In this installment of our Golf Architecture 101 series, Garrett introduces his Fried Egg Golf colleague PJ Clark to C.B. Macdonald's "ideal holes." They discuss how Macdonald came up with the notion of "templates" based on famous British golf holes, and they dig into the history and characteristics of the Redan, Alps, and Road designs. Garrett and PJ wrap up by talking about whether the ideal holes have outlived their usefulness.

If you’ve listened to any amount of golf architecture discussion in the past two decades, you’ve probably heard the term “minimalism.” In a basic sense, minimalism means trying to create compelling golf while moving as little earth as possible. Recently, some architects have been looking for alternatives to this philosophy. Two such architects are Tim Jackson and David Kahn, the principals of the firm Jackson Kahn Design. In this episode, Garrett Morrison speaks with Tim and David about what they make of “minimalism” as a category, how they approach different types of land, whether they’re concerned with making artificial golf features appear natural, and which courses and designers have inspired them.

It’s not easy to design a golf course that challenges elite players without making average golfers want to quit the game. That was the task OCM Golf faced in its 2023-24 redesign of Course 3 at Medinah Country Club. In this episode, OCM partner Mike Cocking sits down with Garrett Morrison to talk about how he helped reimagine Medinah No. 3 as a course simultaneously capable of hosting both the 2026 Presidents Cup and an ordinary Saturday four-ball.

What was Alister MacKenzie up to in the 1930s? For one thing, he was building Augusta National. But more generally, MacKenzie was exploring new forms of golf architecture and producing some genuinely experimental, even radical, courses. In this episode, Garrett Morrison speaks with Josh Pettit, founder of the Alister MacKenzie Institute, about MacKenzie’s wild ’30s: what projects he completed, how this era of his career influenced the design of Augusta National, and how it might light the way forward for golf architecture in the 21st century.

Beau Welling is the founder and CEO of Beau Welling Design, and in addition to collaborating with Tiger Woods and designing courses like Bluejack National and Fields Ranch West at PGA Frisco, he is an an experienced landscape designer and urban planner. In this episode, Garrett Morrison talks with Beau about how designing a golf course is like designing a city. As far as Beau is concerned, the goal is the same: to help people feel and be more human.

Ahead of this week's Players Championship, Garrett Morrison is joined by Fried Egg Golf's Joseph LaMagna for a discussion about Pete Dye's Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. The two share their favorite things about the course and what makes it one of the best venues on the PGA Tour before coming up with some ideas on how the Stadium Course, and the Players itself, can improve.

In this second installment of our Golf Architecture 101 series, Garrett Morrison guides Fried Egg Golf producer PJ Clark through Alister MacKenzie’s famous 13 principles of golf course design. Garrett and PJ give particular attention to MacKenzie’s preferences for hole-to-hole variety, a minimum of blind approaches, returning nines, and naturalistic earthworks. They also manage to work in an allusion to a Tim Robinson sketch.

If you want to learn more about golf course design, which books should you read? Garrett Morrison fields this question pretty frequently, so for today’s episode, he brings on writer and historian Stephen Proctor to discuss the 10 most essential golf architecture books.

Geoff Ogilvy is the 2006 U.S. Open champion, one of the sharpest minds in golf, and an architect whose firm, OCM, is making waves in the industry. In this episode, Garrett Morrison asks him about the four golf courses that most influenced his ideas about the game.

For the first episode of our Golf Architecture 101 series, Garrett Morrison talks Fried Egg Golf producer PJ Clark through the so-called “schools”—that is, philosophies—of golf course design: penal, strategic, and heroic. If you want to learn more about golf architecture, this is a good place to start.