The structure of revenue: golf course designers share what makes programs enjoyable, worthwhile and long-lasting

Top golf course designers and designers share the teachings they’ve discovered about creating programs that ship playability, effectivity and long-term worth.

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Great golf programs not often come from a single thought or an ideal set of plans. They evolve via expertise, collaboration and hard-earned classes discovered within the discipline.

For house owners and operators, these classes matter. Every design resolution impacts how a course performs, the way it performs financially and the way nicely it serves golfers over time. The most profitable tasks steadiness creativity with practicality, delivering an expertise that’s pleasurable to play, environment friendly to take care of and aligned with the long-term objectives of the power.

Over the course of their careers, main golf course architects have seen what works and what doesn’t. They have discovered that enjoyable typically issues greater than issue, character of the land ought to information the design, and sustainability is as a lot about budgets and operations as it’s about environmental stewardship. They have additionally seen how robust collaboration, clear imaginative and prescient and the proper crew can form outcomes lengthy after development begins.

Today’s golfers carry new expectations as nicely. They need programs which are partaking with out being punishing, memorable with out being extreme and welcoming to a variety of talents. At the identical time, house owners are targeted on asset worth, upkeep effectivity and tasks that ship measurable returns.

To seize the insights behind nice design, Golf Inc. requested revered architects within the business to share the teachings which have stayed with them over time. Their responses replicate a long time of expertise throughout non-public golf equipment, resorts, public amenities and renovations of each scale.

Together, these views provide sensible steerage for anybody planning enhancements or fascinated by the way forward for their facility. At their core, the teachings level to a easy fact: The greatest golf design serves each the sport and the enterprise that helps it.

Steve Dana
Landscape Architect/Senior Design Associate
Jerry Pate Design

The first venture of my profession was the second 18 holes for a rising non-public membership neighborhood in Coachella Valley, California. The proprietor had directed us to create a dramatic and difficult golf course to counter the present course which was fairly subdued in its character and easy in its problem. We did because the proprietor desired … bunkers had been deep, hazards had been plentiful and greens had been extreme.

The outcome was a course that was acknowledged as a greatest new course within the space and was applauded for the effectivity with which it was constructed. However, the members ultimately rejected our course with solely 20% of the membership’s rounds being performed on it; it was under-utilized. The different course had 80% of the play, fully taxing it.

Sometime after opening, the possession requested us to simplify our course to encourage extra play on it. The ensuing softening did steadiness out the play between the 2 programs, and the members may now totally take pleasure in each of their facilities.

The lesson was clear. Golf is recreation. It’s imagined to be enjoyable. Golf is tough … arduous sufficient by itself. Design accordingly.

Tom Doak
Architect
Doakgolf, Inc.

My No. 1 remark over time is that the tasks the place the development crew had essentially the most enjoyable are those that end up the perfect.

That was true of Long Cove Club, the primary venture I did for the Dyes, the place a younger crew labored grueling hours within the warmth after which performed softball collectively within the evenings. It was true at Pacific Dunes, the place we had been all in awe of attending to work on such a stupendous piece of floor. It was true at Ballyneal, the place my shapers watched rented comedy motion pictures each night time at their rental home in a small city with little to do; or at Rock Creek Cattle Company, the place they instituted a bowling night time each week in Deer Lodge.

All it takes is discovering good individuals who get alongside nicely collectively, and a consumer who’s on the identical web page.

Forrest Richardson
Architect
Forrest Richardson Golf Course Architects

Lesson one: It have to be entertaining. I joke with my actor daughter that “Your dad is in the entertainment business.” With a level of pushback, she admits that is so. Golf design is leisure. In the top, it’s our job to create a stage the place strange individuals collect to socialize, recreate and have interaction within the sport. Each day the world over about 12 million hours are spent by individuals taking part in golf — on a golf course. That’s over and above the time spent in simulators, on the vary or placing on a miniature golf format. One factor I’ve come to understand is that the sport must be enjoyable. It sounds easy, however that single tenet of my work is all the time before everything. Whatever we do to a course to alter it or make it higher, one of many guiding rules must be to create extra enjoyable and delight.

