All right, on to this month’s DN, which tackles the question of whether today\u2019s golf architects are terribly unoriginal, caught up in repackaging ideas from 100 years ago.<\/p>\n
Originality in Golf Architecture<\/p>\n
The most common complaint I see about current golf architecture is that it\u2019s unoriginal. <\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, kicking off our new FEGC community forum with a provocative topic, member \u201cPeter M\u201d wrote<\/a>, \u201cWe can only have so many sand scrapes, template holes, and potato chip greens before it gets old.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, on X, Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan has also been worrying about the supposed lack of originality in modern golf course design. \u201cWhat confounds me about this era of golf course architects,\u201d Duncan remarked<\/a>, \u201cis that they are not thinking like artists. The artistic urge is to break and dismantle and innovate, but almost everything we\u2019ve seen for 25 years is based on fealty to the looks and ideas of the past. It\u2019s like Manet and Monet never looked sideways at Romanticism.\u201d<\/p>\n When I pressed Duncan about which golf architects he was calling unoriginal, he said<\/a>, \u201cShort answer: the field. Longer answer: as long as designers think everything they do has to be a variation on what was being done in the 1920s or 1910s [we\u2019re] going to be in an endless loop.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s quite an indictment of the profession. While Duncan did single out Mike Strantz, King Collins Dormer<\/a>, Jackson Kahn, and Brian Schneider<\/a> as standard bearers of originality in modern golf course design, he stood by his generalization. Even Schneider, Duncan claimed, is \u201cgrounded in post-Victorian architecture.\u201d As long as we\u2019re naming influences, though, I would add that King Collins Dormer and Jackson Kahn are equally, if not more, indebted to Mike Strantz. And Strantz himself learned much from Tom Fazio. And so on.<\/p>\n Having influences doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re unoriginal. In fact, I think originality actually comes from engaging with influences \u2014 processing, emulating, and reformulating the stuff you love. But that\u2019s a different topic<\/a>.<\/p>\n A point of clarification, before I move on: while I don\u2019t hesitate to argue with Derek when we find ourselves on different sides of debates about golf architecture, I respect him a great deal. No beef here.<\/p>\n That said, I found it an amusing bit of irony that Duncan is not the first Golf Digest architecture editor to accuse modern golf course design of lacking originality. (I guess golf architecture critics are just as derivative as golf architects.) Back in 2010, Ron Whitten made much the same argument in an article titled \u201cWhy the lack of innovation?\u201d Here\u2019s Whitten:<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is, every architect worships the past \u2014 the 1920s or teens or even earlier \u2014 and molds designs to those ancient templates. As Pete Dye says, every hole\u2019s a copy of some other hole. There is no hip-hop, rap, or even jazz in golf architecture; it\u2019s all Stephen Foster and John Philip Sousa. Which means modern-day courses are gussied-up reproductions, with strategies conjured up by Old Tom Morris or Old Macdonald, bunker styled after Alister MacKenzie or George Thomas, and greens patterned on relics like the Redan, Biarritz, and Eden. In 150 years, nobody has been able to come up with a new concept for a green? If phone engineers thought like golf architects, our cell phones would still be attached to the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n I must admit, Whitten’s got bars.<\/p>\n But was he right? Halfway, maybe. Not all the way.<\/p>\n For example, the most relentlessly original golf architect of the 2010s and 20s has been none other than Tom Doak<\/a>, one of the leaders of today\u2019s supposedly hidebound industry. In the past decade and a half, Doak has built a C.B. Macdonald<\/a> template gallery that feels more like St. Andrews (Old Macdonald<\/a>), a reversible course that actually works in both directions (the Loop at Forest Dunes<\/a>), a real-deal Irish links (St. Patrick\u2019s), a high-tech transplantation of a lost Macdonald design to a Wisconsin sand plain (The Lido<\/a>), a sporting par-68 layout (Sedge Valley<\/a>), and a LiDAR-assisted blowup of a dull strip of land next to the St. Lucie Canal (Sandglass). If these projects don’t qualify as innovative, then I have to ask what we mean by the word.<\/p>\n {{old-macdonald-template-gallery}}<\/p>\n At the same time, there is plenty of monkey-see, monkey-do in 2020s golf architecture.