Golf architecture from the late 1800s through the Great Depression is a well-traveled road. Between contemporaneous books and articles from the likes of Horace Hutchinson, C.B. Macdonald, Alister Mackenzie, George Thomas and others, and from the discoveries of modern researchers who scour archives and digitized newspaper reports, the story of golf’s formative years in America
Courses
The Minnesota native wasn’t technically a golf course architect—he never built an actual course—but rather a golf course artist. And yet the creative flair and dramatic realism that Chapman, who died on July 9 at age 97, brought to his fictional drawings made them as memorable as some real-life designs. An accomplished player who attempted
When your family lineage of designing and building golf courses reaches back nearly 90 years, you tend to view the profession of golf course architecture from a unique perspective. Rees Jones began working for Robert Trent Jones in 1965 when his father was at the height of his career. That proximity to the most prominent
Moments in golf’s recent history have taken important steps toward making the game more inclusive of the LGBTQ community. Two examples: TPC Harding Park hosting the inaugural Pride Open, organized by Greg Fitzgerald, the first out, gay male PGA teaching pro, and the USGA raising Pride flags at its headquarters in June and sharing an
What do artists desire most: critical acclaim or commercial success? They aren’t mutually exclusive, and every creator desires both, but rarely, in any medium, do the two overlap entirely. When he was younger, the always outspoken Kidd might have strived purely for critical consideration, embracing the notion that the artist’s role is to push the
The long-term consequences of golf courses sitting fallow for extended periods of time was a very real concern this past spring, as people around the world retreated indoors into quarantine. The thought of courses being abandoned en masse, out of hardship, was not on my mind in January, however, when I walked the site of
How much thought does an average golfer give to the way holes are laid out on a golf course? Does the routing matter, or at least does it matter more than the quality of the individual holes? Can a golf course be great if the routing is poor, and conversely, can a wonderful routing save
Seminole Golf Club, a mainstay in Golf Digest’s biennial ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, will be center stage during the TaylorMade Driving Relief Skins Game pitting Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson against Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff. What will viewers see when the vaunted course makes its television debut? Veteran architecture editor Ron
Every architect yearns to work on a great site, and almost all of them will tell you that good land is one of the top requirements for building a good golf course. Over the last 25 years, places like Bandon Dunes, Sand Valley and Barnbougle Dunes, in Tasmania—several of the most incredible sites to ever
For the last five years, nearly everything Gil Hanse touches seems to turn to gold. Hanse is arguably the hottest, and hardest working, golf architect in the business and has had an incredible string of successes, with both original designs and restorations of storied courses, since the debut of his Rio Olympics course in 2016.
It’s time to talk about The King, specifically the golf courses of Arnold Palmer Design Company. For more than 45 years, Palmer’s design company has built highly entertaining and beautiful courses worldwide for clients who were proud to display the Palmer name. But was there a cohesive design intent behind the hundreds of courses the
12. Seminole Golf Club Donald Ross (1929) / Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (2017) A majestic Donald Ross design with a clever routing on a rectangular site, each hole at Seminole encounters a new wind direction. The greens are no longer Ross, replaced 50 years ago in a regrassing effort that showed little appreciation for
It began with a simple question: if The Old Course at St. Andrews is so great, why hasn’t it been mimicked or replicated more often? What a can of worms. Of course, it has been copied in different ways over time, and it remains the touchstone for so much of what we consider standard in
A single great feature, or even a merely interesting one, can enshrine a golf course with character. Pebble Beach and Cypress Point show off a rocky coastline like few others, but the endowment doesn’t have to be that grand. Character can come from lesser features, like a sand ridge (Seminole), a snaky tributary (Augusta) or
This hiatus of global activity is a great chance to reflect. These unique circumstances provide an opportunity. And opportunity is what golf course architect Jim Urbina and I discussed when we came up with the idea of a new podcast, The Salon. Urbina’s business of building and remodeling golf courses is one based on itinerant
