As post-pandemic golfer participation continues to rise, there’s a slew of new golf courses which are in construction and opened of late.

Several have unapologetically humdrum backstories.  Others come with historical and personal significance of which legends are made.

We came across a cool one in the low-population town of Traphill, N.C.  It’s where the private Contentment Golf Club is being built, and the 800 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains holds special meaning to its developer.

Curt Sidden, a Davidson, N.C. resident, would retreat to find refuge with his late grandfather.  Sidden’s father, Dr. Curtis Sidden, 92, grew up in Traphill and is heavily involved in the planning of Contentment.  Now, Sidden’s vision is to provide the same, quiet, happy-place getaway for city and suburban dwellers alike.

Unsurprisingly, the literal meaning of contentment is “serenity” that defines the breathtaking land on which Contentment resides.

Read the full article on GolfGuide.com. 

If might seem like golf course architect Scott Hoffman came out of nowhere with his design at Lost Rail, opened in 2022 outside of Omaha. However, he’d previously worked for over a decade with Tom Fazio, designing courses in the western U.S. He then worked with Tim Jackson and David Kahn for a number of years. Hoffman wasn’t pursuing new work when he was approached about looking at land for a club near Omaha, where he’s from, and those interests turned into Lost Rail, Golf Digest’s runner up for Best New Private Course for 2023. He’s now busy constructing Mapleton, another new stand-alone club near Sioux Falls, Idaho.

Hoffman joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan on the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss finding the land for Lost Rail, his instinct for routing golf courses, the insomnia-inducing puzzle of routing Lost Rail, the freedom of working for Fazio versus being his own business, how to water a 20,000 square-foot green, whether classical architecture influences his designs, the futility of properly evaluating a course after just one round and how he compares and contrasts Shinnecock Hills with National Golf Links of America.

Listen to the episode here.