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t need another template course, for instance. The idea of a Macdonald\/Raynor-inspired design was edgy in 2010, when the Macdonald\/Raynorssance was just beginning to stir. Now, not so much.<\/p>\n Also, if you can\u2019t build a naturalized bunker as well as the Coore & Crenshaw<\/a> or Renaissance Golf Design crews do, please don\u2019t try. It will look like what it is: a knockoff.<\/p>\n And one more: not every highly ranked Donald Ross<\/a> course needs the bunkers and chocolate drops that Andrew Green<\/a> built at Inverness<\/a> in 2017. Much better to study the aesthetic that Ross or his foremen established on that specific site and work from there. Which, incidentally, is what Green did at Inverness and why the work came out so well.<\/p>\n So yes, I\u2019d like to see current golf architects \u2014 particularly those specializing in Golden Age \u201cresto-vations\u201d and juggling many commissions at once, like Andrew Green, Tyler Rae, and Gil Hanse<\/a> \u2014 ask each client, “What\u2019s special about your course?” Don\u2019t look across town; don\u2019t look at the latest top-100 ranking. Dive into your architecture, your history, your place, and let the architectural stewardship proceed from there.<\/p>\n But where I really disagree with Duncan and Whitten is that artistic originality should be a primary goal for a golf architect.<\/p>\n Golf architecture is not a pure art like poetry or painting or music. The intention is not only to create something beautiful; it’s also to prepare a ground for the game. Golf courses aren\u2019t just observed. They\u2019re used.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why artistically experimental golf courses can be, frankly, annoying. Take the work of Desmond Muirhead, whom Whitten praised for showing \u201cchutzpah in drawing inspiration from art, literature, and Mother Nature.\u201d Whitten also acknowledged, however, that Muirhead \u201cwent off the deep end with fish bunkers and mermaid holes.\u201d Right. Muirhead, for all his admirable creativity and conviction, may have forgotten at times that his main task was to prepare a ground for the game. And golfers seem to have tired quickly of his weird shit.<\/p>\n We tend to enjoy ourselves most on a golf course when we\u2019re least aware of the architect\u2019s hand. That\u2019s because we crave contact with nature. We want to imagine ourselves doing battle with the wilderness, not with some ASGCA member\u2019s fussy landscaping. Alister MacKenzie<\/a> knew this, and it was why he was obsessed with the art and science of camouflaging earthworks. Bill Coore knows it, too. I think that\u2019s why he deflects questions about his \u201cstyle.\u201d He doesn\u2019t see himself as having one; his understanding of golf course design is fully rooted in his response to the natural world.<\/p>\n Is Bill Coore unoriginal? Has he repeated himself on every project since Sand Hills<\/a>? I wouldn\u2019t put it that way. He\u2019s just humble enough to recognize that most golfers desire nature (or at least a convincing simulation of it), not Bill Coore\u2019s art.<\/p>\n The harder golf architects strive for artistic originality, the more they tend to forget golf\u2019s primal connection to the natural landscape.<\/p>\n Last year, I visited the then-new Crossroads course at Palmetto Bluff, designed by Tad King and Rob Collins. I\u2019ve enjoyed the work of King Collins (now King Collins Dormer) elsewhere, and Crossroads is nothing if not innovative: a reversible nine-holer with rambling, multilevel greens, each containing two pins. A feast! If I could play it every day, I\u2019m sure I would find satisfaction in exploring its many intricacies. But I just didn\u2019t like it. I wasn\u2019t moved by Crossroads, and I couldn\u2019t figure out why for a long time. Eventually I got it: this was a course that wouldn\u2019t let me forget about its architecture. For me, Crossroads is over-designed, over-eager to prove its own originality, and divorced from its natural setting as a result.<\/p>\n King Collins Dormer isn\u2019t alone in occasionally doing too much. Among many up-and-coming golf architects, I sense an anxiety to establish a unique style and differentiate from the still-competitive giants of Coore & Crenshaw and Doak. Some have done so successfully. See: Brian Schneider and Blake Conant\u2019s<\/a> fresh and exciting work at Old Barnwell<\/a>. For the most part, though, the drive for originality has not produced outstanding golf architecture. Bold and energetic, sure. But also sometimes overcooked and unnatural-feeling.<\/p>\n I would like to see today\u2019s rising golf architects pull back a bit. Do less.