Tobacco Road Golf Club, near Pinehurst, N.C., is a paradox: a wild adventure among manmade features, through rugged conditions laced with sand and brush.

After a long overdue restoration, Southern Pines has transformed from a neglected local favorite into one of the heavyweights of the Sandhills.

Once the center of golf’s battle with racism, Shoal Creek has made undeniable progress.

If the Augusta National Women’s Amateur is an important golf tournament, then Champions Retreat is an important golf course — to the tournament’s players, and to the fans who watch the tournament. That’s a heavy expectation to bear. But Champions Retreat vindicates that importance.

One of Gil Hanse’s only Deep South designs prioritizes fun, options, and creativity above all else.

Like the resort that the course calls home, El Camaleón is beautiful, well kept, and gives away all its inauthenticities at the slightest examination. It is enjoyable, most of all with suspended disbelief.

Pine Needles feels like a step back in time, but four U.S. Women’s Opens in 25 years prove that it still offers all the challenges that the modern golfer can handle.

The majority view of Gil Hanse’s reimagined Pinehurst No. 4 is that he nailed it. But remaking a consensus top-100 course is an impossible task.

No. 3’s shortcomings reveal a problem for Pinehurst: deep roster or not, there is a pronounced drop-off after No. 2 and No. 4.

Pinehurst No. 2 is golf’s equivalent of Level 20 on “Dr. Mario” — it moves quickly, and it brings certain doom, but in the end you limp away convinced that all you need is one more chance.