The topic is bunkers: should they be placed scientifically or randomly? Should there be more or less, or any at all? Has the naturalistic look become ubiquitous and overused? What about proper bunker depth? Are liners a waste of money? And are bunker still the hazards they once were, have they lost their importance, and…
Like most architects, Steve Smyers has a deep reverence for the classical era and the strategic brilliance of Harry Colt, Alister MacKenzie, George Thomas and others. However, as an elite player as well as a veteran designer, he realized the basic strategic precepts that have existed since the early 1900s and have guided much of…
In this Feed the Ball podcast, we get deep into some Wisconsin golf talk with golf course architect Craig Haltom. Haltom joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss recreating C.B. Macdonald’s The Lido at Sand Valley, how GPS technology has the potential to change the way courses are preserved and finished, how he…
Is it possible we take Whistling Straits for granted? Of all the spectacular builds in the history of golf, from The Lido to Calusa Pines, very little is spoken about how Pete Dye and Herb Kohler transformed flat farmland and an abandoned Army airfield into the wild, multilayered Irish-looking golf course gouged into the bluffs…
Davis Love III needs no introduction. But just in case, he’s a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, has logged over 20 PGA Tour victories, won the 1997 PGA Championship, was twice victorious at The Players Championship and is a two-time Ryder Cup captain. He’s also a tournament founder (the PGA Tour’s RSM…
James Duncan came to the U.S. from his native Denmark in the early 1990s to learn the craft of building golf courses. He learned from the best, working first with Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf Design, then joining with Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw to help construct courses like East Hampton, Old Sandwich, Bandon Trails,…
Designer Troy Miller worked for Landmark Land Co. for a decade, building golf courses around North America, before leaving the company to settle down in his hometown of Charleston, SC. The move put him in a unique position to do something he’d first envisioned years before: help the city rebuild the popular but dated municipal…
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 a limited amount of original work, David Kahn has proven to be one of the most creative, courageous and expressionistic golf course architects working today. Along with partner Tim Jackson, the other half of Jackson Kahn Design, he’s reimagined the shaping and visage of the historic Dunes Course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, built…
Canadian designer Ian Andrew, Feed the Ball guest from Episode 14, is back to visit with Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina. The conversation turns to topics of: –Choose Your Own Adventure golf architecture; –The satisfactions of playing “unknown” courses; –Golf as an emotional experience; –The importance of “compression and release” in design; –Creativity beginning with…