Design Notebook: A Tier List of Current Golf Architects

Hello and welcome back to Design Notebook, where DLF Week might be over but we’re still mulling which color we’d want our synthetic EcoBunker edges to be. Black? Rainbow? So many great options.

In today’s DN, Garrett Morrison embraces debate and organizes today’s golf architects into five tiers. Matt Rouches then chimes in with some thoughts on a massive sand ridge in Florida that could accommodate a lot more golf development. Relatedly, we tell you what you need to know about a new Gil Hanse-Jim Wagner project on that very ridge.

Sorting Today’s Busiest Golf Architects into Tiers

By Garrett Morrison

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote briefly about the notion of golf architecture’s future “A-list.” As I thought about who could be the Bill Coores and Tom Doaks of the 2040s, I started to build a mental model of the industry as a whole. Who is getting the most (and most desirable) jobs in different segments of the golf-construction market? And when those architects opt out, who’s next in line?

A fun little thought experiment.

I considered doing a power ranking, somewhat in the lighthearted spirit of Matt Belloni’s ranking of the most popular young actors in Hollywood. But I realized that such a list might generate unnecessary angst and misunderstanding. So instead I’ve sorted 30 of the busiest current golf architects into five tiers: “the A-listers,” “the prospective A-listers,” “the new-build stalwarts,” “the renovation stalwarts,” and “the legacies.” My goal with this exercise is to capture the basic structure of the golf architecture industry today.

A few caveats before I dive in:

• This is decidedly not a ranking of the quality of these architects’ work. It is instead a rough assessment of how in-demand various designers are, along with some light analysis of the positions they occupy in the market for jobs.
• I’m doing this mainly for fun and to generate discussion. It is in no way an “official” Fried Egg Golf document.
• I realize that my view of golf architecture is fairly U.S.-centric, or at least North America-and-GB&I-centric. If I’m ignorant about other sectors of the global scene, I’m happy to be educated.
• In this kind of exercise, oversimplification is unavoidable—and part of the fun, I’d argue. Think about it: if I were perfectly precise in my depiction of the entire landscape of golf architecture, there would be nothing to discuss.

The A-listers

These are the leading golf architects of the time. They get the most sought-after jobs, work on the highest-quality sites, and build the most talked-about courses. If a Cypress Point-grade property were to become available, one of these architects would likely book the gig.

Right now, the A-list is a Big Four: Coore & Crenshaw, Tom Doak (and his firm Renaissance Golf Design), Gil Hanse (with his longtime design partner Jim Wagner), and David McLay Kidd. In the post-Covid era, all four have filled their plates with new builds, and Hanse has continued to dominate the top end of the renovation market.

The prospective A-listers

This category focuses on up-and-comers with the potential to achieve A-list status within the next decade. Many of these architects trained with a Big Four firm and are already connected with powerful developers.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll limit this tier primarily to architects currently working on an original, solo-credit 18-hole design—either a new build or a complete reimagining of an existing golf property:

• King-Collins—current projects: The 21 Club and The Bounty Club
• Kyle Franz—Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms, Broomsedge, Luling
• WAC (Whitman, Axland & Cutten)—Cabot Revelstoke and The Ranch
• OCM (Ogilvy, Cocking & Mead)—Fall Line and Tepetonka
• CDP (Clayton, DeVries & Pont)—7 Mile Beach and 5 Mile Beach
• Brian Schneider and Blake Conant—The Gilroy at Old Barnwell
• Jim Craig—first course at Rodeo Dunes
• Jay Blasi—redesign of Poppy Ridge

To fill out this category, I’ll add Jackson Kahn, Andy Staples, and Mike Nuzzo, all of whom have 18-hole original designs on their résumés and continue to contend for desirable jobs.

There are at least a couple dozen other youngish designers with A-list upside who haven’t gotten their first big crack at a new build yet. I don’t mean to snub them; I’m just trying to keep this segment a digestible size.

The new-build stalwarts

While these designers lag behind Coore & Crenshaw, Doak, Hanse, and Kidd in getting premier resort- and private-course jobs, they boast substantial, long-running résumés and have stayed busy during the recent construction surge. Their focus is on original designs; when they do renovations, they tend to carry them out in a modern style.

Beau Welling (particularly through his association with TGR Design, Tiger Woods’s firm), Kyle Phillips, Fry/Straka, Tripp Davis, and Love Golf Design all compete strongly for new builds on attractive sites. In the frisky Asian market, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, and Brian Curley have more juice than most Westerners know. And reports of Tom Fazio’s fall have been greatly exaggerated; he is still Discovery Land’s go-to architect, with designs in Florida, Texas, Costa Rica, Baja, and Dubai opening in the next few years.

The renovation stalwarts

These architects aren’t usually going to box out Hanse for a consulting gig at a top-tier Golden Age club (see, most recently, Sunningdale), but they rack up renovation commissions at a steady clip. Their work shows up frequently on top-100 rankings and major-championship telecasts.

In Great Britain and Ireland, Mackenzie & Ebert have leveraged their relationship with the R&A into custodianship of many well-known links and heathland courses. In the U.S., Andrew Green has an eye-popping number of historical projects on the books, as does Tyler Rae.

