Tag: derek duncan

Episode 87: Scott Hoffman

Episode 87: Scott Hoffman

If might seem like golf course architect Scott Hoffman came out of nowhere with his design at Lost Rail, opened in 2022 outside of Omaha. However, he’d previously worked for over a decade with Tom Fazio, designing courses in the western U.S. He then worked with Tim Jackson and David Kahn for a number of…

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Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 27, ft. Ben Crenshaw

Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 27, ft. Ben Crenshaw

Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw joins golf course builder Jim Urbina and Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss his long time partnership with architect Bill Coore and the beliefs and impulses that define the many courses they’ve built, from Sand Hills to Friar’s Head to Bandon Trails, all the way through to their…

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Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 26, ft. Greg Letsche

Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 26, ft. Greg Letsche

Golf course architect Greg Letsche, lead designer for Ernie Els Design, joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina to discuss his early years working for Pete Dye, how running projects for Jack Nicklaus differed from his experience with Dye, the design similarities between Dye and Nicklaus, the sometimes absurd…

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Episode 86: Blake Conant

Episode 86: Blake Conant

In less than 10 years in the profession, Blake Conant has risen from crew member to shaper to the co-designer of Old Barnwell, a stunning new course near Aiken, S.C. Conant has primarily shaped greens and bunkers for Tom Doak at projects like Houston’s Memorial Park, Bel Air, The National’s Gunnamatta Course in Australia and…

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Episode 85: Remembering Tom Weiskopf with Phil Smith

Episode 85: Remembering Tom Weiskopf with Phil Smith

Shortly after Tom Weiskopf broke with design partner Jay Morrish in the late 1990s he turned to architect Phil Smith. Smith had been working with Nicklaus Design in Arizona, but the opportunity to partner one-on-one with Weiskopf was too good an opportunity to pass up. Over the next 24 years, Smith and Weiskopf designed courses…

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Episode 84: Don Placek

Episode 84: Don Placek

Don Placek began working for Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design in 1997 after being in Perry Dye’s Denver office for several years. It was a significant jump, going from the types of technical builds Dye was coordinating in the western U.S. and Asia to Doak’s more intuitive, organic way of designing and constructing courses. Placek…

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Episode 83: Stephen Kay

Episode 83: Stephen Kay

Architect Stephen Kay has been involved in the building, remodeling or renovation of over 300 courses during his design career spanning back to the mid-1980s. He was one of the pioneering voices in the late 80s for looking at the historical record of a course during renovation to attempt to honor the original architecture. He…

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Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 25, ft. Josh Pettit

Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 25, ft. Josh Pettit

Designer and historian Josh Pettit began collecting the writings of Alister MacKenzie for his new compendium of essays, “The MacKenzie Reader,” years ago, and was ready to publish in 2020 when the pandemic postponed printing until the summer of 2022. The wait was worth it–the Reader is a gorgeous volume of Pettit’s selections of the…

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