Australia’s latest bucket-list layout, The Cliffs Kangaroo Island, photographed by Jacob Sjöman, features on the cover of the July 2026 issue of Golf Course Architecture. The course was designed by Darius Oliver and built on a rugged landscape a short flight from Adelaide. We speak with the architect, plus developer Sam Atkins, about The Cliffs as it prepares to open in October 2026.

In the main feature of this issue, ‘New golf in the old country’, we report on the boom in major golf developments in the UK and Ireland. We profile 18 projects that are either on the drawing board, in progress or opening imminently. These include Gil Hanse’s work at Sunningdale and North Berwick, European Golf Design’s complete redesign of La Grande Mare on the island of Guernsey, a pair of Ryder Cup hopefuls in England, and several entirely new golf courses.

Elsewhere, we report on visits to three projects on three different continents. Toby Ingleton toured the Cashen course at Ballybunion, Ireland, where Team Niblick and Tom Watson Design have collaborated on a redesign of the Robert Trent Jones layout. Richard Humphries visited Brian Curley’s new layout at Shura Links in Saudia Arabia, and Interlachen CC in Florida, where Fazio Design has helped make the course more resilient to extreme weather.

For our feature interview, Adam Lawrence spoke with David McLay Kidd about his stellar course portfolio and the evolution of his design philosophy. “If I were teaching a class on golf design, width would be in the first lesson,” says Kidd.

There is much more too, including contributions from John Clarkin of Turfgrass on the importance of getting agronomic input at the early stage of a project, and Aaron Gagnon of Hunter about how irrigation has helped elevate aesthetics, playability and sustainability at Österåkers Golfklubb in Sweden. We also report on projects in the West African nation of Benin, at Carmel CC in North Carolina, and Augusta Municipal Golf Course, known as ‘The Patch’, in Georgia.

Enjoy the read!