How I Got Started in Golf Architecture - Part Three

"Sight is faculty; Seeing is an art."

George Perkins Marsh

My growing passion for golf and the golf course landscape eventually led to me leaving my Landscape Architecture firm and entering graduate school to focus solely on golf course design. It was not an easy decision. Not only did I enjoy the people I was working with, but I had built up a fairly impressive portfolio of work. A portfolio that would now be useless when seeking to obtain golf course design commissions. But before I made the final commitment I needed to get over one last hurdle. I was still finding that the design of golf courses was lacking in both creativity and foundational design. The question I needed to resolve was this; is it the process itself or is it just the people designing golf courses? In other words, was the design of golf courses simply too limiting, or were the designers themselves lacking in creativity? The person responsible for helping me think through this process was Bob Reimann. Bob was a brilliant and creative Landscape Architect and long time design instructor (and former Dean of Landscape Architecture) at the State University of New York at Syracuse. When I discussed some of these issues with him, his answer was “all the more reason to follow your passion.” If it wasn’t to be extremely challenging to me as a designer, then what was the point? He also pointed out that sometimes subtlety in design can make a huge difference, but it isn’t always obvious to the casual observer. Eventually I came to realize that strong conceptualization could lead to both bold and subtle forms. And that some things only the designer recognizes. And that’s OK.




So I left my firm and entered graduate school. I already knew that a great golf course must be both strategically sound and aesthetically appealing. So I set out to further study this. First, I did the obvious and began studying the classic American courses. I then traveled to Scotland and Ireland to study some of the links courses. I wasn’t, (and I’m still not), interested in becoming a golf course historian. I made no intention to “memorize holes” or golf course routings, though I sketched every course I visited. My purpose in traveling and studying the classic courses had two purposes. First, to simply experience the origins of the great game of golf. And then secondly, to see how the architects of old interpreted the original links in a new landscape. My goal was never to capture something that I eventually could cut and paste into my future designs. At the same time I was continuing to pursue a broader interest in studying the forms and features of the natural landscape. With Bob Reimann’s guidance, I spent a semester conducting “A Study of Natural Compositions in the Adirondack Park”. In a nutshell, my goal was to observe nature, and then through photography and sketching, try to figure out why certain landscapes are more attractive than others. It also involved analyzing the processes of nature, such as the movement of water, its “sequence”, and erosion. You see, I believe what the great Landscape Architect Olmsted did, that nature has a restorative power – and not just for intellectuals but for the common man. And I knew I wanted to infuse my golf course design work with a sense of this. I began training myself not to just look at golf courses and nature, but to “see”. As George Perkins Marsh wrote in Man and Nature – “To the natural philosopher, the descriptive poet, the painter, and the sculptor, as well as the common observer, the power most important to cultivate, and at the same time hardest to acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is faculty; seeing is an art.”

When I left graduate school I felt confident I was ready to get started. I obtained my License in Landscape Architecture and in 1996 simply “Hung my Shingle”. The rest - as they say - is history.