The Bayonne Burger

November 03, 2025 by Nicklaus Mills in Review

Picture a Wall Street worker. His eyes are glued to the Hudson from the 40th floor. His brain has been melted by markets, deals, and endless numbers. He is starving for something simple, indulgent, and immediate. He wants a burger from Hamburger America on the way home to his West Village apartment. He wants a round of golf. The craving is urgent and unpretentious. Bayonne Golf Club is that ferry ride, the wrapper in his hand, the sizzle on the grill, the quick bite that satisfies without demanding contemplation.

The course coils and twists like a boa constrictor’s stomach. Fairways squeeze, angles tighten, and approaches close in like a digestive muscle around prey that has nowhere to run. You feel it pressing, constricting, shaping your shots without ceremony. It is not elegant. It is not refined. It is alive in the bluntest, most immediate way, demanding your attention.

The borrowed landscape does most of the heavy lifting. Factories rise like sentinels, churches spire skyward, and the Statue of Liberty appears off in the distance. These are foreign ingredients in a strange recipe, points of aim that turn mundane shots into moments of unexpected delight. Watching them is like perching on a stool at the bar of Hamburger America. You see the line of cooks at work, taking basic elements and somehow making something worth enjoying. The water flashes silver, the mounds rise and fall, and suddenly the ordinary site has rhythm, choreography, and a sly grin hidden in the details.

Bayonne does not ask for reverence. It does not pretend to be Noma. Each hole is flavorful enough to make you nod in approval, fun enough to leave you smiling, but none are revolutionary. The satisfaction is immediate. You bite into it, chew, swallow, and move on. The taste lingers for a moment, enough to remember, but not enough to redefine your standards. It delivers what it promises, and it does not promise more than it can give.

Playing here feels good. It scratches that craving like a burger in the late afternoon. It fills the moment with pleasure, indulgence, and a touch of cunning. The fairways, the skyline, the twists of land all combine to create something lively and spirited. You walk away content. You enjoyed it. That is the experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

Bayonne Golf Club is a burger. Savory, indulgent, slightly messy, and clever in ways you might not expect. It is not world-class. It is not transformational. It is exactly the kind of thing you want when the craving hits. And sometimes, that is more than enough.

Happy Golfing

Quintessentially American

October 12, 2025 by Nicklaus Mills in Review

Well, I’m having trouble knowing where to begin with Sleepy Hollow. Just as much trouble, in fact, as knowing where to end. I could save us both some time by summing it up in a single line: Sleepy Hollow is the most quintessential American golf course. There. Done. No elaboration required. Move on with your life.

But maybe I need to sleep on that notion. It is October after all, and my brain may be swimming in a pumpkin-spiced fog. The leaves on the deciduous trees are in full retreat, our tee time was delayed by autumn frost, and here we are, playing golf on what feels like Halloween’s home turf. Maybe I’m just under the influence of a holiday that I have always tied closely to this country.

It could be the way the course looks over the Hudson River, that wide tidal estuary that once carried the economic lifeblood of a nation inland, linking canals and tributaries that pushed America’s industrial heart westward. It pulled the centre of gravity away from the colonial ports of Boston and Philadelphia and into a new era.

Or maybe it is the Gilded Age history baked into the property. This land once belonged to Colonel Shepard and Margaret Vanderbilt, who envisioned a manor of unapologetic opulence. Then came the titans: Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Astor, Vanderlip, Harriman, Macy, Choate and Colgate. Their vision was to reshape and reprogram the land with golf, and for that they summoned Charles Blair Macdonald, the godfather of American golf architecture. Macdonald’s fingerprints are all over the nation’s early great courses, his designs setting a blueprint for what American golf would become.

The focal lone tree located central to the course.

Not long after, Albert Warren Tillinghast added his own eccentric brilliance. He was a man who designed as though possessed, free, unfiltered and untethered by modern constraint. The early twentieth century was golf architecture’s golden age, and Sleepy Hollow stands as a living, breathing artifact of that time.

