From Old Tom (Morris) more than a hundred years ago, through to a much younger Tom (Doak) today, the business of golf course design has been littered with celebrity, personality, controversy, egos, trends and the full gamut of playing and presentation styles. Measuring the career of a tournament professional is much simpler than assessing the work of a golf architect, principally because of the subjective nature of those who study and commentate on design, but also because golf courses are living, evolving entities and many older layouts have changed drastically over the years. With these limitations in mind, we attempt to identify and rank the ten greatest golf architects of all time – the criteria simply being to look at the portfolio of various eminent designers and determine which ones are the most impressive.
Firstly the apologies, and there will need to be plenty. Designers like Willie Park Jr (Sunningdale, Maidstone, Olympia Fields), Charles Alison (Hirono, Kawana), Herbert Fowler (The Berkshire, Walton Heath, Eastward Ho!), James Braid (Gleneagles, Carnoustie, St Enodoc), George Thomas (Riviera, LA Country Club, Bel-Air) and Perry Maxwell (Crystal Downs with Alister MacKenzie, Prairie Dunes, Southern Hills) were unlucky to have missed selection, as each created a number of wonderful courses during the early part of the 20th century. Also considered were the likes of George Crump (Pine Valley), Hugh Wilson (Merion) and Henry Fownes (Oakmont), pioneers remembered for their tireless work on a single outstanding product, as well as Bob Harrison, the only local Australian architect with a world-class résumé of original work.
Another strong contender was Canadian great Stanley Thompson, who designed such treasures as Highlands Links, St George’s, Capilano, Banff Springs and Jasper Park in his homeland. Thompson’s influence on golf was greater than the composition of his portfolio, as he was also the mentor of Robert Trent Jones Sr, perhaps the most prolific course architect ever.
If this list were to measure the most influential architects, however, then Old Tom Morris and Charles Blair Macdonald would have easily made the Top 10. Macdonald for introducing quality golf design to the USA by creating his extraordinary National Golf Links of America, and Old Tom as much for increasing the reach and appeal of golf as for his design work at places like Machrihanish, Prestwick and around St Andrews. The standard of Macdonald’s design work was certainly high, but he neither left enough new courses to qualify in such elite company nor was his design work particularly innovative. Rather than creating original holes he instead chose to copy the famous par threes, fours and fives of Europe. Old Tom, on the other hand, was busier and unafraid to design unique and unusual holes. Although he worked on a number of courses that are true world-beaters, none of Royal Dornoch, Royal County Down, Muirfield, Carnoustie, Lahinch or Cruden Bay remains as Old Tom had arranged.
So onto the top 10, and while most of these men worked during golf’s ‘Golden Age’, the period between 1900 and 1939, their backgrounds, personalities, styles and modus operandi were very different. Among them are master salesmen and innovators like MacKenzie and Tillinghast, fingers-in-all-pies types like Harry Colt and Donald Ross, eccentric artists like Tom Simpson and Pete Dye and even a non-golfer named Seth Raynor. Ross was the busiest architect featured, working on more than 400 layouts, but if history teaches us anything it’s that there is a difference between quantity and quality when it comes to golf course architecture. None of Robert Trent Jones, Robert Trent Jones II, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player or Tom Bendelow, each with hundreds of completed courses, would be seriously considered for inclusion among a list of the all-time greats.
10. William Flynn – Flynn will forever be remembered for his work in 1931 at Shinnecock Hills in New York, which was essentially a redesign of a Seth Raynor and Charles Blair Macdonald course that had to be shifted away from a proposed highway running through Southampton. About a third of the layout was to be retained, but the interaction between the new and old land here was so beautifully handled by Flynn that it’s almost impossible to distinguish between the 12 holes he created and the 6 originals that were reshaped.
William Flynn got his start in design at Merion nearly two decades earlier. Working on the grounds crew he helped Hugh Wilson complete the course and apparently suggested a few amendments of his own. He later went into business with Howard Toomey, and was particularly prolific in the Philadelphia area where he designed fine courses like the Philadelphia Country Club, Rolling Green, Huntingdon Valley and Lancaster. Other notable Flynn layouts include Cherry Hills, the Cascades Course at The Homestead, Lehigh and nine holes at The Country Club in Brookline. Significantly, he was also the guy appointed to complete the final few holes at Pine Valley after George Crump had passed away.
9. Seth Raynor – For many, Seth Raynor will be the most surprising inclusion on this list. A non-golfing surveyor, Raynor was plucked from obscurity by C.B. Macdonald in 1907 to help create his field of dreams at The National Golf Links on Long Island. Macdonald once quipped that Raynor barely knew one end of a golf club from the other, but he was an intelligent man and Macdonald taught him the virtues of great golf and how to find areas of virgin land where the best golfing holes and features could be replicated.
