by Forrest Richardson, ASGCA, Golf Course Architect Golf course routing plans have always fascinated me. In fact, my first introduction to golf architecture was studying routing plans on scorecards, paper menus hijacked from grillrooms and — later on — whatever plans were reproduced on the pages of Golf Digest. Not too long ago a plan caught my eye while researching the work of Alister MacKenzie. During my research I landed on an obscure website of the National Park Service’s Fredrick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Among the collection of thousands of Olmsted plans and documents are several plans, photographs and [...]

by Forrest Richardson, ASGCA, Golf Course Architect Scottish golfer Alex Smith golfing at Coronado Golf Course | San Diego History Center c. 1905 ——— The term ‘Tee Box’ has been widely accepted by modern golfers to mean the typically level surface at each hole where play begins. We also refer to these as just ‘tees,’ and if you’re involved closely with the USGA and R&A you might officially refer to them as ‘teeing grounds,’ which more specifically is a defined area on each tee that is measured based on the placement of tee markers. Actually, the term ‘tee box’ [...]

by Forrest Richardson, ASGCA, Golf Course Architect ———There is no dispute that sometime during the 1990s we began hearing that “the true version of the game was conceived without trees.” As someone who studied links golf and the origins of the game during my formal education, I know this to be partially untrue. Throughout the famous examples of links golf — Carnoustie as one example — we find trees in clusters, the lone specimen and even thickets of low varieties. Trees are not absent in our earliest form of the game. Besides, the opinions of the 1990s — or [...]

Adapted from writings by Allan Brawley, Forrest Richardson and Mark Fine ———Robert Hunter (Wiles Robert Hunter) was born in 1874 in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he grew up the son of a factory owner who served as a colonel under Ulysses S. Grant in the American Civil War. His father’s stature in the community introduced Hunter to politics at an early age. When a serious economic recession descended over the industrial economy of the U.S. in 1893, Hunter found his first calling — social work. In 1896 Hunter undertook a project that would radically change his life and, indirectly, [...]

by Forrest Richardson, Golf Course Architect Originally appeared in The Golf, the Journal of the Golf Heritage Society and the Society of Hickory Golfers (2021) One of my fondest memories visiting Disneyland as a kid was the “Great Carousel of Progress” — a revolving stage originally created by General Electric and Disney for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Each audience remained in one of six theatres as the show rotated to scenes with animatronic characters showcasing a family enjoying their homelife. The scenes began from the beginning of the industrial revolution to a futuristic rendition of what life might be like [...]

Several years ago, a friend of mine, Michael Cronan, began a talk to a group of architects and designers by discussing what he referred to as the scale of design. Cronan began by asking the audience to imagine a horizontal scale where there is a far left end and a far right end. From this point, he began to describe the primary design disciplines and, in relation to the scale, how each is approached. “At the very left side of the scale,” he began, “you have fashion design, for it occurs mostly at the same scale of the finished product; [...]