Brian Silva began working for iconic New England architect Geoffrey Cornish in 1983, building golf courses in the traditional way of the day. After a revelation concerning the essence of strategic golf he transitioned into golf course restoration, becoming one of the business’s most respected talents at renovating historic Golden Age-era courses. His particular passion…
Bruce Hepner began his architectural career in 1990 as an associate for Ron Forse, with whom he became one of the early advocates and influencers of historic golf course restoration. He returned home to Michigan in 1993 to work for Tom Doak, first as a shaper and later as a designer at modern masterpieces like Pacific…
Perhaps wanting to avert the mass gagging that commenced the last time he built a PGA TOUR TPC course in a Southern swamp, Pete Dye kept the spice in this particular gumbo relatively mild. Or perhaps it just seems that way since the pros — and all of us too — are much more acclimated to Dye’s cooking…
Brian Curley began his golf course architecture career working on a number of Pete Dye courses for Landmark Land Company. There he met another Dye protégé, Lee Schmidt, and the two combined forces to form the company Schmidt-Curley Golf Design. Since the 1990’s they’ve built courses all over the U.S. and throughout the world, and for…
I don’t know what billionaire owner and developer Herb Kohler asked for when he hired Pete Dye to design and build the Straits Course at Whistling Straits, but if he wanted a true homage to an Irish links he didn’t get it. Though it looks the part in a sweeping glance there’s scant opportunity for the creative or interpretive play that real links…
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…
Richard Mandell’s golf design practice has taken off over the last 10 years. He entered the business in the early 1990’s and paid his dues for over a decade working singular jobs while learning how to build and renovate courses with a minimal amount of of unnecessary inputs or accessorization. As a result he gained a…
Ron Forse was an engineer who made a jump into golf course architecture in 1989, working on a project in West Virginia in conjunction with Dr. Michael Hurdzan. Though not necessarily his intent, he began taking jobs consulting with a number of historic club, guiding them through the process of renovating their old courses. Since…
South Carolina native Beau Welling played college golf at Brown University and earned a landscape architecture degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. After exploring career opportunities in several diverse fields, he committed to golf course architecture joining Tom Fazio’s staff in the late 1990’s. In 2007 he opened his own firm in Greenville, and became…
Ron Whitten has been one of the most prominent and influential voices in golf course architecture since the mid-1980’s when he became Golf Digest’s architecture editor. He created the current criteria for the magazine’s popular (or, depending, notorious) Top 100 U.S & World Courses lists, has written various books including the essential compendium, “The Architects of…