets these barren designs apart from courses pretending to be links.

“The charm of the seaside courses of Great Britain lies in their multiformity, their unconventionality, their infinite variety,” Hunter wrote. “There are eighteen holes, and the yardage is up to standard, but comparison largely ends there. The terrain itself has an individuality all its own. In its uneven diversity, its tumbling irregularity, its unrivaled originality, linksland bears no resemblance to any other territory.”

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Geoff Shackelford is the author of “Grounds for Golf” (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martins Press) and co-designer of Rustic Canyon Golf Course in Moorpark.