The quality of a golf course is usually in the eye of the beholder. Usually the view depends on the beholder’s success that day. In the 1962 American Golf Classic in Akron, Ohio, after I had remodelled Firestone Country Club into a stern test of golf, Bob Rosburg shot 78 in the second round and damned every tree and trap on the course. The next day he shot 65 and told the press he had never played a finer competitive course.

I don’t build courses just for the pros. I worry more about the duffer. Besides, I’ve never built a course on which a professional couldn’t score 65 if he’s playing well. Sometimes I get the idea that they want me to build courses on which they can score in the 60s when they’re playing badly.

I’m not a fiend. I don’t hate golfers. I love golfers. That’s why I build them good courses to play.


..... My philosophy always has been that every hole should be a difficult par and an easy bogey. Every course should be challenging, but it always should be fun to play. When Bob Jones and I designed Peachtree in Atlanta, I told him, “Bob, I know you want this to be a great championship course, but most of your members are well over sixty. They want a course on which they can have fun.” Fortunately, through the use of long tees and large greens that allow great flexibility, I think we created both at Peachtree. Every golfer gets special enjoyment from playing particular courses. He may not know why, but that doesn’t matter. The fact that he does is sufficient to make those courses admirable. It means that the architect has incorporated features in the course so superior that anybody instinctively derives joy from playing it.

So how does an architect create a course that is great for the best players in the world as well as the highest handicappers? He creates options.

In the early days of golf course design and development, most courses were penal, extracting penalties from the player who failed to execute the shot required. There was no other way to go other than over trouble. Facing that kind of hole is disheartening to the high-handicap golfer, who sees a problem that is beyond his capabilities with no alternative available. There is no choice but to play exactly the shot require or get into trouble. Often he can’t even play short because there is trouble there too. Putting such demands on most players is the mark of inept architecture - or perhaps just cruel architecture. In many cases, the penal design of the old courses was unfair because of the degree of punishment for error. A shot that was just slightly off line might catch a deep bunker, for instance, while a badly missed shot would escape the trap and leave the golfer only a pitch to get it close to the hole. Thus he would be the equal, or better, of a golfer who had played an almost perfect shot that missed by inches.