Feed The Ball

Golf course architect Forrest Richardson was elected in 2020 to be the 75th president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, a chair that’s been held by such notable designers as Stanley Thompson, Robert Trent Jones, William Langford (twice), Rees Jones, Robert Trent Jones, Jr., Alice Dye, Jeff Brauer and Steve Smyers. He joins Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina in the Salon to discuss his plans for the society as well as:

–Authoring a golf course design newsletter as a teenager;

–making the ASGCA younger and more inclusive;

–His long relationship with Desmond Muirhead;

–His idea for the “Lighthouse Hole”;

–Whether golf needs to develop more different “expressions” of the game;

–The feasibility of stand-alone short courses and par-3 courses in towns and cities;

–And whether golf needs to innovate to continue to exist.

Click here to watch Forrest Richardson mission statement video for the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

Listen to Derek Duncan discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

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The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 14, ft. Forrest Richardson appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Architect Kyle Phillips began his illustrious career as an associate working for Robert Trent Jones II in California. He gained unique design and planning expertise working on a slate of international courses for Jones, which later helped him garner major overseas jobs once he opened his own firm in the late 90s. Those include Kingsbarns in St. Andrews, Yas Links in Dubai, South Cape in South Korea, Bernardus in the Netherlands, and numerous others. He continues to be one of the major figures in golf course architecture both domestically and worldwide.

(Photo above: the 14th at Cal Club, from calclub.org.)

Phillips joined Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina from his home in northern California to talk about:

–The prevailing modes of golf design when he started with Jones;

–His major rebuilding of the Cal Club in San Francisco;

–How golf architecture lost its soul in the 70s, 80s and 90s;

–The importance of outside voices to a club’s self-perception;

–Creating naturalistic holes (Kingsbarns) out of unnaturalistic golf sites;

–How constructions and design moves from spans of acres to feet to inches;

–The concept of “turning back geologic time” in golf design;

–And the difference between the European concept of healthy turf and the American impulse to always “grow grass.”

Listen to Derek Duncan discuss “The World Atlas of Golf” on the Good-Good Golf Podcast.

Listen to Derek Duncan discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

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The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 13, ft. Kyle Phillips appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Few people in golf have had as rich or wide-ranging life in golf as Donald Steel. He began his career as the golf reporter for London’s Sunday Telegraph in 1961, memorably covering, as a rookie writer, Arnold Palmer’s back-to-back Open Championship wins at Birkdale and Troon. A few years later, while continuing his reporting duties, he joined the architectural firm of Cotton, Pennink and Lawrie, assisting in dozens of new designs and remodels throughout the U.K.

After opening his own firm in 1987, his design business flourished and he built a string of prominent new courses like the Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle in northern Scotland, the Abaco Club in the Bahamas, and Cherokee Plantation, The Vineyards on Martha’s Vineyard and the Highland Course at Primland Resort in the U.S. At 83, Steel has largely retired from golf architecture but he continues to be one of the profession’s wisest, most knowledgeable and most gentlemanly figures.

Steel joined Derek Duncan via Skype from London to discuss growing up during the London Blitz, what era he thinks had the greatest balance between equipment technology and skill, playing in the President’s Putter, his recollections of Bernard Darwin, the quality of golf writing in the 60s and 70s vs golf writing today and the unique challenges of building golf in various countries and climates around the world.

A video of Steel’s unique Le Tecina course at La Gomera on the Canary Islands.

Listen to Derek Duncan discuss “The World Atlas of Golf” and Donald Steel’s contribution on the Good-Good Golf Podcast.

Listen to Derek discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

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The post Episode 72: Donald Steel appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Golf architect Chris Wilczynski has bridged two distinct eras–that of the course-a-day, turn and burn construction frenzy of the 1990s and 2000s, and now the current period of “slow” golf with its focus on boutique operations and club restoration. He began his career as an associate with Arthur Hills, one of the busiest designers of golf and real estate development. Since 2010 he’s operated his own Michigan-based business and conducted prominent renovations of courses like Warwick Hills in Michigan and Chautauqua Golf Club in New York, as well as several new designs including Esplanade at Azario near Sarasota, Florida, opened in 2020.

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Wilczynski joins the Feed the Ball podcast to talk about:

–Teaching his class at Michigan State about golf construction and renovation during the time of Covid-19;

–The most important factors in getting hired by clubs and clients;

–Restoration vs. Renovation;

–How golf course construction in the 1920s and construction today are both similar and different;

–The “unifying vision” of Arthur Hills courses; and

–The consequences of building small greens.

Listen to Derek discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

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The post Episode 71: Chris Wilczynski appeared first on Feed The Ball.

After working for over a decade for Tom Fazio, Tim Jackson opened his own West Coast design firm with David Kahn, another Fazio alum. Jackson Kahn Design is known for their creative, ambitious ideas about design–as exhibited at, Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course and The Other Course and The Bad Little Nine at Scottsdale National–and also for their decidedly artistic approach to client presentation and development with state-of-the-art graphics, renderings and animations.

