Joe Jemsek grew up with Dick Wilson. At least figuratively. In the early 1960s, Wilson, one of golf architecture’s most interesting and possibly misunderstood figures, designed the former America’s 100 Greatest Course Cog Hill No. 4 in Chicago, known as Dubsdread, for Jemsek’s grandfather. Few people knew Wilson or his former partner Joe Lee as…
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…
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…
P.B. Dye began working on his father Pete Dye’s construction sites when he was a boy. Along with his brother, Perry, he’s had the closest and longest view of how Dye conceived of and built golf courses and was a primary assistant during several of his father’s touchstone courses, including Long Cove on Hilton Head…
No one has ever accused Tom Fazio of being a minimalist. In fact Fazio seems almost hostile to the idea that there’s virtue in building holes with as little construction involved as possible. If the option is presented, why not take full control of the design process? Had modern industrial machines and equipment, Fazio has conjectured, been widely…
The short review of The King & Prince Golf Course (formerly known as The Hampton Club), out at the north tip of St. Simons Island and owned by The King & Prince Beach Resort, is 14 exercises in rather ordinary Lowcountry-style golf interrupted by an out-of-the-ordinary four-hole foray through a large Intracoastal marsh. The longer version is that…
The design at Mystery Valley, near Stone Mountain about 30 minutes east of Atlanta, is attributed to Dick Wilson but I suspect his then-associate Joe Lee is responsible for pretty much all of this course. After a struggle with his health and alcoholism, Wilson died in 1965, a year before Mystery Valley officially opened, and Lee and Robert Von Hagge…