Forelinksters is a directory of the top rated and most recommended public golf courses created by regular golfers just like you.(Become a member!) In addition to our regular members, there’s are a number of the “blogosphere” founding members who are by their own rights seasoned, golf course reviewers. They are typically public golfers who have played some of the world’s best golf courses and enjoy writing about their experiences for the benefit of other golfers. Some are veteran golf writers for top publications, others have their own blogs or websites, and still others post throughout the golf internet world on sites relating to course reviews. They have collectively visited, reviewed and written about thousands of the world’s most acclaimed golf courses. Forelinksters continue to seek new reviewers and profiling them here. If you’d like to be added to our growing list, please contact us here.
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Dan Perry
Dan Perry and Pete Dye
Happily married (here’s why she’s great), who has a fat cat named Moe. Love golf more than I should. Here’s by blog where I review golf courses and discuss SEO. Luckily, so does my wife. We’ve played golf at Treetops, Arcadia Bluffs, Kohler (where we honeymooned, and played all four courses), and many others. I’ve also played Medinah and Riviera.
Love taking pictures; feel free to check out my Flickr account (around 9,000 pictures and growing).
Some odd pieces to my life’s puzzle:
In my early 20’s, I spent 2 ½ months in Europe. My base was northern England (I had an uncle there), and I traveled quit a bit visiting York, Scarborough, London (for a week), and a very interesting weekend in Amsterdam. While in the Navy I water-skied for three days straight, every other week on Lake Meade (just south of Las Vegas) for a year and a half. The one thing the Navy taught me was attention to detail. I think that’s helped me in my professional career more than anything else.
I enjoy public speaking. What most say is true; the more you do it the better you get. I’ve spoke at many Internet Marketing industry events (My Resume). At my current job, one of my tasks is training others on the value of SEO. Constantly refining PPT, constantly tweaking the presentation, etc., and I absolutely love it.
More to come as life progresses but so far, it’s been pretty damn good.
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Larry Gavrich
- Larry Gavrich
After 35 years at the highest level of corporate communications with a Fortune 50 company, Larry decided to combine two passions, writing and golf, into a service to help baby boomer golfers and others find their dream home on the course. When searching for a golf property of his own, he realized there was a short supply of objective, unbiased information in the real estate offices of the many golf communities he visited. Everyone wanted to sell him something, and every place sounded like paradise. Scratch the surface, however, and there were key differences in the real estate, the golf memberships, the cultures of the communities and the characteristics of the local town or city. Over the five years of his business, he’s visited more than 125 golf communities and private clubs and interviewed developers, real estate agents, residents, chamber of commerce officials, golf pros and anyone who could give him the “inside scoop” that he passes along to his readers. After publishing 11 issues of the HomeOnTheCourse newsletter, which focused on different areas of the southeast and reviewed the highest level communities in those areas, he now focuses full time on his web site, GolfCommunityReviews, where he publishes daily a review or observation on golf related real estate, golf courses, golf travel or whatever happens to suit his fancy or prove most relevant for my audience on that day. In four years, he’s gone from zero visitors and zero hits [delete and zero hits] on the web site to a level of nearly 9,000 visits per month and almost 500,000 page views annually. His observations are fresh and sometimes a little edgy (especially when he writes about airline travel or developers who do not live up to their promises). If any of his readers want his advice on where they should look for a vacation, retirement or primary home on the course, he takes them through a series of questions to determine their primary criteria, and then,[delete comma] identifies the most appropriate communities for my readers to visit.”
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Mike Wolfe
Mike Wolfe at Pine Valley
Chris Koss, The Houston Golfnut
Michael Green, the Aussie Golfer
Writing has always been a passion of mine and I was looking for an outlet. Golf too has been a passion since I was a kid and I thought I’d have a go at combining the two. While I enjoy writing about a whole range of other topics, the golf blog has never been a chore. It’s not all golf and skittles with me though. Science has been at the forefront of my career and I choose to fill in the out of work hours with exercise, sport, music, socialising and acquiring lots of useless information. I enjoy learning and attempting to connect with everyone and anything. At least then I can discuss or criticise with some knowledge of what I’m talking about!
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Brian Kuehn, Ann Arbor, Michigan
John Garrity, his Top 50 Golf Courses in the world hold Askernish as #1
JOHN GARRITY is a sports writer, author and photographer whose work has taken him from the cricket grounds of Australia to the temples of Ladakh. He’s been a fixture on the Sports Illustrated masthead for three decades, he is a special contributor to GOLF Magazine, a frequent contributor to Golf.com, and the author of his own blog, “John Garrity’s Top 50.”
