Designing Golf

After a surprisingly controversial PGA Championship at Aronimink, Garrett brings on his Fried Egg Golf colleague PJ Clark to chat about championship golf course design and setup. First they discuss the factors that made Aronimink a polarizing venue: the lack of trees, the firm greens, the provocative pins, and the relatively low emphasis on driving accuracy. Then Garrett takes PJ through a brief history of the championship setup wars, starting with Robert Trent Jones’s “Open Doctor” shenanigans in the 1950s and 60s. Finally, Garrett and PJ both lay out what they’re looking for in a 21st-century major championship golf course.
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Donald Ross had one of the most prolific, impressive careers in the history of golf architecture. Yet his design methods and ideas are not as widely and precisely understood as those of, say, Alister MacKenzie or C.B. Macdonald. So in this episode, Garrett sits down with Bradley Klein, a longtime golf architecture writer and golf course consultant, to answer some Ross-themed questions asked by members of Fried Egg Golf Club. First, though, Garrett discusses what he believes are the five essential Donald Ross golf courses.
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What do the different components of a golf course construction project cost? Or really — what should they cost? In today’s episode, we tackle the economics of building golf courses. First, Garrett outlines Alister MacKenzie’s ideas about economy in construction and applies them to today’s realities. Then he brings on golf architect Bruce Hepner to discuss Hepner’s recent work on public courses like Miami Lake Golf Club and his thoughts on the excesses of modern golf architecture.


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The golf course at Augusta National has changed a great deal over time. So what was the original version like? This episode dives into what Garrett calls one of the strangest and most interesting courses ever created. First, he is joined by Josh Pettit, founder of the Alister MacKenzie Institute, to discuss how certain holes at Augusta National were inspired by links templates. Then Garrett sits down with golf architect Brian Schneider to talk about the ways that the 1930s iteration of the course might inspire modern golf architecture.
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Most golf architects will tell you that the most important step in designing a golf course is routing — that is, locating greens, fairways, and tees, and linking them together into a full sequence of holes. And yet routing is also probably the hardest aspect of golf course design to discuss. So in this installment of our Golf Architecture 101 series, Garrett sits down with PJ Clark to demystify the art of routing.
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