There are many other restoration specialists I could include here, but M&E, Green, and Rae seem to be the hottest non-A-list names in that market right now. (It’s also worth mentioning that all three have new builds underway and would fit well in the “prospective A-listers” category above.)

The legacies

These architects are no longer on the forefront of industry trends, and they’re nowhere near as dominant as they were in the 1980s and 90s, but they still have massive name recognition.

Eighty-four-year-old Jack Nicklaus remains prolific and perhaps belongs among the “new-build stalwarts” above, but his ongoing legal battle with his own company casts doubt on the future of his design outfit. Meanwhile, brothers Rees Jones and RTJ II continue to find willing clients, Rees mostly in the Southeastern U.S. and Bob primarily in the Caribbean.

All right, that’s 30 names. Let’s discuss.

Footnote: I’m cognizant that all of the architects I mentioned are male, which I believe reflects the makeup of the profession more than my own biases. I’m hopeful that Angela Moser, Christine Fraser, and other women in the industry will get more opportunities soon.

Aerial of the Week: Lake Wales Ridge

By Matt Rouches

After our team heard about High Grove, the new golf development in Florida, we instantly went to Google Earth to explore. It isn’t news to us that parts of Florida have sandy soils—see Streamsong Golf Resort—but we were surprised to find a massive sand ridge stretching from Clermont, FL, all the way down to Venus, FL. It’s quite visible on Google’s satellite imagery. Streamsong sits roughly 15 miles west of this landform, so clearly there are pockets of sand around the ridge as well.

Via Google Earth

After some surface-level research, we discovered that the Lake Wales Ridge formed about two million years ago and is roughly 100 miles long, 10 miles wide, and 300 feet tall. It was submerged by water for much of its history and is now home to the highest number of rare plants and animals in the US.

Given the amount of golf development in Florida happening right now, I wonder how many more courses will appear on or around the Lake Wales Ridge. And an even bigger question: how much more sandy land remains undiscovered in the U.S.?

Chocolate Drops

By Garrett Morrison

Florida sand. Early last week, information began to circulate about High Grove, a private golf development on sandy land in Venus, Florida. The club will feature an 18-hole course and a short course, both designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner. Construction is scheduled to begin in December of this year and conclude the following summer (in other words: fast). The developers behind the project are Ryan Hanks, Colin Sheehan, and Bert Guy. Sheehan, until recently the head golf coach at Yale University, has advised on similar developments at Ohoopee Match Club, The Tree Farm, Fall Line, and Childress Hall; and Guy is involved at Fall Line and Childress Hall. So High Grove represents the continuation of two important trends in the U.S. golf course industry: the resurgence of construction in the Southeast, particularly in Florida, and the rise of the small-membership, destination-club model. The club has made an impressive amount of detail about Hanse and Wagner’s design available on its website.

Site plan for High Grove

De-bunkering a Doak. The Rawls Course at Texas Tech University, a public-access Tom Doak design that opened in 2003, recently completed a $1.8-million bunker renovation, installing concrete and gravel liners and reducing the course’s bunker count from 93 to 62. The new bunkers are shallower and less penal than the previous ones. According to a member who reached out to Fried Egg Golf, the renovation was directed by Troon Golf, which took over management of The Rawls Course in 2009. Doak was apparently not involved. The member emphasizes that some kind of change was probably necessary; in recent years, the course’s bunkers had deteriorated, losing sand and becoming too deep for some older members to navigate comfortably. Nonetheless, it seems odd not to have the original architect, or at least an associate of the firm, advise on such a project.

Little Manistee. A new nine-hole par-3 course at Manistee National, an affordable resort in northwestern Michigan, got some run on social media this week. The developer/designer, Reddit user “maxwellrolls,” said that construction cost under $250,000, partly because the resort was able to purchase second-hand irrigation components from Oakland Hills Country Club for “pennies on the dollar.” The course, which looks very fun, will open for the 2024 season on April 26.

Activation alert. Last week, Pinehurst Resort unveiled branding for Pinehurst Sandmines, the dramatic property where Tom Doak and Angela Moser recently built Pinehurst No. 10. The press release mentions that “a variety of future developments are being evaluated, including an additional 18-hole golf course, a short course, clubhouse and guest cottages.” In the meantime, enjoy the new logo, which features a rail car in a nod to the site’s industrial past.

A Course We Photographed Recently

Annesley Links at Royal County Down (Newcastle, Northern Ireland)—designed by Old Tom Morris in 1889, revised by Donald Steel and Mackenzie & Ebert several times in the past 30 years

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Quotable

“Anybody who played as much tournament golf as I did would be influenced by Augusta National, and influenced by Bob Jones and his philosophy. They would also be influenced by St. Andrews. I think those are the two biggest influences that I had. Both Augusta and St. Andrews are second-shot golf courses and I always preferred second-shot golf courses because most people like to hit a driver and have fun with it. But if you put the drive on the wrong side of the golf course, you should have a more difficult approach. If you put the driver on the proper side of the fairway, you should have an easier approach. That was Jones’s philosophy and it’s a good one. I like it, and I’ve used it in a majority of my styles. The only difference today is that because of the golf ball, you need to take the driver out of somebody’s hands three or four times a round to balance or even the playing field.” –Jack Nicklaus