Briarwood - Montana - USA

The greens at Briarwood Country Club are a blessed bit of green in a region more known for its stony mountain ranges, but this may not be the color you remember from your round.

Although Jack Nicklaus’s Old Works Golf Club has gathered much attention among Montana golf courses for its black bunkers, traps with this sinister hue actually made their Big Sky debut during the mid-’80s at Briarwood, a design from Brad Benz and Michael Poellot.

Perhaps the most intimidating one of these hazards comes to the right of the final green, a 4 metre-deep trap that comes at the end of a 600-plus yard hole where players will eventually need to cross a wide creek on their way to the putting surface. The course stretches just a touch beyond 7,000 yards from the tips.