Feed The Ball

Jim Wagner and Gil Hanse have been design partners for over 20 years. Though Hanse’s name is on their courses, Wagner has been equally influential in their concepts and outcomes while overseeing a dedicated group of shapers and designers known as the Cavemen. In the last 10 years the two men have taken their small company to the highest elevations of golf architecture with designs like the O...

Brian Silva began working for iconic New England architect Geoffrey Cornish in 1983, building golf courses in the traditional way of the day. After a revelation concerning the essence of strategic golf he transitioned into golf course restoration, becoming one of the business’s most respected talents at renovating historic Golden Age-era courses. His particular passion is for Seth Raynor , a...

Jay Blasi founded his own design company in 2012 after working for Robert Trent Jones II for over a decade. He gained notoriety as the lead associate on two high profile Jones courses: The Patriot Golf Club in Oklahoma, and Washington State’s Chambers Bay , host of the 2015 U.S. Open, where Blasi was instrumental in infusing the design with its sandy, tumbling avant garde character. He recen...

Mike Clayton is a throwback to a bygone tradition of golf figures such as Willie Park, Jr., Walter Travis and Max Behr , top players who later became both architects and men of letters. Clayton won the Australian Amateur in 1978 and played the European Tour from 1982 until 2000. He’s written extensively for golf publications in his native Australia and beyond, and has recently published a bo...

Not since Hugh Wilson at Merion has an architectural career been launched as brightly as David McLay Kidd’s . As a young designer in his 20’s, Kidd was tabbed by Mike Keiser to build the first course at Bandon Dunes . Kidd followed that spectacular success with a series of prestigious designs across several continents, becoming arguably the hottest architect on the planet. After severa...

A rundown of the best moments and most significant exchanges during the first full season of the Feed the Ball podcast. Highlights include thoughts on the current and future state of golf course architecture from Golf Digest architectural editor Ron Whitten , Golf Advisor’s Brad Klein and architect Ian Andrew ; thoughts on Tiger Woods as designer from Beau Welling ; reflections from Dr. Mich...

The par-3 3rd at Ballyneal. Bruce Hepner began his architectural career in 1990 as an associate for Ron Forse , with whom he became one of the early advocates and influencers of historic golf course restoration. He returned home to Michigan in 1993 to work for  Tom Doak , first as a shaper and later as a designer at modern masterpieces like Pacific Dunes , Ballyneal , Streamsong Blue and Cape Kidn...

Dalu Dunes (photo: farrowgolf.com) Brian Curley began his golf course architecture career working on a number of Pete Dye courses for Landmark Land Company. There he met another Dye protégé, Lee Schmidt , and the two combined forces to form the company Schmidt-Curley Golf Design . Since the 1990’s they’ve built courses all over the U.S. and throughout the world, and for the last 20 yea...

Peter Kessler — the Voice of Golf, historian and one of the most outspoken commentators in the game — returns to the podcast to talk to Derek about his recent social media dustups with Brandel Chamblee and the fans of No Laying Up , about being provocative on Twitter , the skills required to be great on camera, the consequences of the shift in the way consumers view golf content, eleva...

The 11th at Atlanta National P.B. Dye began working on his father Pete Dye’s construction sites when he was a boy. Along with his brother, Perry, he’s had the closest and longest view of how Dye conceived of and built golf courses and was a primary assistant during several of his father’s touchstone courses, including Long Cove on Hilton Head Island and The Honors Course near Cha...

The Saticoy Club Thad Layton began working for Arnold Palmer Course Design in the late 1990’s and now, as Senior Architect and Vice President, leads the company along with fellow designer  Brandon Johnson . Since 1972, the firm has been known for producing a massive number of courses worldwide, mostly associated with real estate. Over the last five years, however, Layton and Johnson have bee...

Tom Mackenzie joined with Martin Ebert to form the golf architectural firm of Mackenzie & Ebert in 2005. They each began their careers designing golf courses for Donald Steel , and their business is very much a continuation of the elder architect’s practice. Like Steel, Mackenzie prefers to design naturally, altering landscapes as little as possible while identifying intrinsic queues in...

