Some golf holes just make you go “wow.” You turn a corner in your golf cart after a 50-yard motoring between holes and all of a sudden everything in front of you takes your breath away.
Tom Fazio, the designer of the Alotian Club, Warren Stephens’ exclusive golf course in western Pulaski County, may be the current-day master of the signature hole — only he’s able to populate his courses with several of them. Still, a golfer will remember that one or two holes from any course that struck a chord with his or her appreciation level: the hole that aesthetically was head-and-shoulders better than any other, or that demanded the utmost from the person’s golf talent, or that just finally proved too much to handle and left a golfer thinking, “I’ll get you next time; but, boy, that really was something.”
Some designers put a lake around a hole and deem it the course’s signature, since one of the most acclaimed signature holes in all of golf is Pete Dye’s island No. 17 at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. But nature herself made some signature holes, with the requisite killer bunkers or mounding, such as No. 14 at the Old Course at St. Andrews.
Today’s designers try to emulate nature, if not Dye, as much as they can. Arkansas has an array of such signatures on some of the better courses in the South. ArkansasSports360.com takes a look at some of those holes that elicit a “wow,” an “oh my gosh,” or just an “I’ll get you next time; but boy, that really was something.”