Standing on the property, looking across the broad, sweeping landscape, my tiny brain struggled to make sense of it all. The place is enormous. The beauty, almost theatrical. The course matches nature’s energy with grand, deliberate gestures. At times it drapes itself elegantly over the terrain, flowing down hollows and across rocky shoulders. At others, it thrusts greens high into the air, connected by ornate footbridges that seem as if they have always belonged.

That is what I love about the Macdonald, Raynor and Banks style. They did not simply blend their work into the environment. They formalised it. They celebrated it. They took the drama of nature and set it to a template, like a jazz musician riffing on a familiar tune. It is not subtle. It does not need to be. The course wants to be part of the story, like a mascot on the sidelines, waving its arms and urging the crowd to join in.

Sleepy Hollow is Halloween, Gilded Age grandeur and American golf mythology all rolled into one. It is a love letter written in stone, soil and template greens. Like any great American story, it is part history, part theatre, part self-mythologising, and entirely unforgettable.

Walking off the 18th green and you don’t need to be a golfing savant to know that you’ve completed a special round of golf. A round of golf that perfectly encapsulates golf in America.

Happy Golfing

The Point of it All

September 05, 2025 by Nicklaus Mills in Review

The famous fog that blankets the West Coast in the summer was lifting around the Monterey Peninsula. The air was still, and the sound of our group’s quiet conversation carried across the fairways. A family of deer played in the unusually long grass, left to grow for the upcoming Walker Cup, the seals were sunbathing on the warm rocks and the sea otters were playing with one of my golf balls that I had donated into the Pacific Ocean. Four holes in, I caught myself thinking that Cypress Point feels less like your everyday golf course and more like a dream state. It is a feeling that seems to stretch all the way back to the people who first imagined the potential of this corner of the coast, to Marion Hollins and Samuel Finley Brown Morse. Two incredibly successful individuals that zagged away from the social perils of New York during the gilded age and found themselves a part of the exotic coastal nature and Spanish colonial homes of the Monterey Peninsula.

Now, I should admit from the outset, I am no authority on Cypress Point or on Dr. Alister MacKenzie’s written works. I certainly cannot quote him verbatim, nor have I ticked off every course of his around the world. I only have the perspective of a visiting golfer, and one who is prone to interpreting things through his own lens. With that caveat in mind, what I felt here was less about conventional wisdom of the ‘Good Doctor’ that tends to permeate through his existing work. The golf course at Cypress Point, is one that has an undercurrent of joy. And for that, I think we may have Marion Hollins to thank.

Photo By Julian P. Graham/Loon Hill Studios

Morse, the developer, provided the capital and the confidence to shape this stretch of coastline. Hollins, though, gave it its character. She was supremely talented and lived a life that might have been lifted from the pages of The Great Gatsby. Officially, she was employed as ‘Athletic Director’ of Del Monte Properties. Her remit was to create and implement sporting programmes for a prosperous clientele, the sort of people who had succeeded in the American Dream and wanted a suitable playground in which to spend it. That was the job description in black and white. The reality was far more interesting. Hollins was, in every sense, the region’s director of fun.

She had an eye for adventure, a talent for sport and an energy that seemed to bend people to her vision. Where others might have seen an inhospitable coastline of dunes, pines and rocky outcrops, she saw possibility. She was the one who persuaded MacKenzie to take on Cypress Point, ensuring that the course would carry both his strategic brilliance and her sense of playfulness. The result is a course that tests and thrills in equal measure. There are moments when the golf is serious, demanding and even daunting, yet there is always a thread of delight that runs through it. That, to me, feels like Hollins’ lasting imprint.

Playing Cypress Point today, especially on the eve of the Walker Cup, is to feel that legacy alive. It is impossible not to be caught up in the rhythm of it all, the variety, the sheer beauty of each hole, and the way the course invites courage without ever losing its smile. Hollins may not be the household name mentioned this week, credited for its current state, but her influence is everywhere on this dreamscape.

