Chocolate Drops: Steve Smyers Joins Forces with Colton Craig and Tom Coyne

Welcome to the week! Here’s what has my attention at the moment in the world of golf course design:

→ A mea culpa right off the bat: Steve Smyers, Colton Craig, and Tom Coyne announced the formation of their new design firm—named Smyers Craig Coyne (SCC), naturally—on February 12, and I forgot to include the news in last week’s edition of Chocolate Drops. Whoops.

Anyway, SCC will likely get a fair amount of work in the coming years. Steve Smyers is a veteran architect and an accomplished amateur player with deep connections in the golf world. He was a member of the USGA Executive Committee from 2006 to 2011, and he served as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects from 2015 to 2016. Colton Craig is an up-and-coming architect who collaborated with Brian Ross on the design of Park Mammoth Golf Club. Tom Coyne is the editor of The Golfer’s Journal and the author of the bestselling books A Course Called Ireland, A Course Called Scotland, and A Course Called America.

SCC’s current projects include renovations of Isleworth Country Club and Everglades Club, both in Florida; a redesign of Bloomington Country Club in Indiana; and a new build at Lazy J Sporting Club in South Dakota.

The partnership between Smyers, Craig, and Coyne demonstrates the business and marketing advantages of forming architectural “supergroups” in today’s golf industry. Recent years have seen the creation of Clayton, DeVries & Pont; Whitman, Axland & Cutten; and King Collins Dormer. However, while those firms consist of partners with obvious stylistic affinities, Smyers Craig Coyne strikes me as a more unlikely mixture of talents. SCC’s press release acknowledges as much: “The new firm brings together a Baby Boomer (Steve), Gen X-er (Tom), and Millennial (Colton), each contributing their unique perspectives on the world of golf architecture.”

This sounds great, in theory. But I do wonder—more out of curiosity than skepticism—what exactly a Smyers Craig Coyne golf course will look like. Smyers is best known for building long, tough championship tests such as Maridoe Country Club and the Pfau Course at Indiana University. Craig and Coyne, on the other hand, have fostered brands around an expertise in naturalist Golden Age design and a love of sporting links golf, respectively. Is there an interesting common ground here? We’ll see.

→ Swope Memorial Golf Course, an A.W. Tillinghast-designed municipal course in Kansas City, posted a video about its ongoing renovation project. I’m trying to reserve judgment, but hearing superintendent Josh Linn tout the “wow factor” of the new bunker sand sets off alarm bells for me.

→ Sergio García has nabbed a design job in Bahrain. He wore Fireballs GC gear to the contract signing.

→ Faldo Design, one of the busiest architecture firms that no one talks about, is building a “bucket-list course” (Sir Nick’s words) on a dramatic seaside property on the island of Madeira.

→ Our friends at Australia Golf Passport posted a photo of Mackenzie & Ebert’s renovation work at New South Wales Golf Club, an Alister MacKenzie design 30 minutes south of downtown Sydney. I can’t say that the revetted bunkers and lumpy tie-ins remind me of anything MacKenzie’s associates in Australia or elsewhere produced in the 1920s, but I hope NSW members are happy with the results.

→ We have two architecture-themed podcast episodes coming for you this week: on the Fried Egg Golf Podcast, Michael Keiser will talk with Andy Johnson about Dream Golf’s latest moves; and on Designing Golf, PJ Clark and I will discuss Alister MacKenzie’s 13 “essential features of an ideal golf course.” Enjoy, and if you have any questions about or reactions to the episodes, the comment section is below.