Although none of Raynor’s holes were originals, he did become an expert at identifying suitable ground for golf and routing courses in such a way that his replicas could be best adapted to the site. His par threes were especially effective. Some clearly worked better than others, but most of the really memorable Redan, Eden and Biarritz holes built during the last century came from Raynor. His best courses, Fishers Island, Chicago Golf Club and Yeamans Hall are terrific, as are those on the next tier down such as Shoreacres, The Creek Club, Camargo, Piping Rock and Yale. Raynor was an unlikely golf course architect; indoctrinated by Macdonald to spread the gospel of great golf across America, he essentially worked so that his mentor didn’t have to.
8. A.W. Tillinghast – One of several highly respected ‘Golden Age’ golf architects from Philadelphia, A.W. Tillinghast was a gifted designer responsible for some of the most cherished championship tests in America. An aggressive and unabashed self-promoter, ‘Tillie’ was especially busy during the heady days of the 1910s and 20s when he worked on storied layouts like Winged Foot (East & West), Baltusrol (Upper & Lower), San Francisco Golf Club, Ridgewood, Quaker Ridge, Baltimore Country Club (Five Farms East), Somerset Hills and the courses of Bethpage State Park in New York, including the mighty Black layout. He is also credited with suggesting the famous 7th and 13th holes at Pine Valley.
Unlike Raynor, Tillinghast was a daring designer with a pioneering spirit. Unafraid to push the envelope, his putting contours were generally severe and often experimental. As a result Tillinghast courses rarely appear or feel the same, although most are memorable for their shapely bunkering and intricate green complexes. Had some of his better-known courses, such as Winged Foot and Baltusrol, not become so narrow and overgrown, Tillinghast would have appeared even higher in this ranking. Pleasingly, the likes of Somerset Hills and San Francisco Golf Club are true time capsules where the ‘Tillie’ magic remains lovingly preserved. A round on either is a special treat.
7. Pete Dye – Unquestionably the most influential of the current day architects, Pete Dye is pushing 85 years old yet still full of energy and still actively designing and digging golf holes. Best known for his extravagant, heavily shaped modern creations, when Dye started work in the 1960s his courses were actually quite subtle and understated. Somewhere along the way things changed, and the gentle charm of Crooked Stick and The Golf Club, became the charged-up adrenalin rush of TPC Sawgrass, Kiawah Ocean and his latest histrionics at Whistling Straits and French Lick.
Dye does things his own way, building courses without detailed plans or notions of what may be fair or expected. He is famous for using railway sleepers to fortify his bunkers and lakes, and for building long courses and iconic holes like the island-green 17th at Sawgrass. Many other Dye layouts have a water-carry par three as well, and in fact it’s his ability to create a memorable and diverse set of short holes that has largely underpinned his success.
While some dislike Dye’s style of design, others regard him as a genius who understands that the only way to test modern professionals is to build obscenely long courses with small, penal targets. Personally, I find Dye absolutely fascinating and while I don’t care much for his newer creations, Teeth of the Dog, The Golf Club, Long Cove, TPC Sawgrass and Pete Dye Golf Club are all tremendous fun to play.
6. Tom Simpson – An eccentric Englishman who dressed sharply and drove expensive cars, Tom Simpson was one of the most passionate advocates for strategic design and the man who apparently coined the phrase ‘Golden Age’, in reference to golf’s boom years of the 1920s. His passion for design arose from a study of the greens at his home club Woking, near London. So impressed was he with the work of Stuart Paton and John Low, who had redesigned the putting targets, that he decided to forego a promising legal career to instead focus his attentions on the art of golf course creation.
His start in the business came in partnership with Herbert Fowler, but Simpson quickly established his own practice and worked for a number of outstanding clients, including Ballybunion and County Louth in Ireland, Cruden Bay in Scotland, Royal Porthcawl in Wales, Liphook in England and the Royal Golf Club of Belgium. On each of these projects Simpson was employed essentially to overhaul existing layouts, and there remains some conjecture about the level of his involvement at each club. What can’t be denied is the work he did on new course projects in Europe, particularly France where he designed Hardelot (Les Pins), Chiberta, Fontainebleau and two gems north of Paris named Morfontaine and Chantilly. All 27 holes at Morfontaine are sublime, while the best holes at Chantilly and Fontainebleau are as good as any on the European mainland. Simpson also added key holes to St Enodoc, Rye, Carnoustie and Muirfield and designed the charming Royal GC des Fagnes course near Spa in Belgium, which, like Chantilly, features some wonderful cross bunkering.
Throughout his career Simpson wrote beautifully on the subject of design. His work was guided by principles that included the desire for courses to demand ‘mental agility’ and for a hole to either ‘be more difficult than it looks or look more difficult than it is’. Further he believed that the centre of the fairway should never be the ideal place to drive your ball, his best courses reflect these views through strategic bunkering and angled greens that generally encourage an approach from one side of the fairway or the other. One of the strangest anecdotes about Simpson was that he had an obituary written about him a full five years before he passed, apparently so he could approve its contents.
**To view Part II of the article, and discover the Top 5 - click here.
