Harry Colt

Harry Colt was the product of an elite English education, attending boarding school in Bath and reading Law at Clare College, Cambridge. Having learned golf at the original Worcestershire Golf Club, he captained the Blues golf team while at Cambridge around the turn of the 1890s. In doing so, he further expanded his knowledge of great golf in the UK, just beginning its move inland from the links.

After graduation, he formed a law practice in Hastings on the south coast of England. He became a founding member of the newly formed Rye Golf Club, a few miles east of his practice, and he laid out the club’s course with Douglas Rolland on an exceptional piece of linksland across the River Rother from Rye Harbour. Off the strength of this first design and his experience in the game, Colt was hired to be the secretary of Sunningdale Golf Club in July 1901, not long after Willie Park Jr. had laid out its first course. Colt stayed at Sunningdale until 1913. While based in Surrey, he created heathland courses that received significant acclaim: Stoke Poges Golf Club (1909), Swinley Forest Golf Club (1911), Camberley Heath Golf Club (1913), and St. George’s Hill Golf Club (1913). His time at Sunningdale also saw his greatest achievement as a player, when he reached the semifinal of the Amateur Championship in 1906 at Royal Liverpool.

In 1911, Colt traveled to North America, laying out Toronto and Hamilton in Canada, as well as the Country Club of Detroit, Old Elm Club, and Pine Valley Golf Club (assisting Crump) in the U.S. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he had worked on over 50 courses in the UK. Too old to serve in the military, he moved to East Hendred, near Oxford, where he would be based for the rest of his life.

After the war, he formed an architecture firm with C.H. Alison and Alister MacKenzie, whom he had formed relationships with on projects at Stoke Poges and Alwoodley, respectively. His partnership with MacKenzie was short-lived, but he continued working with Alison through the 1920s. While Alison traveled to North America, the Far East, and South Africa, Colt remained mostly in Great Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe. His great courses of this period include the New Course at Sunningdale Golf Club (1922), Royal Portrush Golf Club (completed in 1933), County Sligo Golf Club (1927), two courses at Wentworth Club (1924-26), Golf de St. Germain (1922) in France, and Kennemer Golf and Country Club (1927) and Utrechtse Golf Club De Pan (1929) in the Netherlands. Colt also completed renovations at an incredible list of UK courses, including Royal Lytham and St. Annes Golf Club (1919), Muirfield (1923), Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Ganton Golf Club, and Royal County Down Golf Club (1926).

With MacKenzie gone, Colt partnered with another of his collaborators, John Morrison, in 1928, but the Great Depression slowed down business. Struggling with deafness as he aged, Colt often retreated to his home, wife, and church in East Hendred toward the end of the 1930s. Nevertheless, his mark on European golf was already thoroughly established. An astounding number of the greatest courses on the continent have been designed or touched by Colt. It is for that reason that he is often included on the shortlist of the greatest and most prolific architects in golf’s history. He died in 1951 at the age of 82.