Garrity has written more than a dozen books, including the critically-acclaimed “Ancestral Links: A Golf Obsession Spanning Generations” and “Tiger 2.0: The Best of John Garrity.” He lives in Kansas City, Mo., with his wife Pat, a church liturgist and choir director.
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Eric Rodgers, BunkerTalk
Eric Rodgers got the golf bug at 6 years old when he first held a golf club and has been an avid golfer ever since. For almost 40 years, he’s been able to play on 100′s of courses both in Pennsylvania, where he grew up, and now in Tampa, Florida where he currently lives, as well as sampling other courses throughout North America that he’s visited while traveling . He put together a blog BunkerTalk to inform my readers as to the price, condition, staff and facilities available at local courses, mostly in the Tampa Bay area. He was tired of setting a tee-time at a course and finding out once on the course that it is in less-than-advertised condition, even if he researched the course ahead of time, the reviews that were sponsored by the golf club or were completely out-of-date. If you’re headed to the Tampa Bay area, you’d be well served by visiting BunkerTalk.
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The Golf Course Review Gurus blog’s creators are Mark and Chas, who are dedicated to traveling throughout New Jersey and providing an un-biased review of many of the public courses the state of New Jersey has to offer. They provide reviews of the New Jersey golf course as well as the amenities and customer service the course offers from the moment we tee it up to the time we finish our beer on the 19th hole. they’re always happy to take any course review recommendations and welcome any feedback you have on their blog
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TexasOutside.com is currently ranked the #1 Outdoor Recreation Website in Texas and has over 5000 pages of information on fun things to see and do in Texas. One of the most popular sections on Texas Outside is the Golfing Section which has:
· golf course locator pages and maps making it easy to find a course by city, region, or course name
· hundreds of reviews and ratings of Texas Golf Courses which were done by Texas Outside and include detailed course descriptions, pictures, our course rating, links to discounts/specials, and more
· lists of the Best Public, Private, and Resort courses in Texas
· golf resort and golf stay and play reviews
· out of State golf course reviews as well as resort reviews
· golf articles about fun golf vacations
Texas Outside has been golfing in Texas since 1980 and has played and reviewed over 350 public, private, and resort courses in Texas plus several courses in California, Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina. Their course reviews are truely unbiased and each course is rated on a one to ten scale for scenic beauty, condition, variety, difficulty, value, and how fun it is to play.
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- Brian and The King
Brian Penn is a golfing enthusiast and has been playing the game seriously since he first took lessons at 16. Presently, he plays to a five-handicap and aspires to get to scratch by the summer of 2013. In the mid 1980s he worked as an club professional providing instruction, building equipment, organizing tournaments, and learning the business of golf. See what’s in my bag.
He has a ton of good information regarding course reviews, travel, and tips for play and practice on his blog, All About Golf. He provides hard hitting and honest opinions about articles of interest and would love to get your comments and requests for topics.
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Eric and Zac have been golfing together for the past 15 years, and are dedicated to the sport of golf and trying not to suck at it. Their site, Badliesgolf was developed to show you the most popular golf products on the market, and give you their honest reviews about them. They have been testing clubs and products ever since they worked at a golf course together back in 2000. Recently, they have decided to write and publish their reviews and offer them to their readers. If you have a golf product you’d like reviewed on Badliesgolf please contact them here. They also specialize in golf course reviews in Central Wisconsin, playing and writing about the best golf courses in the surrounding area. Eric and Zac also enjoy creating videos about their golfing adventures, so feel free to snoop around, post a comment, and join their Facebook Fanpage. Also, suscribe to their email list for chances to win some awesome golf products!
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Chicago Golf Guy is a golf blog for golfers by golfers in Chicago, who are looking for everything and anything golf in Chicago. That is a lot of golf and Chicago in one sentence, but that is what their blog is all about golf in Chicago. The topics are: reviews of golf courses in the Chicagoland area as well as golf equipment testing and reviews. They also blog about new golf websites offering discounts on golf, as well as what golf tournaments are going on in Illinois, and pretty much anything else that you can think about pertaining to golf in Chicago.