Cross bunkers at the Army Navy Club Richard Mandell’s  golf design practice has taken off over the last 10 years. He entered the business in the early 1990’s and paid his dues for over a decade working singular jobs while learning how to build and renovate courses with a minimal amount of of unnecessary inputs or accessorization. As a result he gained a reputation as a conscientious, h...

Ron Forse was an engineer who made a jump into golf course architecture in 1989, working on a project in West Virginia in conjunction with Dr. Michael Hurdzan . Though not necessarily his intent, he began taking jobs consulting with a number of historic club, guiding them through the process of renovating their old courses. Since that time he’s become one of the business’s most respect...

South Carolina native Beau Welling  played college golf at Brown University and earned a landscape architecture degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. After exploring career opportunities in several diverse fields, he committed to golf course architecture joining  Tom Fazio’s staff in the late 1990’s. In 2007 he opened his own firm in Greenville, and became senior design consul...

Tom Coyne’s fourth book is “A Course Called Scotland,” a funny and poignant tale of his journey playing over 100 links courses in Scotland, England and Wales in less than 60 days. His goal was twofold: to find out the meaning of golf, which must exist somewhere in those sacred links soils; and to hone his game enough to pass through a qualifier at the end of his trip and gain ent...

Oregon native Dan Hixson began his golf career as a tour pro and later became a club professional, but his real desire was to be a golf course architect. Despite no formal training, he slowly learned the profession and soon was hired to build Bandon Crossings , a public course just south of Bandon Dunes . That led to new commissions for the remarkable Wine Valley in southeast Washington and a near...

Ron Whitten has been one of the most prominent and influential voices in golf course architecture since the mid-1980’s when he became Golf Digest’s  architecture editor. He created the current criteria for the magazine’s popular (or, depending, notorious) Top 100 U.S & World Courses lists, has written various books including the essential compendium, “The Architects of...

The first project  Kyle Franz ever worked on was Tom Doak’s masterpiece,  Pacific Dunes , a course now recognized as one of the best in the world . That fortuitous turn launched his design/build career where he amassed one of the business’s strongest pedigrees shaping courses for Bill Coore , Tim Liddy ,  Gil Hanse and others. His big solo break came with the commission to re-establish...

The first project  Kyle Franz ever worked on was Tom Doak’s masterpiece,  Pacific Dunes , a course now recognized as one of the best in the world . That fortuitous turn launched his design/build career where he amassed one of the business’s strongest pedigrees shaping courses for Bill Coore , Tim Liddy ,  Gil Hanse and others. His big solo break came with the commission to re-establish...

Mike Nuzzo seemed to have struck gold when he was hired by a wealthy Texas businessman and rancher to build an ultra-exclusive golf course intended only for the client’s personal use. For almost three years, Nuzzo, a first-time architect, and Don Mahaffey , a turf and irrigation specialist, coaxed out a wide, bouncy and fascinating 18-hole creation that became Wolf Point Ranch , one of the m...

Mike Nuzzo seemed to have struck gold when he was hired by a wealthy Texas businessman and rancher to build an ultra-exclusive golf course intended only for the client’s personal use. For almost three years, Nuzzo, a first-time architect, and Don Mahaffey , a turf and irrigation specialist, coaxed out a wide, bouncy and fascinating 18-hole creation that became Wolf Point Ranch , one of the m...

Architect Jeff Mingay broke into golf course architecture working projects for his mentor and fellow Canadian Rod Whitman . In 2009, after completing a trio of Canada’s most exceptional modern golf courses — Blackhawk , Sagebrush and Cabot Links — he opened his own design business and found immediate success renovating and restoring courses in British Columbia and Washington stat...

Sweetens Cove has captured the hearts and minds of the architecture world. Rob Collins and design partner Tad King began building the 9-hole course, 30 minutes west of Chattanooga, in 2012 and have watched it become an impassioned touchstone for a vocal, hardcore group of golf course fanatics as it marches steadily up the golf course rankings lists. The course, which Collins purchased from the ori...

  Mike Young has seen the golf course design business from all sides, starting as a rep for maintenance and turf companies before establishing himself as one of the state of Georgia’s most prominent and prolific architects. Young builds his courses the old fashioned way — himself — and his years as designer, builder and also golf course owner have taught him how to cut unnec...