Let’s work together
The public view of golf design, insofar as it exists, is that a golf course springs almost magically into existence thanks to one inspired mind.
We in the media are partially to blame for this: it is much easier to talk about the lead architect than it is to discuss the large team involved in creating a course, and the industry’s fondness for ‘signature’ design, which sees courses attributed to one famous name (who might well have scarcely even visited the site) only makes matters worse. Even on the best sites, where very little work is needed to produce great golf, there is no sense in which an architect – whether he be named MacKenzie, Palmer or whatever – simply waves his hand to cause beautiful bunkers and great greens to appear. If it takes a village to raise a child, then to build a golf course requires, at least, a small town.
Yes, on most golf course projects, at the head of affairs, there is a single individual. But is this necessary if the course is to be really good? Must a course reflect one person’s vision, and have a single source of authority as the final decision maker? Or can good design be the result of a collaboration of minds?
Tom Doak is well placed to offer an opinion on the issue. He has collaborated very closely with largely the same group of associates for most of his glittering career, and he is at pains to try to highlight the contributions to his courses made by Brian Slawnik, Brian Schneider, Eric Iverson (pictured on page 40, on site with Doak) and Don Placek. He designed the Barnbougle Dunes course in Tasmania in partnership with Mike Clayton. He has worked with a number of other collaborators on a variety of projects. And, famously, he was hired by developer Michael Pascucci to design his Sebonack course at the top end of Long Island, in collaboration with Jack Nicklaus.
Although Doak takes every opportunity to trumpet the work of his collaborators – seen recently with Angela Moser at Pinehurst No. 10 and Clyde Johnson for the Old Petty course at Cabot Highlands – the boss gets the final say, in particular in defining the course’s routing, which on any decent property is by far the most important part of golf design. Doak has a reputation as a master router of golf courses and, over the years, he has come to the conclusion that, for him at least, routing is mostly a job best done alone.
“Really my style of design is all about my routings and green sites, and I do a lot of work very quickly in my head, so having people try to collaborate on paper never helped much,” he says. “When we’re out there looking at potential holes on the ground, that’s when someone can weigh in with an idea – either during the routing phase or during construction. I may move a green or change a couple of holes, which we can usually do because our courses aren’t surrounded by houses – for example we changed the green site of the seventh at Barnbougle in the field. For shaping, I’m more of an editor. Sometimes I give pretty clear instructions about a given green, but if I’ve put them in a good place, I’ll often just give them one or two general directions and let them go, and refine what they come up with. The key that everyone understands is to err on the side of doing too little, instead of changing everything around. From there, some get changed a lot, some not at all. That’s what motivates everyone.
“Every golf course is a collaboration; most architects just don’t name names, for business reasons,” he says. “I hate that the business is the way it is. Clients don’t want me to give my associates co-design credit, because they think if Childress Hall was advertised as a Doak/Iverson design, everyone would assume I had less to do with it than with other projects. And, yes, it can also be bad business – you’re encouraging clients to bypass you and steal your best associates for much less than they’d pay you as a team, and encouraging associates to get a big head and take more credit than they should. But I’m secure enough in what I do not to worry much about that.
“I figure it takes at least four or five good people to build something really great, and all of my associates understand that the lead associate may or may not do a lot of the creative work on a project, depending on how busy we are and the strengths of the others involved. The lead associate’s main job is to keep the project moving forward and preserve the input I’ve provided. The more experienced they are at it, the more they are able to do some of the shaping themselves, at the same time. But, just for example: Brian Slawnik was the lead associate for High Pointe and Wild Springs Dunes. At High Pointe, he and I did nearly all of the shaping, because everyone else was elsewhere. But at Wild Springs, Eric, Brian Schneider and Blake Conant were all available to shape, so Slawnik did a lot less shaping, and I did almost none.
“You can either be a total control freak about your projects, and do one at a time, or you can enlist good people to help you,” he goes on. “If you’re going to do the latter, then you should recognise their talents and use them wisely. The key to my success has been my ability to identify the right people and keep them on board – I would say that’s the one thing I learned from Alister MacKenzie’s career. Talented people are much more likely to stay on board if you use a fair amount of their ideas, and explain why when you don’t. The fact that it’s an open decision and everyone is allowed to make suggestions is a big part of the atmosphere and success.”
Pretty much the only time Doak has ceded any responsibility for the routing of a project was at Streamsong in Florida, where he and his long-time friend Bill Coore worked together to produce a 36-hole development. “Collaborating with Bill on the routing of Streamsong was so interesting, because we were both letting someone else into a process we usually do ourselves,” he says. “The goal was to get a 36-hole solution where we would both be happy building either course, and we were only able to do that because of a long history of mutual respect. Our approaches are very different, so there was a lot of back and forth, and it took quite a while, partly because there was no rush to start construction, and we weren’t too busy elsewhere.”
