Chris Cochran began his career building golf courses for Jack Nicklaus in the mid-1980s. With over 100 international projects completed, he is Nicklaus Design’s longest tenured senior design associate, and since the early 90s has arguably been the most significant mover behind Nicklaus Design’s global operation. Cochran sits down with Golf Digest architecture editor Derek…
As superintendent of Sand Hills Golf Club for the last 13 years, Kyle Hegland has one of the most unique jobs in golf. The world-renowned course is located in one of the most extreme environments for golf — an arid climate ripped by savage winds and brutal winters. Yet Hegland’s expertise in creating and maintaining…
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…
When the story is at last written about the current era of neoclassical architecture, Jim Urbina is certain to be featured as a star character. He represents a distinct branch of the Dye architectural tree having begun his career working on projects for Pete and Perry Dye. Later, Tom Doak hired Urbina at Renaissance Design,…
David Marcucilli’s first passion is his hometown of Newtown, CT, where he’s attempting to orchestrate the funding and design of a new all-season public green space that will include his conception of innovative, non-traditional golf. He hopes it will become a place of sociability, togetherness and pride for a town that is still suffering from…
In almost all cases golf courses are a jarring abstraction against their environment. No matter how evolved they may appear, there’s nothing natural about their shapes, their presence or their reason for being. Golf as we know it does not appear accidentally in any ecosystem. They are not random mutations but rather invasive species. But…
Someday we’ll be able to talk about Ballyneal in the northeastern corner of Colorado without referencing Sand Hills, as I’ve already just done. It’s kind of like how it took about 15 years for every new violent, ironic crime movie not to be viewed through the lens of Pulp Fiction. Such is the advantage of being first—you get to…