There is, to my mind, something vaguely dissatisfying about coffee table-style volumes profiling golf courses.  Make no mistake; I own many such titles and, in an anti-intellectual sort of way, probably spend more time re-examining their photos than looking over any of my more “serious” golfing tomes.  The problem is that no matter how hard even the best of these may try, photographs are seldom capable of capturing the vast grandeur of a great golf course or, for that matter, the countless subtle, on-the-ground details that tend give the best layouts so much of their playing interest.

But collect such books we do, which leads me into an area which may interest American readers more than those residing overseas: coffee table volumes profiling courses far – and I do mean far – removed from our standard North America/United Kingdom frame of reference.  Given the game’s British roots, such titles generally have been confined to English-speaking nations such as Australia and South Africa; indeed, even as I write this, I remain puzzled that nobody has produced an English (or dual-language) text profiling the elite courses of golf-crazy Japan.  But thankfully, there is much fertile ground to cover in these former British colonies so, without further pontification, here are six modern volumes – all reasonably available on the internet – which do a particularly good job of profiling courses which the average North American golfer will never otherwise see:  (Continue)