Tom Doak

Tom Doak became fascinated with golf course architecture at an early age and went on to study design and landscape architecture at Cornell University, where he was the recipient of the William Frederick Dreer Award in 1982. Doak used the award to travel and study golf courses in England and Scotland. “In that year abroad,” Doak wrote, “I discovered a challenging, natural outdoor sport played by all ages, on exciting courses which had cost nothing to build and which were affordable for all to play. Ever since, I’ve felt a responsibility to build courses which reflect the ideals of the game as the Scots still play it.”

While Doak was in school, his faculty advisor taught him to think in negative space. That is, instead of designing a fairway based on the rough, Doak likes to imagine a golf hole as all fairway, and he places the rough and bunkers in interesting locations. 

After college and his travels abroad, Doak worked for Pete Dye’s firm for three years — a period he refers to as his “graduate school in golf design.” Doak has been heavily influenced by his time with the Dyes and his studies of more than 1,000 golf courses, but he believes the best designs are organic and evolve from the ground they inhabit. P.B. Dye, Pete’s son, advised Doak to learn how to operate a bulldozer, which taught him to think in three dimensions and best use the land at hand.

From his first solo design — High Pointe Golf Club in Michigan in 1989 — to his roster of highly touted courses from this century, Doak has established his firm Renaissance Golf Design as an industry leader. Doak and RGD’s new-build successes include Pacific Dunes (2001), Barnbougle Dunes (2004), Ballyneal Golf and Hunt Club (2006), CommonGround Golf Course (2009), Old Macdonald (2010), Streamsong Blue (2013), Tara Iti (2015), and The Lido (2022). Doak has also mentored many other golf architects, including Gil Hanse, Jim Urbina, Bruce Hepner, Mike DeVries, Kyle Franz, Riley Johns, and Brian Schneider.

Off the course, Doak previously contributed to Golf Magazine and has written a handful of books, including The Anatomy of a Golf Course, the Confidential Guide to Golf Courses series, The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie, and Tom Doak's Little Red Book of Golf Course Architecture.