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The Bogey Golfer © is Martin Nielsen, his main qualifications for his blog are:
•an 11.5 handicap index
•a nagging tendency to miss four-foot putts •a sense of humor that’s been finely honed by the ridiculous game of golf
He first took up golf in 1987, right before the stock market crash. When the bottom fell out, he bought a hundred shares of his favorite stock, waited for the dead-cat bounce, immediately sold it, and bought his first set of clubs. He fights an outside-in swing path, and has a great deal of trouble with lag putts. Twice, he’s holed an approach shot on a par 4 for an eagle (on the same hole!), but hasn’t ever managed a hole-in-one. He lives in Loveland, Colorado, USA. The courses here are excellent, and so is the weather! (Usually…)
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The Power Fade Golf Blog is a blog dedicated to all things golf (and a few
other things as well). Authored by JK and LG, the Power Fade Golf Blog seeks
to provide valuable commentary, informative articles, and helpful reviews on
golf-related topics that the authors believe is useful to the golfing
public. Course reviews make up just a small portion of what The Power Fade
Golf Blog offers. From equipment reviews to discussions by the authors to
the popular “Play of the Week” and “Fail of the Week” series, The Power Fade
Golf Blog offers a unique perspective on golf-related topics that the
average golfer may or may not know about and seeks to provide useful
information to help all golfers improve at the game they love, not only by
playing better, but also by living better, saving money, and saving time.
JK, currently residing in Atlanta, GA, writes posts for the The Power Fade Golf Blog in his spare time. Playing golf for almost 20 years, JK plays to a
single-digit handicap and attempts to provide the experienced golfer’s
impression of certain golf-related items. Although he doesn’t play as much
golf as he once did, JK focuses much effort on equipment and course reviews
(when he has the chance) and provides much help to beginning clubmakers on
how to save money building their own clubs.
LG, currently residing in the San Francisco Bay area, CA, is an avid golfer
and health enthusiast. LG has authored course reviews of several of
America’s top 100 courses and continues to provide valuable reviews for bay
area golf courses (and beyond!). LG also provides helpful tips on staying
healthy and getting fit for golf. As a mid-80s golfer with almost 5 years of
golfing experience, LG provides a perspective on golf topics that are akin
to the average golfer’s point of view, giving The Power Fade Golf Blog a
second, tempered view of the tops it addresses.
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James at Royal County Downs
GolfTop18.com: James started playing golf at the age of 9 and by the age of 22, he’d only played about 20 courses, with about 99% of all rounds played at the country club where his dad was a member. When that changed, James started hitting all the courses he’d missed growing up in Ventura County, as well as those in the greater Los Angeles area and wherever else he travelled. He kept brief reviews of the holes he liked, along with pictures of his frends or him playing golf along the way. Before the concept was formalized on his GolfTop18 website, he started ranking courses and holes with a couple of his golfing buddies. The rankings were always about personal preference and were organized into GolfTop18 lists, based on the belief that 10 was not enough and 18 just makes more sense in golf setting. He now continues writing golf course reviews (over 150 to date), ranking his Top18 holes and courses, and has an interactive user section on GolfTop18 where golfers with strong knowlege of courses on the website can also rate them.
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Paul Imondi
Paul Imondi is a professional golfer, and provides reviews of the golf courses he plays throughout California and other varied states. He gives you a point of view on a golf course from the eyes of a traveling professional. He plays numerous events locally in California and most recently qualified for the 2012 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. You can follow him on his website www.paulimondi.com or on Facebook and Twitter.
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Gideon, the Golf Course Guru
You know those golf magazines and websites that paint a glorious picture of seemingly every course featured in their pages, making them all sound like Pebble Beach? The Golf Course Guru isn’t one of them. Nor is it a course review website that just gives you numbers – yardage, slope, and rating. If you’re looking for fluff and generic descriptions, go elsewhere. What you’ll find here is honesty. The things that matter when you’re looking for a place to play.
This past March, my friends and I took our annual trip to South Florida to partake in Spring Training baseball, the Honda Classic at PGA National, and a few rounds of our own. We wanted to find courses that we hadn’t played in the three years that we had previously visited the area. We found lots of options online, but knew nothing about them. Were they well-maintained? Did they have a driving range? Were they overpriced? Did their fairways bear a closer resemblance to a goat track?
Unfortunately we could not find these answers anywhere. And then it hit me: in the fifteen or so years that I’ve played golf in the Tri-State area, other than word of mouth, I’ve had no point of reference for golf courses. Sure, once in a blue moon, a golf writer will post a review of a new course in the area (Pound Ridge, for example). But otherwise, if you want to find straight forward reviews with the things that matter to most golfers (like restaurant reviews for foodies), you’re in the dark. Here’s my attempt to fill that void.
Over the years, I’ve played hundreds upon hundreds of courses across the country – most of them in the Tri-State area, where I live. I’ve accumulated a database in my brain and have finally decided to put my keen observatory skills and passion for golf to use.
I grew up in Scarsdale, New York, playing the Westchester County Courses like Saxon Woods and Maple Moor. Sadly, these were my first golf experiences.