UK-based architect Tim Lobb has recently taken on a couple of collaborative projects, at Pirkkala in Finland, where he has worked with Kari Haug, and at Gävle in Sweden, with Christian Lundin. “Most of the collaborative projects will occur between two parties who know (and respect) each other. In my case the collaborations have come from colleagues in the golf course architecture world through our relationships and friendships through the EIGCA,” he says. “I have also found collaborations with partners who are localised to projects is also a massive benefit in terms of local knowledge and accessibility to the project.
“Concept and visioning is the most important stage of the collaboration, to create a variety of ideas and use local knowledge as a foundation for the thought process. For the Pirkkala project in Finland we were also keen to implement Kari Haug’s Playable Pathway strategy to enhance a design foundation routed in diversity and inclusion, and the correct application of forward tees.”
Lobb says it is inevitable that there will be differences of opinion in collaborative projects, and that finding a constructive way to deal with them is essential if the project is to succeed. “Debate and discussion should be a part of any design process and for sure different ideas are generated, which might not necessarily be the way you may have done it in the past,” he says. “But with discussion the best solution for the client is achieved. No one person knows everything and there is the beauty of collaboration. With Christian in Sweden at Gävle we were both asked to submit for the project. Christian and I decided to collaborate and help the client achieve their vision together. It has been a fantastic project and I loved working with Christian on the vision and concept. Christian and his team are now implementing it. It is my first project in Sweden and working next to Christian has been wonderful.”
Architects Tim Lobb and Christian Lundin worked on a masterplan for both 18-hole courses at Gävle club in Sweden (Photo: Lobb + Partners)
Read more: Tim Lobb talks about his work with James Edwards at the Soma Bay development in Egypt.
The firm of Clayton, DeVries and Pont is not obviously set up to encourage collaboration, given that its four partners (the three founders – Mike Clayton, Mike DeVries and Frank Pont – and Hendrik Hilgert) are based in different countries across three continents. But, says chairman Edward Cartwright, team members still work together closely.
“Given the distances and local projects in all three ‘jurisdictions’, we are asked how we work together fairly frequently,” he says. “Our teams in Europe, Australia and the US provide complete client solutions locally. There is also full cross-border collaboration to suit the client’s needs. Examples of this would be at The Addington in England, where Frank, Clayts and Mike have all consulted, at Bloomfield Hills in the US, where Mike and Frank worked together, Royal Dublin, which was Frank, Hendrik and Clayts, and 7 Mile Beach in Tasmania, where Clayts and Mike are both working. We have several other upcoming projects where such collaboration will take place.
“Additionally, all four partners have consulted on the designs for our courses in Vietnam. Hendrik is lead designer and I expect all of them will be involved during the build phase.”
The Clayton, DeVries & Pont team, although based in different countries, sometimes come together to work on a project, such as at Golf de Fontainebleau in France (Photo: CDP Golf)
Philip Spogard and Michiel van der Vaart are not so far apart, but Denmark and the Netherlands are still not quite next door. Spogard says that on most projects he and his partner work separately, but have collaborated closely on a number of jobs. “At Golfbaan Stippelberg in the Netherlands, Michiel worked more on the routing and landscape while I got stuck into the greens,” he says. “On a number of other jobs, such as Himmerland in Denmark and Ålands GC in Finland, which were mostly ‘my’ projects, Michiel joined in with some visits, ideas and a few greens. Similarly I had input on some of his jobs in the Netherlands. In that way we can supplement each other through large scale projects – and cover for each other in case of illness. That has a great value for our clients, who are more ‘covered’ that way at critical points during construction. For most of our clients, upgrading their courses is a massive investment and it can be problematic if the architect doesn’t deliver at the moment of implementation. We have been so busy for the last fifteen years that we mostly have to focus on our own projects – but we know we always have each other’s back in case we need help or get stuck with issues where we need another point of view.
“It is definitely an advantage for both us and for our clients to have a team of architects who can draw on each other during a project. More often than not our relations to our clients are between five and 15 years – so there are multiple points in that timeline where we get the chance to either give input or assist each other.”
Kevin Ramsey and David Dale of Golfplan have worked together for many years, and are both based in the same city in northern California, so it is perhaps unsurprising that their professional relationship is very close. Ramsey says this is a fundamental part of their success. “Dave and I believe two heads are better than one and we work together on nearly every design,” he says. “We have a collaborative spirit and are always bouncing ideas off each other and reviewing each other’s concepts. In some cases, we have actually worked on the same drawing at the same time to meet a client’s time request. We have worked together for 27 years and know each other quite well. We now spend more and more time together on site to give our clients the full benefit of the team not just in the design but the implementation. This allows us to cover more ground while on site.”