Bill Coore always knew the first hole at Cabot Point was going to be difficult to build. “I just don’t know about the first hole,” he confides. “I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.” Cabot Point will be the centerpiece of Cabot St. Lucia, the newest golf and resort venture from the group
Earning the name “the Bunker Guru” your peers in golf-course design circles is quite the compliment. And for Jeff Bradley, the moniker is apt. Since the late 1990s he has been arguably the best known and most talented creator of bunkers, working primarily on the golf courses of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Bradley brings
The partnership of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, the men behind new Byron Nelson home Trinity Forest, has been one golf’s most respected architectural teams for quite some time. And it all started back in the late 1980s, when the pair visited a site for a course that was never built. This came soon after
As we sit around and contemplate our world amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve had ample time to think about the future of course design, and what might be in store over the next decade. We asked 20 or so golf-course architects to reflect on the business and its future. The consensus is a pragmatic one:
Many golf course architects will tell you they used to doodle imagined golf holes when they were kids. With few exceptions, though, these old drawings, if they survived, went into some scrapbook somewhere and never made it before the eyes of the world. The type of youngster who doodles golf-holes today, however, does have a
In the summer of 2018, after a round of golf at The Country Club in the Pepper Pike suburb of Cleveland, I spent some time perusing the numerous artifacts on the walls of the cavernous locker room. Not far from the original match-play bracket of the 1935 U.S. Amateur played at “Country” was a reproduction
“See that field over there?” Bobby Weed says, pointing toward a few hundred acres of grassland abutting a distant tree line. “That’s my ocean.” Weed is standing outside the nearly completed clubhouse at The Grove XXIII, the uber-exclusive golf course he built for his client, NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan (it opened in the
George Waters has emerged as a kind of sage-like figure in the realm of golf-course design. He’s certainly seen the industry across the spectrum and from a variety of angles. When he was younger, he worked on maintenance crews at several golf courses. When he discovered his passion for architecture, he contacted the office of
HAMMOCK BEACH, A SALAMANDER GOLF & SPA RESORTPalm Coast Six holes on the Jack Nicklaus-designed Ocean Course skirt the Atlantic. The inland Tom Watson-designed Conservatory is boldly dotted with sod-wall bunkers.More Information Mark Whitright/Courtesy of Hammock Beach INNISBROOK, A SALAMANDER GOLF & SPA RESORTPalm Harbor Four 18s, including the lush, hilly, tree-lined Copperhead Course, a
I was sitting at home last Sunday, as most of us were, looking at my children running around the house and wondering how we were all going to make it through the upcoming weeks together without sports. The blank television screen looked like a black hole that not only refused to emanate joy, but seemed
Aside from Augusta National and Pebble Beach, perhaps no professional golf arena is more instantly recognizable than The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. At a glance, golf fans can identify not just the climactic holes at the TPC (as it’s commonly been called since its genre-bending architecture was unleashed on the world in 1980,
Among golf-course-architecture circles we often fall into a cliché of talking about a contemporary youth movement of up-and-coming designers training and working for the likes of Bill Coore, Tom Doak and Gil Hanse. Many of the talented shapers and artists we lump into this group are in their 30s, or older—golf design is one of
The PGA Tour’s annual return to Bay Hill Club and Lodge, host to a PGA Tour event since 1979, allows us a chance to celebrate Arnold Palmer the course designer. Because his influences and contributions to all areas of golf are so significant, Arnie might be under-appreciated as an architect—which is a compliment to his
Announcing the 2020 Alister MacKenzie “Lido” Prize in Golf Architecture What is The Lido Prize?It is awarded annually by members of the Alister MacKenzie Society to honor the memory of Dr. Alister MacKenzie and recognize the design potential of an up-and-coming architect. The winner will be invited to attend and participate in the annual Society
A summer buddies golf vacation is not unlike making your own ice cream sundae. There are plenty of ingredients that can affect how it turns out, but you really can’t go wrong. That said, by adding the following toppings, you can max out the fun. Establish traditions Whether it’s playing for a tattered green jacket