Brian Schneider joined Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design in 2002. For the last 17 years he’s played a vital role creating some of this generation’s greatest golf courses around the world: Ballyneal, Old Macdonald, Cape Kidnappers, Rock Creek Cattle Company and others. He was the lead design associate on Barnbougle Dunes, Dismal River Red, Grand…
Dave Wilber, aka the Turfgrass Zealot, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on golf grasses and soils. Agronomist to the stars, Wilber has consulted with and been instrumental in developing grassing plans for some of the world’s greatest courses, including places like Kingsbarns in Scotland and Friars Head. He’s also been a pioneer in…
Over the last several years we’ve been witnessing a fairly radical development in golf architecture. Ever since the most important golf tournaments shifted formats from match play to stroke play, architects and clubs and organizations have been concerned, and occasionally obsessed, with “defending” par. In modern golf par has become sacrosanct, an (admittedly arbitrary) construct…
Mike Keiser once said the property at Sand Valley reminded him of a combination of Pine Valley, Sand Hills and Sunningdale. Talk about raising expectations. Intimate knowledge of those courses isn’t required to appreciate this rare environment of barren sand, monstrous dunes and orbital pine forests that accounts for Sand Valley. In fact you need…
Jay Blasi founded his own design company in 2012 after working for Robert Trent Jones II for over a decade. He gained notoriety as the lead associate on two high profile Jones courses: The Patriot Golf Club in Oklahoma, and Washington State’s Chambers Bay, host of the 2015 U.S. Open, where Blasi was instrumental in…
Not since Hugh Wilson at Merion has an architectural career been launched as brightly as David McLay Kidd’s. As a young designer in his 20’s, Kidd was tabbed by Mike Keiser to build the first course at Bandon Dunes. Kidd followed that spectacular success with a series of prestigious designs across several continents, becoming arguably…
South Carolina native Beau Welling played college golf at Brown University and earned a landscape architecture degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. After exploring career opportunities in several diverse fields, he committed to golf course architecture joining Tom Fazio’s staff in the late 1990’s. In 2007 he opened his own firm in Greenville, and became…
Keith Cutten is an integral player in golf design’s next generation who has worked alongside a variety of architects including Bill Coore, Jeff Mingay, Doug Carrick and, most importantly, his mentor Rod Whitman shaping features, drafting plans, developing budgets and running job sites. He’s also one of the leading young historians on golf course design and…
Ian Andrew is one of golf’s most respected restoration and preservation specialists, working principally on Golden Age courses in Canada. He has few peers when it comes to observation and the analysis of golf course architecture, and he rarely shies from expressing candid opinions on the state of the game. His writings can be found…