Which brings me back to the point of it all! If Marion Hollins were alive in 2025, what would she make of what Cypress Point has become? I cannot answer with authority, but my hunch is that she should be proud. Proud of the vision, proud of the joy and proud that fun still lives at the very centre of this extraordinary place.

Happy Golfing

Oakmont: The Ultra Major

June 16, 2025 by Nicklaus Mills in Review

The 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club has come to its brutal and brilliant conclusion, with J.J. Spaun etching their name into the sport’s most unforgiving chapter. This was not a celebration of beautiful golf. It was an exhibition of survival. Four days of relentless challenge, where every hole asked for everything and gave nothing in return.

Watching it unfold felt less like a golf tournament and more like a spiritual cousin to one of the world’s most punishing endurance races: the Barkley Marathons in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee. That ultramarathon, designed by Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, was built on the idea that success should be rare, even accidental. Each time a runner manages to finish, the course is made harder the next year. There is no ideal strategy, no steady rhythm. Only suffering, instinct, and a willingness to keep going when everything says stop.

Oakmont shares this DNA.

The Barkley Marathons, 2014 Documentary. A must watch.

The Fownes family, who built the course, were not trying to create beauty. They were trying to create discomfort. If a player found a solution to a hole one year, they might return to find a bunker in its path the next. Oakmont evolves constantly, its defenses shaped over time to meet the growing strength of modern professionals. Like the Barkley, it is designed not to be solved, but endured.

This year’s U.S. Open felt like a blindfolded trek through a forest with no trail markers, just instinct and grit to guide the way. There were no rhythm holes, no safe landings, no breathers. Balls spun off crowned greens, drives chased into bunkers like magnets, and lies buried themselves in the rough like secrets. Shane Lowry picked up his ball without marking it, a moment of confusion that summed up the mental toll. Adam Scott fought terrain more than opponents. And the weather played its part too, shifting momentum on a whim, rewarding some, betraying others. Oakmont was less a course, more a labyrinth and only one player found the way out.

Week in and week out, the PGA Tour is designed to showcase talent. It gives players the stage to create. Oakmont takes that stage away. It doesn’t ask who can play the best golf. It asks who can keep playing golf when the game has been stripped bare.

By Sunday evening, when the final putt dropped and the final breath was taken, there was no great crescendo. Just the quiet relief of completion. The winner did not conquer Oakmont. They simply survived it longer than everyone else.

This wasn’t just a U.S. Open. It was the Ultra Major. And Oakmont, like the Barkley, reminded us that the most profound tests in sport are not those that seek perfection, but those that make it impossible.

Congratulation J.J.

Happy Golfing

Going Nuclear

June 04, 2025 by Nicklaus Mills in General

Golf is a game of discourse by variables. Wind or no wind, firm or soft ground, nerves jangling or oddly calm. From the first shot of the day on the first tee, you’re managing a chain reaction. One small thing sets off another: a gust of wind leads to an over swing, which leads to a plugged lie, which leads to a filthy mood, which leads to... well, you know how it goes.

It’s nuclear fission, in the guise of a tweed flat brimmed cap. Each shot splits the atom of your composure. And your job, quietly and nobly, is to avoid total nuclear meltdown.

That’s where the golf architect comes in. They’re not handing you a strategy, that’s your job as the golfer. They’re designing the reactor, tweaking the pressure, setting the temperature, adding just enough tilt and temptation to test the limits of your containment system.

The best courses don’t explode. They smoulder. They build tension without tipping over and that’s what keeps us coming back. The thrill of holding it together, one swing at a time and an endless power for playing the game of Golf.

Ranking the Rankings

April 29, 2025 by Nicklaus Mills in General

With the oversaturation of opinion on the internet, what’s the harm in throwing one more into the void?

Golf course rankings are the fodder of choice for golf tragics like us. Disenfranchised from whatever real priorities we should be tending to, we instead find ourselves doomscrolling through numbered lists, getting irrationally upset that one course is ranked higher than another. A course we’ve played once suddenly becomes a hill we’re prepared to die on. But what does this say about the rankings themselves?

