Paul Cowley has worn many hats in his golf career: land and landscape planner, structural architect, superintendent and construction engineer. The majority of his golf architecture career, however, was spent running projects and designing courses for Mark and Davis Love III. Known inside the industry as one of the most creative and original thinkers, Cowley…
Tom Dunne founded the independent golf journal McKellar in 2017. Featuring alluring artwork with a playful point of view and stories from the best writers in the business, McKellar has become one of the brightest stars of a much welcomed revival of boutique publishing. In the course of traveling extensively to explore different courses and…
Dutch architect Frank Pont made a dramatic jump from the diverse worlds of engineering, corporate banking and mergers into golf course design in the mid-2000s. Since that time he’s become one of Europe’s most active and respected practitioners in historical restoration and remodeling. Through his work at some of the most prominent old courses on…
First off, this is not about J.B. Holmes, that poor, maligned social media avatar for tortuously slow play. This is about you, your friends and foes, your family and your foursome. It’s about pace of play. A pox of slow play consumes the game of golf — relentlessly and severely — and we’re no longer…
Eric Iverson has worked with Tom Doak at Renaissance Golf Design since 2001. He’s widely viewed by his peers as one of the business’s most skilled and creative shapers and construction specialists. He helped craft such instant classics like Ballyneal, Cape Kidnappers, Barnbougle Dunes and Streamsong Blue. He also ran the Stone Eagle, Rock Creek…
Canadian Trevor Dormer has been in the golf construction business since the early 2000’s and has become a prominent member of the industry’s talented “under-40” (for now) group of construction specialists and shapers. He’s worked around the globe with, among others, Nicklaus Design, Rod Whitman, Ron Prichard, Bill Coore, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner.…
Bruce Charlton joined Robert Trent Jones II in 1981 and the two have been building courses across the globe for nearly 40 years. The firm has earned considerable acclaim for their entire body of work, but their undisputed masterpiece is Chambers Bay near Seattle, site of the 2015 U.S. Open (won by Jordan Speith). Built…
Dave Axland and Rod Whitman, two of modern golf’s most skilled and admired construction men, met in the 1980s through Bill Coore. Axland has been an associate and project manager for numerous Coore-Crenshaw courses since the mid-1990s including Sand Hills, Talking Stick, Friars Head, Old Sandwich, Chechessee Creek plus numerous others, and has designed Wild…
Rees Jones has spent nearly 35 years preparing, modifying and remodeling golf courses for major championship events. In addition to the 100 original courses and dozens of renovations he’s orchestrated, he’s infused his vision into such venerable American tournament courses as Pinehurst No. 2, Oakland Hills, Medinah No. 3 and The Country Club for the…
The question was straightforward. It came after a dinner out, late. Bottles of wine, as in multiples, had been served. “How long do you think it would take to build 20 golf courses?” Pause. This is where all their discussions had led, to this one essential question. He thought about it, tried to come up…