The Missing Links: America’s Greatest Lost Golf Courses & Holes by Wiley

Rediscover 27 lost icons

The Missing Links: America’s Greatest Lost Golf Courses & Holes, written with meticulous research by Daniel Wexler, invites you to explore 27 once-celebrated layouts that no longer exist in today’s landscape. This volume surfaces through careful documentation, letting you glimpse the ambition, design, and history of courses that have since disappeared or transformed beyond recognition.

What makes this book special

Every entry combines period photography and detailed maps with a hole-by-hole narrative, helping you imagine how each course might have played. You’ll encounter renowned designs and the minds behind them, including Alister MacKenzie’s Sharp Park GC in California, which was altered by a Pacific storm; William Langford’s Key West GC in Florida, challenged by a hurricane; and Charles Blair Macdonald’s Lido Club, reshaped during the Depression era. The book weaves atmospheric details with architectural context, offering a vivid sense of place and time without making claims about outcomes on today’s greens.

Inside you’ll find

• 27 lost courses and holes documented with period photography and maps
• Hole-by-hole guided tours that reconstruct the feel of each layout
• Profiles of famous architects and the historical forces that shaped their designs
• Used Book in Good Condition

Why golf history lovers will appreciate it

Beyond a catalog, this book reads like a travelogue through time. Archival images, hand-drawn or printed maps, and careful annotations invite you to compare eras, understand how geography influenced strategy, and savor the stories behind each site. The narrative emphasizes context and craft—how a coastline, a hurricane, or a Depression-era sale redirected a course’s fate—while staying anchored in the present moment of curiosity and discovery.

Who should read this

Ideal for golf history enthusiasts, course-design fans, and collectors of historical photography, The Missing Links offers a thoughtful, richly detailed perspective on a chapter of American golf that remains fascinating and largely unseen by the casual reader.