By Bradley S. Klein

In most popular sports, the playing field must be laid out according to strict rules. In golf, there is only one requirement. The hole must be 4 1/4 inches in diameter.

Everything else about the layout may vary from course to course: the distance from tee to green, width of fairways, texture of the playing surface, size and contour of greens, and the shape and depth of sand bunkers, grass swales, mounds and water features. Small wonder that golf provides arguably the most interesting and diverse playing surface of any sport.

But golf courses also provide a window into the history of the game, and to the people who designed the courses -- from the earliest courses that conform the game to the environment, to courses that alter the environment to conform to the game, and then back to more-natural courses.

Here is a look at some courses that let you experience that evolution over the past 145 years.

North Berwick Golf Club, West Links (1880)

East Lothian, Scotland

North Berwick's West Links offer a chance to peer back into the earliest days of golf architecture, when designers worked with the existing conditions of land. Rather than making use of flat, open, featureless terrain, they worked with the readily accessible coastal dunesland adjacent to town centers. There, the ground creased by wind erosion, and the occasional hollow created by animals seeking shelter, collaborated to create interesting and diverse terrain. Those origins help explain the maddening features at North Berwick's West Links: beach frontage, blind shots, greens in sheltered low areas, a putting surface on the far side of a 3-foot-high stone wall, basement-deep bunkering and wildly undulating greens. Golf has been played here since 1832 on a nine-hole layout, subsequently expanded to 18 holes in 1880.

National Golf Links of America (1911)

Southampton, N.Y.

At this course, on Long Island's South Shore, nature didn't dictate the contours of the course as it did in the old days -- instead, the designer tamed the landscape. Charles Blair Macdonald, who coined the term "golf-course architect" and was a self-appointed patriarch of the craft, beat the land into submission where needed to make certain distinctive features stand out. At the National Golf Links of America, hazards, obstacles and deflective bounces are scattered everywhere, usually immediately adjacent to landing zones -- those areas where you want to land the ball to gain an ideal angle for your next shot. Some 250 bunkers pepper the course, many of them smack in the middle of landing zones.

Teugega Country Club (1921)

Rome, N.Y.

After World War I, powerful trends were shaping the design of courses. The aspiring middle and upper classes embraced the game, and as automobiles grew more popular, designers could venture onto land previously thought inaccessible to casual recreation. This era, 1919 to 1939, became known as the Golden Age of Golf Design, thanks to the work of several visionary designers. Many of them were émigrés from Great Britain who adapted features of the seaside courses back home to interior farmland and forested parkland. The most productive of these designers was Donald J. Ross, who hailed from Scotland and built a portfolio of 410 courses, many of them serving as U.S. Open venues. Even his lesser-known works still shine -- such as Teugega Country Club, a modest private club on the shores of Delta Lake.

Pasatiempo Golf Club (1929)

Santa Cruz, Calif.

Along with innovation, the Golden Age of Golf produced some true works of art, like this intriguing semipublic course on the north side of Monterey Bay. Designer Alister MacKenzie, an émigré Englishman, made a study of military camouflage and translated that skill into memorable courses throughout England, South America, Australia and the U.S. -- most famously, Augusta National Golf Club. MacKenzie understood that by disguising what was natural and what was created, golfers would have to figure out what would happen to the ball once it hit the ground and rolled out. This mystery of landforms would prove more enduring a challenge to golfers than mere distance. At Pasatiempo, golfers confront a scattering of arroyos, dry washes, plateaus and bunkers placed deceptively short of intended landing areas that look like they are immediately in play. The putting surfaces, meanwhile, offer gravity-defying contours.

Firestone Country Club, South Course (1959)

Akron, Ohio

By the 1950s, technology -- and people's approach to the game -- was spurring more changes in course design. Consistent, reliable steel shafts became standard for clubs, and a much-improved golf ball flew farther, higher and straighter than before World War II. The modern swing, meanwhile, involved less hand movement and more central coordination of the entire torso. Golf, once strictly a ground game, became a primarily airborne power game. The Firestone course reflects this new sensibility. Robert Trent Jones Sr. turned a onetime facility for employees into a world-class championship venue, as he stretched teeing grounds, deepened bunkers, expanded greens and created a brutal par-70 test, over 7,000 yards long, that became a paradigm of renewed length and strength.

Harbour Town Golf Links (1969)

Hilton Head Island, S.C.

The Firestone course rewards hitting for distance; Harbour Town Golf Links reflects a focus on subtler "small ball." Instead of relying on long drives, golfers have to angle and bend their shots carefully to conform to the setup of the holes. Hit the ball too far and you went through the dogleg into the trees; hit it too short and you couldn't curve the ball enough around the canopies to get to the greens. The course made previously unheralded architect Pete Dye a national figure, and helped turn Hilton Head Island into a popular golf-resort destination.

Sand Hills Golf Club (1995)

Mullen, Neb.

By the 1990s, golf-course design had become heavy-handed, featuring bulldozed layouts that overhauled the natural setting instead of using it. Design partners Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw repudiated that vision with a revolutionary course that feels more like a ramshackle old ranch than a thriving private golf club. The designers hardly moved any dirt in creating a course that fits snugly onto native ground, relying on natural depressions for what would become bunkers and used entirely open, native land for what became greens. Small wonder the holes here feel like paths through windswept, rolling dunes that have been here for millennia.

Pinehurst Resort, the Cradle course (2017)

Pinehurst, N.C.

This short course helped spark a new movement in golf architecture. After restoring Pinehurst's famed No. 2 Course for the 2014 U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open, resort leaders took a look at an underused 4-acre parcel on the south side of the clubhouse and converted it into a nine-hole layout called the Cradle. Designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, the par-27 course, 789 yards long, offers family-friendly greens and holes readily playable by anyone of any skill level at $65 a round. The Cradle quickly became booked solid by the public -- and helped inspire a spate of small, fun courses around the country. The courses recall the spirit of uncertainty and whimsy of early golf courses -- now complemented by fine greens management, fast and firm surfaces, and accessibility to families and diverse players.

Bradley S. Klein is a golf-architecture journalist, historian and design consultant in Bloomfield, Conn. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

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April 07, 2025 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

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