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a common refrain that we’re still lingering in the era of minimalist design that Coore, Doak, and Mike Keiser ushered in 30 years ago. But that\u2019s not really true. Hardly anyone builds minimalist golf courses anymore. Many are trying to be naturalists, emulating the forms of nature with painstaking swipes of an excavator bucket, but just about everyone is reshaping sites from wall to wall these days.<\/p>\n As odd as it might sound, then, one of the most daring, punk-rock things a young golf architect could do right now is to be an actual minimalist. Not to pursue the kind of excess that critics often mistake for originality, but to use as light a touch as possible. To refuse the mantle of artist and the pressure to be innovative. To render themselves invisible to the golfer.<\/p>\n But does anyone have the guts?<\/p>\n Chocolate Drops<\/p>\n Note: I posted last week\u2019s Chocolate Drops in Fried Egg Golf Club\u2019s new community forum. Check it out<\/a>!<\/p>\n At the great West Links<\/a> at North Berwick Golf Club, Clyde Johnson is helping to restore the shape and dimensions of a famous green-side bunker on the third hole. This project continues a broader restoration plan, headed up by Johnson and course manager Kyle Cruickshank. Two years ago, I documented their efforts to bring back the full scale of the Redan bunker<\/a>.<\/p>\n {{inline-course}}<\/p>\n With architects Joe McDonnell and Sam Cooper, Formby Golf Club in Liverpool, England, is implementing some simple, meaningful changes to its par-4 seventh hole. Excellent insights in this X thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tepetonka, a new private golf course in Minnesota designed by OCM Golf, posted drone footage of all 18 holes on Instagram last Saturday. The turf is still struggling a bit after some flooding last winter. FEGC member Michael Chadwick offered some smart commentary<\/a> on the course in our community forum.<\/p>\n In case you missed it\u2026<\/p>\n The White House has begun to dump rubble<\/a> from the ongoing East Wing renovation project on East Potomac Golf Links, a municipal course owned by the National Park Service and operated by the National Links Trust.Wild Spring Dunes, a Dream Golf resort in East Texas, will open eight holes<\/a> of Tom Doak\u2019s new 18-hole course on November 12.Nick Faldo\u2019s new golf course in Qiddiya City, Saudi Arabia, is set to open<\/a> in 2026.Sandpiper Golf Course in Goleta, California, is battling through local permitting processes<\/a> in hopes of starting a golf course renovation by Tom Doak and a clubhouse reconstruction by Winick Architects sometime in the near future.The Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort reopened on November 10<\/a> after shutting down and losing the 2026 Sentry because of water restrictions on the island of Maui.Lawsonia Links has continued to make incremental improvements<\/a> to its Langford & Moreau<\/a>-designed course.Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf & Spa is vying to be selected as the venue of the 2035 Ryder Cup. To that end, Luton Hoo\u2019s golf course will undergo a top-dollar renovation by European Golf Design, Justin Rose, and Gary Player (who may or may not think the Ryder Cup should be \u201cabolished\u201d<\/a>).Mossy Oak Golf Club in West Point, Mississippi, has reopened<\/a>, now private, after a renovation by Jerry Pate.A Course We Photographed Recently<\/p>\n Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club (Deal, England)\u201418-hole course designed by Harry Hunter in 1899<\/p>\n {{royal-cinque-ports-golf-club-design-notebook-gallery}}<\/p>\n Underlined and Starred<\/p>\n “There should never be a line of demarcation which divides the fairway from the rough. It can serve no possible purpose; it is inartistic and reflects no credit on the work of the staff. The eye ought to be unable to detect where the fairway ends and the rough begins, even if the fairway consists of grass and the rough of heather. It is quite simple to obtain this result, although it may take a little more time.\u201d -Tom Simpson<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/69126f52b6756af79014f977_681454e459c9266ddc8d1a53_11-12-14-5-DJI_0257.jpeg\")
Bunkers and mounds at Inverness (Fried Egg Golf)<\/p>\n![\"DJI_20240405052318_0082_D\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/69126bc65fe765998cf5f4bd_DJI_20240405052318_0082_D.jpeg\")
The Crossroads Course at Palmetto Bluff (Fried Egg Golf)![\"DJI_20240405044033_0019_D\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/69126bc65fe765998cf5f4af_DJI_20240405044033_0019_D.jpeg\")
The Crossroads Course at Palmetto Bluff (Fried Egg Golf)<\/p>\n