Lee Schmidt’s lengthy golf architecture career began in the early 1970s working for Pete Dye and took many different detours through the decades. He worked closely with Landmark Land Company on numerous Dye projects in the 70s and 80s before taking a job with Jack Nicklaus’ design firm. In the late 1990s he created his…
Golf course architect Greg Letsche, lead designer for Ernie Els Design, joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina to discuss his early years working for Pete Dye, how running projects for Jack Nicklaus differed from his experience with Dye, the design similarities between Dye and Nicklaus, the sometimes absurd…
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…
Few people in golf have had as rich or wide-ranging life in golf as Donald Steel. He began his career as the golf reporter for London’s Sunday Telegraph in 1961, memorably covering, as a rookie writer, Arnold Palmer’s back-to-back Open Championship wins at Birkdale and Troon. A few years later, while continuing his reporting duties,…
It’s not unreasonable to suggest the path of golf architecture in the second half of the 20th century can be traced through Ron Kirby. His career has been a remarkable Zelig-like whirlwind placing him in the immediate proximity of Dick Wilson, Robert Trent Jones, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and many others. His name is on…
Few people in the golf design business knew Pete Dye better than Bobby Weed, who first interned for his mentor in the 1970s. Weed comes into the Salon with Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina to share his thoughts on how Dye continues to influence him, the overriding consideration of drainage, being courted by Jack Nicklaus,…
George Waters began his design career after spending a summer living and doing course maintenance in Dornoch, then getting an internship with Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design. He worked construction projects for a variety of designers, including Doak, then wrote the seminal book on sand based courses, Sand and Golf: How Terrain Shapes the Game.…
Drew Rogers hung out his own design shingle in 2010 after working 18 years with the firm of (Arthur ) Hills & (Steve) Forrest. While working for Hills he gained extensive expertise building new golf courses, albeit it to the specifications of Hills and his clients. Today, Rogers’ own architectural point of view is evident…
Play The Champion on a nice calm morning in January and you might not understand what makes this such a tough tournament course (it hosted the 1983 Ryder Cup, the 1987 PGA, the Senior PGA from 1982 through 2000, and now the Honda Classic). The course looks like almost any Florida resort, winding around lakes and through aisles of homes…
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,…