Lesson two: Growing the asset worth. While it sounds easy, I’m typically shocked at what an impactful query it’s to ask a bunch of members, house owners or operators whether or not the plan will “grow the asset value.” Will the transform, renovation or addition create a extra beneficial golf course? Will the membership price be value extra? Will we be capable of enhance the inexperienced price? Will it entice extra individuals to the resort? Will the work assist create a ready listing? All these boil right down to rising the asset. At each flip it is a nice query to pose as you have a look at enchancment work. Is what we’re about to do going to create a greater, extra beneficial golf facility?

Lesson three: Think large. It doesn’t pay to suppose small and depart doubtlessly nice concepts on the desk. My pal Robert Trent Jones, Jr. is known for declaring to shoppers that “The process of sketching ideas on paper is among the most valuable, yet least costly parts of any project.” When you’re brainstorming together with your golf course architect, you’re investing in desires and concepts. Besides the time concerned, there isn’t a price for development, earthmoving, shaping, irrigation or allowing. It is crucial a part of any venture. “Think Big” is a approach of reminding us that we will all the time rein again our plans. But, if we fail to depict them on paper, there may be little hope of ever realizing them. Many of the best concepts in golf have, sadly, by no means seen the sunshine of day as a result of they by no means acquired visualized to ever be thought-about. That’s a disgrace. The lesson to be discovered is that concepts can solely be really analyzed after we share them in visible kind. Otherwise, they could as nicely be misplaced perpetually.

Bruce Charlton
President
Robert Trent Jones II Golf Course Architects

Lesson one: Early in my profession, I discovered the significance of the architect/shaper relationship. We can draw plans until we’re blue within the face, however it’s the shapers who carry it to life. If you haven’t labored with a shaper, or you probably have however you’re going for a special look, playability or model this time, there’s all the time what I name “the three-hole learning curve.” It takes about three holes for everybody to get on the identical web page and perceive that that is what we’re after. (It takes about three holes for the consumer to get on that web page too.) Then, when working with a shaper they usually do one thing good, I prefer to say, “Give me more of that. Whatever you did to accomplish that, keep doing it.”

Lesson two: Never fall in love together with your drawings. We put one thing on paper and conceptualize inexperienced sketches, however generally you get out within the discipline and for no matter purpose — winds, contours, drainage — you must say, “You know what? That doesn’t work.” You have to regulate to the positioning situations, and generally you must alter to the consumer. Drawings are an excellent begin, however it has to work within the discipline.

Finally, when individuals ask what’s my most necessary device as a golf architect, I level to my two ears. I have to take heed to what everyone seems to be saying, feeling and listening to. One of crucial issues to take heed to is who’s going to make use of the course. Have the flexibility to pay attention and don’t block out feedback as you get them.

Timothy Liddy
President, Timothy Liddy + Associates, Inc.
Fellow, American Society of Golf Course Architects

An invisible pencil within the discipline. This lesson might sound like a quirk, however it’s one I hope you keep in mind should you pursue a profession in golf course structure.

In structure college, the perfect design device you might have is a pencil. Constant sketching — exploring concepts, testing options and drawing via issues — is the way you be taught to suppose as a designer. This often occurs in a quiet, managed surroundings. Even at the moment, in case your device is a mouse and a pc, the precept is similar: Drawing is considering.

The discipline is completely different.

On a golf course development web site, you’ll make dozens of design selections day-after-day. How excessive ought to this inexperienced web site be? How far ought to this bunker intrude into the green? How a lot of the inexperienced floor needs to be seen from the strategy? Each resolution issues, and each impacts the following.

What makes this difficult is the surroundings. Construction websites are scorching, dusty, loud and chaotic. Bulldozers, excavators and loaders are operating consistently, engines roaring and backup alarms beeping. Contractors want solutions instantly to maintain schedules transferring and budgets intact.

