39 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 Photo: Blais Herman “ Every golf course is a collaboration; most architects just don’t name names, for business reasons”
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