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Tim joins golf builder Jim Urbina and Derek Duncan to talk about:

–Tom Fazio’s mandate to “make it playable and make it beautiful”;

–The design motivation: “rich guys suck at golf”;

–The advantage of being able to show clients realistic photo-renderings of proposed holes and renovations;

–The odd discomfort of working with a client without the normal constraints of a budget;

–Sand Hills vs. Shadow Creek;

–And creating one of golf’s most outlandish courses, The Bad Little Nine at Scottsdale National.

Listen to Derek discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

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The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 12, ft. Tim Jackson appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Lester George was an artillery officer in the U.S. Army who rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. In the late 1980s, already into his 30s, he made a career switch to golf design, setting up a business in his native state of Virginia. In the mid-1990s he was introduced to a magnificent property outside Richmond that he would eventually develop, along with legendary Virginia amateur player Vinny Giles, into Kinloch Golf Club, now one of Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Courses and the state’s number one ranked course. George has restored numerous Golden Age designs in the mid-Atlantic states and has also worked in locations from Florida to Texas to Connecticut and Japan. He later followed up the success of Kinloch with the brawny, exuberant, rough-and-tumble Ballyhack near Roanoke.

George joins the podcast to talk about:

–Getting jobs he was told he had no chance of getting;

–Sequencing pars in a routing;

–The importance of being able to read terrain;

–The development of Kinloch and Ballyhack;

–The forensic work used to recreate the Seth Raynor features at the Greenbrier’s Old White Course;

–Potential upcoming projects on a sand mine in Chicago, river bluffs in Virginia and a new 22-hole Raynor template-hole design.

Listen to Derek discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

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The post Episode 70: Lester George appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Golf designer Dana Fry began his career learning the business as an associate for Tom Fazio, and later forged a prominent partnership with Dr. Michael Hurdzan. With Hurdzan he created such top U.S. courses as Erin Hills, site of the 2017 U.S. Open, and Calusa Pines in Florida. Today he runs his business with partner Jason Straka. He joins the Salon to talk to Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina about:

–When it’s appropriate to lengthen golf holes;

–The extremities of Calusa Pines;

–The need to change up design looks and approaches;

–Being consumed by certain jobs (Arcadia Bluffs), and

–The radical site swings between south Florida, coastal New Jersey, northern Michigan and central Wisconsin.

Listen to Derek discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

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The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 11, ft. Dana Fry appeared first on Feed The Ball.

It’s not unreasonable to suggest the path of golf architecture in the second half of the 20th century can be traced through Ron Kirby. His career has been a remarkable Zelig-like whirlwind placing him in the immediate proximity of Dick Wilson, Robert Trent Jones, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and many others. His name is on the design of over 70 golf courses on four continents, including Old Head in Ireland on one of golf’s most spectacular sites, and, most recently, the remodel of Apes Hill in Barbados.

Ron generously lends his time to discuss his remarkable career, including the terror and talent that lived inside Dick Wilson, Trent Jones’ strength as a designer, Trent Jones’ limitations as a designer, Gary Player’s role in their design partnership, what was wrong with architecture in the 1970s, Jack Nicklaus as a master strategist, pounding and grinding Old Head into shape, and his late conversion from bunkers to grass hollows.

Listen to Derek discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

“GOLF’S BATTLING ARCHITECTS”, Sports Illustrated, August 2 1962

The post Episode 69: Ron Kirby appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Rees Jones‘ design work has touched public, resort, club golf and major championship golf as much as any architect of the modern era. He enters the Salon to talk with Jim Urbina and Derek Duncan about balancing the many voices that weigh in on projects in the “remodeling era,” constructing on technically challenging sites vs finding holes, if golf designs should be allowed to evolve or if at some point they should be locked in time, the challenges of working in the shadow of Robert Trent Jones and the value of having an architectural “style.”

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Listen to Derek discuss the legendary book, “The World Atlas of Golf” on the Good-Good Golf Podcast.

The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 10, ft. Rees Jones appeared first on Feed The Ball.

From the original course at Bandon Dunes to The Castle Course at St. Andrews, to Gamble Sands in Washington and then to Mammoth Dunes in Wisconsin, David McLay Kidd has been one of the most innovative and courageous course designers of this generation. He joins Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina in the Salon to discuss “setting the table” at Bandon, if the Castle Course will someday be perceived as an overlooked jewel, whether its more desirable to achieve commercial or critical success, the redundancy of template holes, the revolution of fun and playability and building golf for the masses.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Listen to Derek discuss the legendary book, “The World Atlas of Golf” on the Good-Good Golf Podcast.

The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 9, ft. David McLay Kidd appeared first on Feed The Ball.