design courses that appeal to both professionals and amateurs.
“A good strategist never asks a golfer to
duplicate the same shot during a round,”
he explains. “Every hole should be differ-
ent, and you should have to play them dif-
ferently. You should go uphill, downhill,
left to right, right to left. There should be
endless variety.”
Weiskopf said he learned the value
of variety from Tillinghast, although he
got similar lessons from the MacKenzie-
designed courses at Ohio State University,
where he played his college golf.
“MacKenzie had the first and most
impact on me,” notes the former PGA pro,
who thinks that today Dye is “the best
strategist in the business.”
The way Weiskopf sees it, golf archi-
tecture began to lose elements of strategy
— not to mention part of its soul – when
homebuilders became the driving force in
design.
“Residential communities ruined the art
of golf-course routing, which is one of the
essentials in golf design,” he said.
Among those he calls “the young
guys,” Weiskopf most admires Coore and
Crenshaw.
“They call to mind the traditional styles
of the past, and they did a fantastic job of
restoring Pinehurst No. 2,” he said. “They
made you wonder why the resort put more
grass on the course in the first place.”
Rees Jones
GOLF COURSE
ARCHITECT
His nominees: Coore & Crenshaw,
Tom Doak, Gil Hanse, Mike
Hurdzan, Robert Trent Jones, Alister
MacKenzie, Steve Smyers, A. W.
Tillinghast
Jones was born into a leading family of
golf design — his father, he notes, “put golf
architecture on the map” — and his nominees reflect the evolution he’s seen during
his career.
“Styles change, and today we’re riding
a new wave of design,” he said. “The style
that Nicklaus and Dye popularized has
been supplanted by the one exemplified by
Doak and Coore and Crenshaw.”
Doak, he said, is “passionate and true to
his convictions.”
Regarding Coore and Crenshaw: “I
really like that they’re hands-on architects
who spend a lot of time at a site.” And
generally speaking, the Purists have made
Immortals like Tillinghast and MacKenzie
“more famous today than they were when
they were alive.”
Jones also nominates two architects who
aren’t receiving the attention he feels they
deserve. Hurdzan, a co-designer of Erin
Hills — the site of the 2017 U.S. Open
— has long campaigned for affordable,
environmentally sustainable golf construc-
tion, and he’s one of only seven individu-
als (Jones among them) who’ve received
lifetime achievement awards from the
architects, builders and superintendents
associations.
“You don’t get recognized by all three of
those groups unless you’ve accomplished
a lot,” Jones said. “It’s a major measure of
influence.”
Jones also names Smyers, the current
president of the architects association and
a member of the USGA’s executive com-
mittee, which selects the venues for the
U.S. Open and other national champion-
ships. “In these positions, he gets to speak
out on a variety of important issues,” said
Jones, “and that means he’s an important
voice in our business.”
Ran Morrissett
CO-FOUNDER,
GOLF CLUB ATLAS
His nominees: Rob Collins, Tom
Doak, Keith Foster, Kyle Franz, Gil
Hanse, Mike Nuzzo & Don Mahaffey,
Rod Whitman
Like other neo-classicists, Morrissett
believes that courses designed expressly to
help developers sell houses contribute little
or nothing to the art of golf architecture.
“I don’t necessarily equate multimil-
lion-dollar fees with being influential,” he
explains. “Today, people want golf courses
that are intellectually interesting.”
To identify those courses, in the late
1990s Morrissett co-founded Golf Club
Nuzzo’s Wolf Point, Texas
Erin Hills, Erin, Wis., designed by Hurdzan,
Fry and Whitten
P
HO
TO
B
Y
PAUL
H
UND
LE
Y
1 Alister MACKENZIE
2 Donald ROSS
3 A. W. TILLINGHAST
4 Robert Trent JONES
5 C. B. MACDONALD
The Immortals
