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Non-golfers sometimes treat the terms ‘golf course’ and ‘links’ as synonymous, but they’re not.
“Linksland is a specific type of sandy, wind-sculpted coastal terrain — the word comes from the Old English word blinc, ‘rising ground’ — and in its authentic form it exists in only a few places on earth, the most famous of which are in Great Britain and Ireland”.
Links are always dry — even in the depths of winter — because of the way water drains through the sandy base. So the ball always bounces on the fairway, and never ‘plugs’ in the way that it will on a sodden inland course. And because links are always, by definition, by the sea, to the challenges of the terrain must be added the complications of wind.
See John Naughton’s Memex for more on Missing Links.