European Golf Design’s Matt Sturt, Gary Johnston, Ross McMurray, Tom Kelly, Jeremy Slessor, Dave Sampson, Gareth Weeks and Robin Hiseman. EGD projects are usually managed by a single lead designer, but sharing of ideas is common (Photo: European Golf
Similarly, the team at European Golf Design, which includes managing director Jeremy Slessor, five lead architects and a backroom team, are all based together in one office in Sunningdale, England. EGD projects are generally managed by one of the firm’s lead designers, but Slessor says proximity means the team can work together closely on an informal basis. “Every project has a lead, and we don’t put two or three guys on a project, but beyond there is a lot of peering at drawing boards and asking, ‘Why are you doing it like that?’” he says. “We don’t have one guy doing the grading, another doing the green designs and another the drainage, because I think that’s counter-productive – you’d end up with inconsistencies across the plans. Being in the same office does help a lot – one of the downsides of business life post-Covid is that working from home has become more normal, and if you’re not in the office you don’t have the same interaction with other people. We’ve proved that you don’t need to be in the office all the time to be productive, but I do think there is a downside to being isolated at home.
“One thing that gives us an edge is the number of projects that we’ve done with ‘signatures’, where by definition there is a degree of collaboration that doesn’t exist on other projects.”
Kevin Ramsey and David Dale of Golfplan say they work together on nearly all of their designs (Photo: Golfplan)
The firm of Coore & Crenshaw is famously collegial, so it is perhaps unsurprising that a number of long-time C&C associates have something to say on collaboration. Trevor Dormer, who worked with C&C for many years before joining up with Rob Collins and Tad King in the firm of King Collins Dormer, says that, contrary to any perception of golf architecture being the domain of solo geniuses, it is collaboration – at every level – that produces the best work. “Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of golf design,” he says. “Having a synergetic relationship with partners in a design firm, project managers, or the labourers digging in the bunkers, plays a massive part in the overall success of a golf course. That said, the final decision must be made by the golf architects. Ultimately, the owner has hired the designers to create something special, and the architects must be happy with the result. The routing process can be solitary in the initial stages of working a topo map. I prefer to scour over the topo map and digital elevation model (DEM) alone to start, uncovering circulation patterns and exciting features. After we have had time to process on our own, my partners and I start to riff of each other. Rob and I have done a few routings using a ping-pong format where one of us starts it and we send it back and forth to each other until we have come up with a routing of both our minds. We have also done totally separate routings and then merged them to find the best option, but still a joint process. As far as crafting the course goes, a smart architect will feed off the creativity of the shaping team without giving them too many parameters. Striking the right balance between providing guidance and allowing total creative freedom can be challenging though. Once the first draft is in the ground, sharing ideas and cooperation amplifies. Everything gets better!”
Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, Trevor Dormer and Scotty Sayers on site at Torch Cay, which is under construction in The Bahamas (Photo: Jim Kidd)
Dormer says that collaboration throughout the design and construction team is essential, and perhaps this explains why firms like C&C – who tend to have the same people shaping jobs – emphasise collaboration. “Over the past five years, I have been blessed to work beside the same construction team on a few courses, which has allowed me to form long lasting relationships with the team,” he explains. “Getting to know each member of the team personally and professionally strengthens cooperation and collaboration to a point where everyone feels comfortable making suggestions, putting forward ideas and expressing concerns. Again, this makes the design and construction process much better.”
Riley Johns and Keith Rhebb both also came to the industry via the C&C family, before striking out on their own. As a two-man firm, it is perhaps unsurprising that, again, their approach is inherently collaborative. “Collaboration is essential to strengthening our design ideas and concepts, particularly when it comes to their implementation on the ground,” says Johns. “It is a necessary step in our process that evolves as we refine our way toward a final product – much like a writer’s journey of drafting and editing. This collaborative editing approach is how Bill and Ben work together, and it is a method that Keith and I now apply to our designs as well.
“For instance, when one of us is stuck on a specific feature or a hole concept, the other can step in to help overcome that proverbial ‘writer’s block’. Collaboration also encourages debates, which we find especially beneficial, as it compels us to articulate and defend the rationale behind our design choices. This process ensures we maximise the potential of each piece of land and each golf hole we work on.”
While there are clear benefits to teamwork, architects need to go into those projects being conscious of the challenges that may arise.
At Sebonack, the collaboration between Doak and Nicklaus – which was essentially imposed on the two architects by client Pascucci – produced some difficulties, though Doak says they did not happen at a ‘headline’ level. “When our client at Sebonack offered to break the ties, Jack Nicklaus looked me right in the eye and said, ‘And that’s why you and I need to work things out, because we don’t want him making any of the decisions’,” he explains. “The hard part at Sebonack wasn’t working with Jack – we had a process we’d agreed to. But by agreeing to collaborate we had pushed our own people further down the chain of command, without thinking about that, and none of them liked it.
“I don’t think you can have a successful collaboration if there is no clear authority on decision-making. Mike Clayton at Barnbougle, Jay Sigel at Stonewall, and Brooks Koepka at Memorial Park all understood that we welcomed their input, but I had to decide whether their ideas fit the course we were building. I chose only to do the routing for Tree Farm because I thought Zac Blair wanted to make his own decisions about the course, and I didn’t want to wrestle over them.”
This article first appeared in the October 2025 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page.
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