Early on, each working with Mr. Dye and alone, I struggled to pay attention on this setting. What I discovered was to ask for time. I’d inform the shaper, “Give me five minutes and I’ll have an answer; I just need time to marinate.” As architects, time is your greatest pal. At first, individuals might roll their eyes, but when your solutions are good, they are going to be taught to belief the method.

I additionally developed a small private trick that helped my focus enormously. I’d fake I used to be holding a pencil whereas finding out a inexperienced, bunker or fairway. As quickly as my hand wrapped round that imaginary pencil, the proper facet of my mind switched on, and I started to suppose artistically as a substitute of reactively. It helped me reconnect with the identical design instincts I had within the studio.

After greater than 30 years within the career, I now not want these crutches — however they had been invaluable early on. The bigger lesson is that this: Good web site design not often comes from dashing. Whenever attainable, keep just a few holes forward of development so you might have time to suppose, rethink and let higher options emerge.

If you keep in mind something from this, do not forget that design considering doesn’t cease once you depart the studio. You simply need to learn to carry it with you into the sphere.

Nathan Crace
American Society of Golf Course Architects

My background is a part of what makes me a greater golf course architect. Before turning into an architect, I labored as an assistant golf skilled and ultimately as a director of golf/common supervisor. Those experiences helped to form my ideas on golf structure as extra than simply “eye candy” for the pages of golf publications and helped me to raised perceive how kind really follows perform.

When a golf course architect finishes a venture, the consumer, the superintendent and the employees will need to have a facility that may be operated and managed inside their finances, or the enhancements won’t final. With correct planning and the proper crew, we will create the aesthetic that golfers need whereas nonetheless producing a course that may be maintained in a sustainable method, each environmentally and financially.

In my 30-plus years as a golf course architect, I’ve labored with a variety of consumer varieties with the complete spectrum of budgets from high-end non-public golf equipment and resorts to public programs, municipalities and even the United States Air Force. At the top of the day, all of them have one factor in frequent: a love for the sport of golf and the will to supply the perfect product they will, day in and time out.

As golf course architects, a part of our mission is to create a completed product that allows them with the flexibility to just do that.

Lloyd “AJ” Bridges
Design Associate
DMK Golf Design

One of the primary issues expertise teaches you is that nice golf programs aren’t born from drawings drafted at a light-weight desk, alone. They’re formed by course of and iteration — by Mother Nature, local weather, finances and what occurs when you begin transferring dust.

Clubs typically underestimate how essential it’s to agree early on what really issues of their imaginative and prescient for this endeavor. Is the purpose to supply a problem or enjoyment for the membership? Is the answer manufactured class or an emphasis on simplicity and uncooked parts? Is the cornerstone of the event hustled ambition or long-term sustainability? If these questions aren’t answered at the beginning, the design spends the remainder of the venture making an attempt to catch up.

Another lesson is that constraints aren’t the enemy of creativity — they’re the framework that provides it which means. Environmental limitations, water availability, soils and upkeep sources ought to form the design from day one. Fighting these realities solely results in short-term outcomes and long-term issues. The most sustainable programs are those that really feel “inevitable,” as if they might solely (and may solely) exist on that singular piece of land and nowhere else on the planet.

The fashionable golfer has modified how architects take into consideration design. Players at the moment need programs which are partaking however not exhausting; strategic somewhat than extreme and punishing; pleasurable on the primary spherical or the fiftieth. That notion has strengthened the worth of restraint. Less tends to be extra. Fewer huge earth strikes, less complicated concepts, clearer methods to boost the narrative — executed nicely — create golf that lasts.

At the top of the day, golf is about experiencing a spot. When sustainability, playability and the character of the land are revered, the course doesn’t have to shout. It merely belongs. It’s one thing of a unicorn.

This article initially appeared within the March/April 2026 difficulty.