Today’s design culture

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There has been a sea change in the culture of golf architecture because of the trend toward renovation and restoration. Designers are paying much more attention to site specific land features and the inherent character of the terrain they work with. Gone is the lofty sense of self-entitled privilege by which designers could brush off concerns by everyday golfers with a dismissive retort of “how many golf courses have you designed?”

Architects are more accountable than ever to clients and golfers. In the end, everyone benefits from a more interactive approach, and the quality of golf design has improved dramatically.

Starting with the marketing efforts of Robert Trent Jones Sr. in the late 1950s, some architects started to think of themselves as creative dynamos who were above criticism. Like heroic building architect Howard Roark of Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel “The Fountainhead,” the modern golf designer touted himself as a master shaper of the earth. Jones sold himself as an artist with a signature design style, one that led the USGA to adopt him as “the Open Doctor.”

Robert Von Hagge arrived at site visits adorned in a cape, standing atop the hood of a deep-finned Cadillac and pronouncing judgments that brooked no questioning. Designers were treated in fawning press coverage with all the deference to the filmmaking “auteur,” as if the director created the film alone, without cameramen or gaffers. All too often in the popular golf press and in promotional displays, golf designers were depicted Moses-like in pose, standing on a mound, a roll of plans in one hand, the other hand pointing out across the land.

There was a lot of new design work to be had in the 1960s and beyond, with periodic phases of economic recession momentarily slowing down the pace of construction. That’s when architects started mass producing design plans. The process was akin to the suburbanization of the American landscape featuring Levittowns, shopping malls and highway interchanges, with little regard for local landforms.

Unfortunately, the same heavy-handed approach was deployed upon the game’s Golden Age designs. Handcrafted works by the likes of Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, Seth Raynor, and the incomparable Midwest team of William Langford and Theodore J. Moreau were butchered in the name of “modernization.” The advent of the “player-designer” only aggravated the situation. Nor was it conducive to spending extended time on the ground looking at details, listening to people and handcrafting a finished product. When the number of site visits are stipulated in fixed contract, as if your attention were a matter of an appearance fee, there is little sensibility for the most important asset in golf design — taking time.

It has taken decades to overcome this ham-handed approach. The unraveling began in the late 1980s, when former design associates and assistants to Pete Dye began going out on their own to make their mark. As easy as it is to criticize Dye for the contrived, lunar shaping of many of his golf courses, he (re)introduced to the trade a level of hand-crafting and constant reworking, with features embedded down in the ground. Among those who came out of that tradition were Tom Doak, Jim Urbina, Bill Coore and Rod Whitman — all of whom subsequently flourished as designers who were just as interested in restoration as in new design work.

When the golf industry finally hit the skids around 2008-09, attention turned from new course work to restoration and renovation. And for the last decade or so, that has been the focus, especially as clubs that had long neglected their infrastructure have lately sought to make up for lost time by rebuilding internally, whether the irrigation, drainage, bunkering, greens or extensive tree work. And as architects have discovered, it is incredibly time consuming to undertake such work, entailing endless committee meetings, focus groups, budget sessions, board presentations, open house sessions with members, and long walks and talks with the superintendent.

While there has been a partial rebound in the new-course market, much of the focus now is on restoration and renovation work. Many architects with full portfolios might not even get to design a new course again, but they will make a good living paying attention to what the land has to offer and what course managers and everyday golfers have to say about their golf course.

What counts now is not the architect as heroic figurehead, but the golf designer as an empathetic figure, listener, partner, collaborator and teammate. It’s a whole new ball game out there. The industry is better for it. Golfers are smarter. And design is better.