In this Feed the Ball podcast, we get deep into some Wisconsin golf talk with golf course architect Craig Haltom. Haltom joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss recreating C.B. Macdonald’s The Lido at Sand Valley, how GPS technology has the potential to change the way courses are preserved and finished, how he…
Designer Bill Coore comes into the salon to discuss greens and putting surfaces with Jim Urbina and Derek Duncan. Topics include the importance of shaping greens and surrounds in relation to single holes or the entire golf course, the 14th and 2nd greens at Sand Hills, building “floating” greens and finding natural landforms, looking vs.…
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…
Over the last several years we’ve been witnessing a fairly radical development in golf architecture. Ever since the most important golf tournaments shifted formats from match play to stroke play, architects and clubs and organizations have been concerned, and occasionally obsessed, with “defending” par. In modern golf par has become sacrosanct, an (admittedly arbitrary) construct…
Mike Keiser once said the property at Sand Valley reminded him of a combination of Pine Valley, Sand Hills and Sunningdale. Talk about raising expectations. Intimate knowledge of those courses isn’t required to appreciate this rare environment of barren sand, monstrous dunes and orbital pine forests that accounts for Sand Valley. In fact you need…
Matt Dusenberry opened his own design firm in 2013 after years of building courses all over the world at Greg Norman Golf Course Design. He’s demonstrated incredible range in renovation work ranging from the flat Florida coast at Sandhill Crane in Hobe Sound to the magnificent mountain setting of the Cornerstone Club in Colorado. Particularly…
Canadian designer, author, artist and historian Keith Cutten returns (Episode 15) to discuss his new book, “The Evolution of Golf Course Design.” The book traces how golf course architecture has morphed and changed through time, and, more importantly, examines the underlying societal and economic forces that continually shape the way golf has historically been created.…
Jay Blasi founded his own design company in 2012 after working for Robert Trent Jones II for over a decade. He gained notoriety as the lead associate on two high profile Jones courses: The Patriot Golf Club in Oklahoma, and Washington State’s Chambers Bay, host of the 2015 U.S. Open, where Blasi was instrumental in…
Not since Hugh Wilson at Merion has an architectural career been launched as brightly as David McLay Kidd’s. As a young designer in his 20’s, Kidd was tabbed by Mike Keiser to build the first course at Bandon Dunes. Kidd followed that spectacular success with a series of prestigious designs across several continents, becoming arguably…
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…