“Best” is a subjective word at, err… best. What one person or group values as the “top” will never be the same for everyone – still, when you’re looking for something and you want the “best”, it’s always nice when someone compiles a list. Whether you agree or not with their assessment, in 2007 Golf.com published a list chronicling the “100 Top Golf Courses in the World“.¹

Because seven out of the top ten are all within the continental U.S., today we’re looking at the Top 5 Golf Courses scraped from their list, whilst allowing only one entry per country.

#5 Hirono Golf Club, Kobe, Japan

Situated between rolling hills overlooking the city of Kobe, Japan, the Hirono Golf Club is the location of a very exclusive 18 holes. Its claim to fame isn’t the number of major world competitions it’s held², instead it’s simply how hard it is to get in. Apparently this is the course that all other Asian courses are measured against, but I’m not sure how anyone would know; given that getting a tee time at Hirono is nigh on impossible.

Coming in at #37 on the Golf.com’s list, the C.H. Alison-built course is the only entry in our worldwide Top 5 that comes from a non-English speaking country.

#4 Royal Melbourne (West), Melbourne, Australia

Just south of the main urbanised area of Melbourne is the West course of the Royal Melbourne Golf Club which is known for its “intricate bunkering, tough but fair challenge, variety of shotmaking, and exceptionally fast and true greens”. Designed by world renowned course architect, Dr. Alister MacKenzie it’s ranked 6th on Golf.com’s list, but comes it at number 4 on our improved version!

#3 Royal County Down Golf Club, Newcastle, Northern Ireland

Our third course was designed by Old Tom Morris for just 4 guineas. Considered the best in Ireland, the Royal County Down opened in 1889 and today is considered the tenth most exclusive club in the world.

The imagery isn’t the brightest, but does capture the climatic conditions of Northern Ireland perfectly. However, according to the club website, the Royal County Down is one of the most photographed links courses in the world, and with rolling greens peering out over the Irish Sea, it’s easy to see why.

#2 St. Andrews (Old Course), St. Andrews, Scotland

This is of course where the game of golf began. Officially recognised as being designed by “nature”, the 14th century-built Old Course at St. Andrews is the blessed hope of all that play the game. It is the oldest course in the world and probably #1 on the “must play” bucket-list for most golfers. For our list, it comes in at #2 (#3 on Golf.com’s list).

The Open Championship,³ the oldest professional golfing competition, has been held at the Old Course at St. Andrews every five years since 1873. Unfortunately, the last time a Scot won was in 1910.

The Old Course is held in the public trust by an act of Parliament, and every Sunday golfing is banned for the day to allow the course to rest, so it is instead enjoyed by locals for family picnics and leisurely strolls through the greens.

#1 Pine Valley Golf Club, Pine Valley, New Jersey

Finally we reach the Pine Valley Golf Club. Originally built upon 164 acres of marshland by George Arthur Crump, today the private course sprawls nearly 2 sq km in the thick pinelands of New Jersey.

According to Wikipedia, Crump, a hotelier who knew the area from his hunting expeditions, was subject to obsessive idiosyncrasies that ultimately contributed to designing the #1 course in the world.

Some of those peculiarities included:

1. Holes should not be laid parallel to each other.
2. Consecutive holes should not play in the same direction.
3. Players should only be able to see the hole they are playing on.

Don’t expect to play here anytime soon however – to get a tee time at Pine Valley you have to be personally invited and accompanied by one of the board members! Interestingly, Tiger’s been invited, though he’s never played.

Have you played Hirono, taken in the views at the Royal Down, or paid homage at the Old? What do you think about Golf.com’s assessment of the “best”? Have they got it spot on or are there others that deserve the honour? Let us know in the comments, and make sure to leave a link to your favourite course.

Tokyo has two structures, apparently unrelated, with very similar names - the Tower of Wind and the Tower of Winds.

The Tower of Wind (singular, known locally as Kaze no Tō) is a spectacular structure in Tokyo Harbour consisting of a dazzling white circular base topped with blue and white striped ’sails’.

Google reveals a rather surprising number of blogs and other sites convinced that such a structure could only be the secret lair of Godzilla or an international super-villain. The reality is rather more mundane - the Tower of Wind is a ventilation shaft outlet for the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line - the world’s longest undersea tunnel for cars. The 9.6km tunnel is coupled with a 4.4km bridge to link the two sides of the Bay, saving up to 100km of driving.

The Tower of Winds (plural) is a 21m tall building on the mainland designed by architect Toyo Ito.

Street View shows that it is rather unremarkable by day, while Live Maps shows that it is dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers.

By night, however, it comes alive, with ever-changing displays of interior and exterior illumination. More than 1000 LEDs, a dozen neon rings and 30-plus floodlights respond to the noise of the city and the motion of the wind.  This movement of light is intended to represent “the visual complexity of Tokyo metaphorically in terms of a never-ceasing, ever-changing wind”. Interesting details and good night-time pictures can be found at Ego magazine and Lighting Academy.

It’s Earth Day today, an event designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. To celebrate, we’re looking at the unlikely survival of a very tiny piece of nature in the heart of one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas.

From directly above, it appears that there is somehow a large tree growing on the roof of the Kayashima train station in Osaka.

However when we look at the Street View of the station, we can see that only the canopy of the huge tree protrudes from the roof¹, and in fact the entire station, platform and all, have been built around the tree so as to avoid damaging it.

This is a camphor tree which the locals believe to be sacred, so they appealed to the railway company to avoid chopping it down. One of the suggestions for celebrating Earth Day is to plant a tree, and here they found a way to avoid knocking one down in the first place.

It’s just one tree, but it might serve as an example of how much better we could incorporate the natural world into our environment.

Thanks to GEarth Hacks.

Last week Google removed some street view photos from upstate New York as they showed the camera car hitting a wild deer as it crossed the road.

The Google Sightseeing team was unfortunately on holiday when the news broke¹, but the images were captured by various other sites before Google took them down.

However, you can still see deer in Japan, where Google drivers have managed to avoid a repeat incident.

Google have now issued a statement, complete with advice on what if a deer bolts in front of your car.

Have you ever wondered how they get planes clean? Well at Heathrow we can see the plane cleaning crews hard at work, but for some reason it’s the wet outlines of absent planes that are the most interesting.

Anyone who has read our book would already know that there’s just one automatic plane wash in the whole world - and we can see it clearly at Tokyo’s International airport.

Since we first wrote about Tokyo’s plane wash, Street View has given us another view of the structure - which from this angle looks like a big plane made from scaffolding!

See our previous post on The Langoliers.

Thanks to ChrisW.