Langford & Moreau

For William B. Langford, golf was life or death. Born in Austin, Illinois, in 1887, Langford was introduced to the game as part of the rehabilitation process when he battled polio as a child. Like many Golden Age architects, Langford was a successful amateur golfer and starred on the Yale University golf team, where he helped the Bulldogs win three NCAA Championships. After graduation, he earned his Master's degree in Mining Engineering from Columbia University and then made his way back to Illinois.

In 1918, he teamed up with Theodore J. Moreau, and together they designed more than 200 golf courses. The pair worked from Chicago and stayed mostly in the Midwest, where they had to grapple with heavier soils and less interesting topography than their coastal contemporaries. Tasked with bringing the game to small Midwestern towns, Langford & Moreau had an impact on local, everyday golf that went largely unnoticed. As a result, they have been vastly underappreciated over the years, and much of their work has been poorly preserved or outright erased. Just a handful of the remaining courses provide a true sense of their brilliance. Thankfully, however, many of these courses are public, so if you want to learn about Langford & Moreau, all you need is a sense of adventure.

Although Langford & Moreau undoubtedly absorbed influences from C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, architects of Chicago Golf Club and Shoreacres, their work was original. They embraced boldness of scale like no one else in the Golden Age, building some of the largest features of the period. Using the steam shovel, they blended enormous bunkers and green complexes into the natural slopes of their sites. Many of Langford & Moreau’s designs contain five par 3s and five par 5s, which allows for more variety in a round. For example, Spring Valley Country Club in Salem, Wisconsin, has five par 3s of 138, 231, 181, 170, and 190 yards. Each plays in a different direction and requires different types of lofted and running shots.

Langford went solo when he and Moreau dissolved their partnership in the early 1940s and he continued for 20 more years before he retired to Florida in the 1960s. In addition to his design work, Langford was one of the 14 founding members of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in 1947 and served as ASGCA President in 1951-1952 and 1963-1964. He served as an ASGCA member for 29 years until his death in 1977.