Links

Talpa commented yesterday that our local golf course doesn’t look at all like a links course. Until then I had thought that ‘golf links’ is simply a synonym for ‘golf course’. Other people around here seem to have thought the same, since the road beside our golf course is called ‘Links Road’ and there is a small hotel on Links Road called ‘Links House’.
 
But according to Prof Google a links golf course is the oldest style of golf course, first developed on the east coast of Scotland. The word 'links' comes via the Scots language from the Old English word “hlinc" and refers to an area of coastal sand dunes
 
Many links – though not all – are located in coastal areas, on sandy soil, often amid dunes, with few water hazards and few if any trees. This reflects both the nature of the scenery where the sport happened to originate, and the fact that only limited resources were available to golf course architects at the time, and any earth moving had to be done by hand, so it was kept to a minimum.