Three well-known and established golf course architects have announced they will pool their resources as part of a new firm with principals on three continents. Mike Clayton, Mike de Vries and Frank Pont will together form CDP Golf, which will have its central base in London’s West End.
The three principals of the new firm have experience of working together already – Pont and De Vries have an established collaboration that recently secured a contract to restore Harry Colt’s Bloomfield Hills course in Detroit, while Pont and Clayton’s previous firm, OCCM, submitted an ultimately unsuccessful joint bid to become consulting architects to the Berkshire club outside London a couple of years ago.
Clayton said: “We are fully committed to travelling to each other’s continents to assist with projects. In my instance, as the partner slightly more removed from the others geographically speaking, I shall be spending part of my time based in England for the foreseeable future. Frank and Mike are already working together on Bloomfield Hills C.C. and Frank and I will shortly be announcing a collaboration in Ireland.”
De Vries said: “Golf architecture is a global business. As Frank and I have shown at Bloomfield Hill, the best solution is not necessarily an all-American one.” Pont added: “Clayton, DeVries & Pont is a global affiliation with local presence. Today’s technology and ease of travel makes golf course architecture much more portable a process than it was a century ago when MacKenzie, Fowler, Alison and others travelled around the world by steamship.”
Company chairman Edward Cartwright, who will run the company’s central HQ in London, said: “The three partners have a wonderfully diverse set of talents that complement each other very well. Mike Clayton is, of course, is a highly proficient professional golfer. Mike DeVries is, in addition to being a wonderful designer, a highly talented technician, who is just as adept with bulldozers and Sand Pros as he is with computers and pens. Frank has a background in civil engineering and has a great understanding of the technical aspects of golf course architecture.”