Since graduating from Syracuse University (not a exactly a “prime” golf region), I’ve been working in the sports industry (I’m the Director of Sports Broadcasting at IF Management – www.ifmanagement.com), which has allowed me lots of opportunities to play (entertaining clients, etc.) and gain access to many courses both around the NYC area and nationwide. I caught the golfing “bug” in Hilton Head, South Carolina about four years ago (picture above from Daufuskie Island) and haven’t looked back. I play whenever I can – two-to-three times per week if possible (and yes, with that many reps, I probably should be better than my 13 handicap). Hopefully you’ll enjoy my perspective and find it honest and helpful. Good luck and hit ‘em straight.
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- Ed, The Golf Travel Guru
Orlando, Florida-based Ed Schmidt is a prolific independent writer, author and columnist with more than 2,300 articles and columns published in international, national and local publications, including Golf Magazine, Travel & Leisure Golf, Golfweek, Links Magazine, Private Clubs, Shark.com and Golf PartnersOnline.com.
Schmidt is the author of three books, Florida Golf Getaways, 52 Great Florida Golf Getaways and Central Florida Visions.
The Golf Travel Guru (www.thegolftravelguru.com), Schmidt’s popular website, where he publishes five times a week, is a golf vacationers nirvana with golf resort reviews, travel tips and advice, bold and entertaining opinions on the golf industry, professional tours and personalities and helpful links for planning and playing around the world.
In his career, Schmidt has written about a wide range of travel adventures such as playing golf in China, deep sea fishing in the North Sea and searching for emeralds in Colombia. His research treks for golf travel stories have taken him to locales around the world like Kenya, China, Tunisia, Canary Islands, Argentina and Yugoslavia to name a few.
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Am looking for feedback in regards to courses in the Youngstown, Ohio area, namely Kennsington GC, Mill Creek GC, The Links at Firestone Farms and Reserve Run GC. Other course suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Our website Forelinksters.com lists only the better golf courses in the US, for Youngstown we have:
1. Mill Creek, 36 holes, classic Donald Ross design, on the southeast side of Youngstown near Boardman
2. Copeland Hills, south in Columbiana
3. The Links at Firestone Farms, in Columbiana, a Brian Huntley design, upscale and newer layout
4. Avalon Lakes, 54 holes, upscale north of Youngstown in Warren, one of Pete Dye’s earlier designs
5. Reserve Run, a Barry Serafin layout built over a former strip mine on the south side of town
6. Pine Lakes in Hubbard on the OH/PA border, fine old classic that’s been updated over the years
7. Kensington, southeast in Canfield, another Brian Huntley layout, upscale and newer.
Looks like these are the top rated courses in the Youngstown area, here’s a link to our website with more descriptions:
http://forelinksters.com/course/location/41940/state/Ohio/city/Youngstown
Cheers!
Whoever wrote the review of The Dormie Club is grossly misinformed. The greens are not even close to flat, it is not a parkland style course – no two fairways are parallel to each other, the definition of parkland. It sounds like the person who wrote this piece did not play the course. Golfweek rated it 3rd best new public or private in the last 2 calendar years and it is ranked 48th for best new modern golf course since 1960. Do your homework and try again.
Dear Punkrockgolfpro
Thanks for your comments regarding the Dormie Club. The concept for the Forelinksters website is a Wikipedia of sorts for golf courses where golfers publish the content, and it’s verified and critiqued by other golfers who’ve played the golf courses and publish their reviews and ratings. Based on your comments we evaluated the original review of the Dormie Club by one of our members, and found the review is fairly representative of the Dormie Club. Here’s a review of the course from the Dormie”s website:
Green and bunker designs and features are remarkably varied, creating shot values and playability, without forced carries. Most of the greens lay flat, just like old golf courses, appearing very uncomplicated. But, look at the designs and look at the shot requirements. They are phenomenal. Lots of small, old-fashioned bunkers which integrate naturally with the grasses. The areas that surround the fairways are filled with sandy soil, pine straw, native grasses and fescues. Firm and fast playing conditions will allow for a variety of shots to be played into and around the well-manicured greens. The wooded property, which has two natural lakes and sandy soil, has more elevation change and wider variety of flora than its famous neighbor.
Also, just fyi, here’s the definition of a parkland style of golf course from Golf Digest:
“A parkland course is a golf course in a lush, inland setting, one with well-manicured and watered fairways and rough and greens. There might be plenty of elevation change around such a course, but even if there is, a parkland course’s fairways are generally flat, lacking the knobs and knolls and weird bounces of links fairways. A parkland course is usually in a treed landscape, fairways often tree-lined.”
Hope this helps, please keep providing your feedback. Cheers!