PGA Tour and current PGA Champions tour player Tom Lehman, winner of the 1996 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Anne’s, has seamlessly managed to maintain an elite game while developing a golf course design outlook that almost entirely eschews consideration of elite players. Lehman stops by the Salon to speak with Golf Digest…
In this volume of the Salon, architect Gil Hanse sits with Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina to discuss how he and design partner Jim Wagner build golf courses. They talk about the sanctity of being on machinery, if routing is more vital to a good course than shaping, the importance of “cooling off,” the importance…
Thad Layton, principal at Arnold Palmer Design Company, enters the Salon to talk to Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina about Palmer and the rules of architecture. Specifically the discussion revolves around fundamental rules, when it’s advisable to break them, whether it’s ever permissible to design crossing holes, working within the constraints of conservative developers, straight…
Jim Wagner and Gil Hanse have been design partners for over 20 years. Though Hanse’s name is on their courses, Wagner has been equally influential in their concepts and outcomes while overseeing a dedicated group of shapers and designers known as the Cavemen. In the last 10 years the two men have taken their small…
Bruce Hepner began his architectural career in 1990 as an associate for Ron Forse, with whom he became one of the early advocates and influencers of historic golf course restoration. He returned home to Michigan in 1993 to work for Tom Doak, first as a shaper and later as a designer at modern masterpieces like Pacific…
Ron Forse was an engineer who made a jump into golf course architecture in 1989, working on a project in West Virginia in conjunction with Dr. Michael Hurdzan. Though not necessarily his intent, he began taking jobs consulting with a number of historic club, guiding them through the process of renovating their old courses. Since…
Trying to describe the essentials of good golf course routing calls to mind Justice Potter Stewart’s old brief about classifying porn — I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. Bad golf course routings can be spotted miles away but truly great ones can be sublime. You often don’t realize they’re…
The first project Kyle Franz ever worked on was Tom Doak’s masterpiece, Pacific Dunes, a course now recognized as one of the best in the world. That fortuitous turn launched his design/build career where he amassed one of the business’s strongest pedigrees shaping courses for Bill Coore, Tim Liddy, Gil Hanse and others. His big solo break came…
The first project Kyle Franz ever worked on was Tom Doak’s masterpiece, Pacific Dunes, a course now recognized as one of the best in the world. That fortuitous turn launched his design/build career where he amassed one of the business’s strongest pedigrees shaping courses for Bill Coore, Tim Liddy, Gil Hanse and others. His big solo break came…
Tim Liddy began his career working closely with Pete Dye in 1993, transitioning into golf course design following a career in landscape architecture. The two men have enjoyed a close collaboration for a quarter century, with Liddy becoming fluent in the Dye vernacular while also establishing his own independent firm responsible for highly acclaimed original…