C.H. Alison

Charles Hugh Alison, known simply as “Hugh” to his friends, attended boarding school at Malvern College in Worcestershire before reading history, law, and divinity at New College, Oxford. Like his future partner Harry Colt, Alison played “Oxbridge” golf, representing his university on the team from 1903-1904. Also like Colt, he was an elite sportsman, playing cricket for Somerset County in the early years of the century.

Alison became the Secretary at Stoke Park in 1908 after leaving Oxford without a degree. It was there that he met Colt, who had been hired to design the club’s course. Alison got his first taste of design and construction aiding Colt on this project, and went on to assist him with his designs at St. George’s Hill Golf Club (1912) and Camberley Heath Golf Club (1913). When World War I broke out in 1914, Alison enlisted in the army and served as a decoder. After the war, Colt and Alison formalized their partnership in the firm, Colt, Alison & MacKenzie (later replacing MacKenzie with John Morrison).

During the heyday of Alison’s career, he traveled extensively, and his courses can be found on four continents. In the 1920s, frequent trips to North America saw him produce excellent courses at Kirtland Country Club (1921), Davenport Country Club (1924), Burning Tree Club (1924), Bob O’Link Golf Club (redesign, 1925), Orchard Lake Country Club (1926), Milwaukee Country Club (1928), and Sea Island Resort (1929). In late 1930, he ventured to the Far East with construction foreman George Penglase, first to Malaysia for Royal Selangor Golf Club and then to Japan for three months to begin 1931, where he laid out Hirono Golf Club, Naruo Golf Club, and Kawana Hotel. Alison thus became a central figure in the rise of golf in Japan, leaving his mark on three of the country’s greatest courses.

Alison also traveled to Continental Europe, laying out courses on prime dunescapes at Golf du Touquet (1930) and Royal Hague Golf and Country Club (1938). He spent time in Africa in the mid-1930s, most notably creating Glendower Golf Club in Johannesburg (1936) and Royal Golf de Tangier in Morocco (1939). In fact, it was in South Africa that the itinerant Alison spent the last years of his life, from 1947 to 1952, still designing courses after serving a second stint as an army decoder in World War II.

As Alison’s work is so spread out across the globe, he sometimes fails to get the same recognition as his partners Colt and MacKenzie, or other Golden Age architects who worked predominantly in the U.S. and UK. But given his role in creating great courses in foreign locales, particularly Japan and South Africa, he has to be considered one of the most influential figures in the early 20th-century diaspora of golf.