The unfortunate truth is, rankings matter. Economically, they’re critical to the survival of many golf courses. They’re the weird, slightly embarrassing marketing monster we’ve all helped create. Placing courses like Cape Wickham in a compromised position. A stunning, remote golf course built in the middle of Bass Straight, and hanging on to every great ranking it gets as it survives on tourist dollars and list chasing fiend. The very top of the rankings will always be hogged by the usual suspects, basking in the compounding glow of historical success. But at the opposite end of the list, for some of our beloved battlers, it’s a knife fight for relevance.

So yes, I hate rankings. I also become irrationally upset over them. It’s a maddening contradiction — to reject the whole idea of a pecking order, while also caring deeply whether a course I love (or loathe) has moved up or down three spots. It’s our right, as golf course tragics. We live this madness. So, why not go one step further?

Let’s rank the people who rank the courses...

Is this helpful? No.
Is it fair? Also No.
Did I enjoy putting it together? Not particularly.
But here it is anyway.

Ranking Dog Friendly Golf Courses would be as close as I would come to do a ranking…

8. UK Golf Guy + Australian Golf Passport Podcast
There isn’t enough data to really assess this one, but I’m including it because they’re influential and likable and I need to fill out my rankings to the even number. That said, has DJ ever played a course below a 13 rating in Australia? I’d love to see him grind it out somewhere truly average just to calibrate the system. DJ, the floor is yours.

For Matty & Scowarrrr we wait in anticipation!

7. Planet Golf – Community Rankings
Turns out, a surprising number of this community has played Ellerston. Enough to rank it 6th in the country, apparently. I haven’t had the privilege, but I’m skeptical. The cult of privacy seems to influence a lot here, and a few other courses are ranked in ways that defy logic. Amusing, yes. Trustworthy? Less so.

6. GolfLux
After calling out New South Wales bias in other rankings, GolfLux has zagged and gone full Victoria. Their “Top 15 Australian Courses” waits until number 11 to mention a non-Victorian layout. The list is short, which is refreshing, and the title is strangely captivating. But the actual rankings? Laughable. Good entertainment value though, and maybe that’s the point. Dammit.

PS: Peninsula not Peninsular

5. Australian Golf Digest
Offended might be too strong a word, but I’m not thrilled. The exclusion of RACV Healesville and the inclusion of some truly questionable picks leaves me scratching my head. It reads like a list built by people who really want you to know they’ve played a lot of golf, just maybe not all the right courses.

4. The Golf Travel Agency
I appreciate the honesty that comes with a list built from personal experience rather than a committee room. That said, the New South Wales lean is hard to ignore. Maybe I’m just showing my own Victoria bias. Or maybe we’re both right. Either way, some omissions are glaring, though I’ll forgive them because there’s only so much golf one person can play in a calendar year.

Wouldn’t be an Australian Golf Ranking blog without an image of a Kangaroo or two on a golf course…

3. Golf Australia
This one delivers a thorough ranking from 1 to 100, with the odd hint of bias depending on where you're standing. Overall, it’s a well-constructed list that seems to take its job seriously. No major quarrels, which is both a compliment and a criticism.

2. Top100 Golf Courses
A reliable go-to, not so much for the rankings themselves but for the accompanying course data and photography. Solid in structure, although once you get past course number 70, the list starts to look suspiciously like someone just typed out names in no particular order. Maybe 100 is too many for this country?

1. Golf Course Guide – Public Courses Version
An exercise in restraint, this list benefits from the notable absence of private clubs. Without the shadow of the usual suspects, it offers some breathing room for lesser-known gems to shine. Most of the top 100 feel like they’re in the right postcode. A rare example of rankings done right, possibly because half the usual politics were left out.

Have I missed one? Almost certainly. Somewhere out there, someone has built a Google Doc with 74 conditional formatting cells and a pivot table built around bunker maintenance and the availability vege options at the halfway house. And if they send it to me, I’ll probably read every word.

Because that’s who we are.

Happy Golfing!
Nick.