In the common telling, golf-course design has moved from being punishing to player-friendly. Forget forced carries and narrow, tree-pinched targets — architects now favor width and ground-game options ...

Bill Coore is a big name in golf-course architecture. But he wasn’t always destined for a life in design. In college at Wake Forest, he studied the classics. Not Golden Age layouts. Actual classics.

For most of us, the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro are still two years away, but for golf course landscape architect Gil Hanse of Hanse Golf Course Design, it’s already an Olympic year. That’s ...