59 people miss greens. How much of an interesting challenge is it?” This message is proving popular, with golfers and developers alike. Kidd and his team are wildly busy: they have completed Bone Valley, the fifth course at the Streamsong resort in Florida, which is now growing in for a formal opening at the start of 2027, and they are building a private course for the Peed family, owners of the Dormie Network, in Nebraska. He has other projects in California, Florida, Texas and Washington. And Kidd still holds to his belief that design and build is the best way to construct golf courses. Many of his peers, such as Tom Doak, have pioneered a ‘design and shape’ model, where the fine work of building greens and features is done by staff shapers, but the financial risks of taking on full turnkey contracts have generally been too much for architects to stomach. Kidd doesn’t share that nervousness. “We have been doing design and build forever: the Castle course was a designand-build job,” he says. “Our process lowers the risk enormously; we are extremely engaged so the opportunity for something to spiral out of control is near zero. The worst we had was a massive 1,000-year flood hit midconstruction at Rolling Hills in LA. A $30 million insurance claim later, we were way behind schedule and going through lots of heartache, but we still got everything back together and kept everyone happy. Golf architecture is more art and sculpture than engineering and architecture, and the process of realisation must account for that. So, we self-build.” David McLay Kidd is not yet 60, but he has seen and done more than most could in three lifetimes. And he is responsible for one of the more remarkable things I have seen in my years with this magazine. Thirteen years ago, I went with him to see Guacalito de la Isla, the course he built for Nicaraguan entrepreneur Carlos Pellas Chamorro. And in a world where architects are still entranced by the template holes pioneered by Charles Blair Macdonald, he pushed the boat a little further out than most. The parthree fifteenth features a green that was based on two templates: it is a hybrid of the Redan and Biarritz holes, featuring a swale in the middle of the green and a slope that players can use to run their ball through the swale and access rear pins. “Nick [Schaan] and I laugh about that,” he says. “One of my pet peeves is the whole template thing – I think it’s wildly overdone. We always say, ‘We’re going to build another Redanarritzerran’. It’s our code for ‘We can’t think of anything to do, let’s build a template’. It’s not that they’re bad, but from my point of view I think they’re a fallback for when you can’t come up with a new idea.” “ We’re spending vastly more time figuring out what happens when people miss greens” DAVID MCLAY KIDD The par-three fifteenth at Guacalito de la Isla in Nicaragua Photo: DMK Golf Design
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