Tom Doak interview
Meet the maverick designer with four courses in the world top 100.
Tom Doak is the most famous and controversial course designer of his generation. The 55-year-old American has created some of the most revered courses in the world over the past 20 years, and his legend has been enhanced by caustic reviews of famous courses in his “Confidential Guide” books.
What Doak builds and what Doak writes are both essential viewing. His reputation as an architect is based on turning appealing landscapes into spectacularly good golf courses. His reputation as a critic is of being searingly honest. From Cape Kidknappers in New Zealand to Bandon Dunes’ Pacific Dunes in America to Barnbougle Dunes in Australia, Doak’s portfolio is crammed with fabled projects.
His aura is enhanced by the small number of projects his Renaissance Golf Design company takes on. One commission he has accepted is Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire. And it was as he checked on his team’s progress in renovating this Top 100 heathland that we sat down for an in-depth discussion with golf course architecture’s rock star.
Can you remember when you first thought ‘I love this game’?
I‘ve loved golf since I was a kid. I was always a backyard athlete growing up, I always wanted to be outside. I gravitated to golf over other sports over time because you didn’t have to find 10 other people to play it with you!
Do you still enjoy playing the game?
Yes. I’m not as good as I used to be [11 now, has been four] and that is a challenge for every golfer as they age. When young people interested in golf course design come to me and they are a two handicap, I gently tell them if they really want to be a two handicap, course design is not their best move. The golf industry is not their best career – same for greenkeepers, club pros – we don’t get time to play as much as people think we do.
You worked for Pete Dye, but your style is very different to the man who created the drama of Sawgrass... I learned everything about construction from working for Mr Dye. And I made my own style from travelling and seeing the things I have. Our styles are different, but our philosophies are not that different. You’ve got to remember
our clients are very different. From Sawgrass on, nearly everyone that hired him was thinking about hosting a PGA Tour event, so he had to be thinking about the best players in the world. I remember being at TPC Sawgrass with Mr Dye when a golf writer said to him he must be proud so many courses he’s built have hosted PGA Tour events. He said: “Those boys would play in a parking lot for five million dollars.” His ego wasn’t really wrapped up in it, but when he was building those courses, he had to think about those players.
Are you as hands-on in terms of moving dirt as you used to be?
It’s rare I am on a bulldozer any more. My first course, High Pointe, was the only course I built all 18 greens myself. It’s a shame it isn’t there any more, as it is five miles from where I live. It’d be nice to have it close by. But I’ve attracted a wealth of really talented people to help me build these courses and they are much quicker on the equipment than I am, so I can come to somewhere like Woodhall Spa for a few days and really get the thing finished exactly as I wanted it to be.
Do you have an interest in Tour golf?
Very little these days. I’ve been to all the big tournaments once or twice, or more. It’s really not my niche of the business, which is not to say I don’t understand how they play. Being around Pete Dye a lot, I saw the great players of that era up close. When I was in college, I asked Ben Crenshaw for advice on how to get into the business and he used to have me come walk around with him during practice rounds, so I’d be walking around with Seve and so on.
That must have made for good viewing…
Amazing. I thought I had a pretty good short game when I was younger. Ben Crenshaw obviously was about two levels above me. And he looked at Seve like he was two levels above him. Which is a whole other level...
Would you like to create a PGA Tour course that hosts the PGA Tour?
I’d love to do a tournament course one day. For years, if you wanted to build a course for a tournament, you’d hire Jack Nicklaus or Pete Dye. I’ve no reputation for that. I have a reputation for taking a really beautiful piece of land and building something really fun to play that’s inspiring. I’d love to build a Tour course once just to show I could do something a little different from what they typically do – but I don’t know if anyone will ever pick me, and if they don’t that’s fine. I wouldn’t trade the niche I’ve got for that one.
What other design ambitions remain?
I’d love to do a couple of courses in the States of the kind you have over here – 6,200 yards long max and par 68 or 69. That’s a barrier American developers won’t break. Some of my favourite courses over here fall into that category. And I think if you built something interesting, like the reversible course I did at Forest Dunes, you’d break down that barrier. Most developers would be scared to death to do it, though. Most architects would be scared to death to do it.
What are the biggest crimes in course architecture today?
For years and years it was certain architects taking on way too many jobs. They didn’t have enough time to spend on the details and other talented people were left with nothing. Now there is just not enough work; that’s the crime now. The crime is that we borrowed way too much money to build way too many golf courses instead of letting them come through the pipeline naturally and have the time to spend on them now.
Are you conscious of that failing when you accept jobs now?
Bill Coore is in the same boat as I am – we have lots of opportunities, but we don’t really want to do five golf courses a year. Right now it would be tough to get them, but even when things were booming, two or three at a time was enough. I just felt, though I’m not on a bulldozer any more, I don’t want to get to the point where I’m not there when it happens. And I’d like to be home some of the time, too. So hopefully that leaves more projects for other young people to do. I’ve done 35 courses in 28 years. That’s kind of my pace.
When you are assessing courses for the “Confidential Guide”, do you use categories?
None officially – in the end I am not looking for the course that ticks all the boxes, I’m looking for the course that has a box that I hadn’t even thought of. When something is really different, that’s what interests me the most and that is what you want to seek out the most. There are a thousand modern courses in the last 20 years that tick off most of the boxes. They’re all in good shape, but they are not all clever. So I am looking for the ones that are clever because I sort of assume they are going to get all the other boxes. On an older course, I don’t really care if all the boxes are ticked if it is something really different.
You awarded St Andrews’ Castle Course zero – did you agonise for long over that?
The sad part about the zero is that it is the only one I have awarded. There were over a dozen zeros in the original book and someone took me to task for them, saying a couple are actually good courses. Yet four or five of them are gone. Three or four have been completely redesigned. There’s only three that are still the zero I wrote about years ago. Even the Castle Course has changed from when I saw it and I don’t know how much more they’ll do to it. Unfortunately the zero attracts a lot of attention. And I don’t do it to try to attract attention, it’s just what I really thought.
Has that zero shaped your reputation?
To some extent, yes. I have the reputation of being a controversial architect and being hard to work for just because of what I wrote in the book. Other architects are like “you don’t wanna work with that guy, he is tough to work with”. That’s bull and any one of my clients would tell you that’s bull. But that’s my reputation. I can’t really kick it. It’s too bad, but I don’t spend too much time worrying about it.
Do you worry about what people will think of a course when you are building it?
At some levels, course architecture is artistic – and great painters never worried about what people would think about what they were producing. Ours is a little different because you have to worry about how golfers are going to play it. But aside from that if we are focusing on whatever is on the checklist to get the course rated as a great course is terribly limiting in terms of the variety of things we see.
Do you think about your legacy?
I used to. Once you’ve built a couple of golf courses that you are confident people are going to remember you by, you don’t have to worry about that so much. It frees you up. You don’t have to try to build one of the Top 100 courses in the world any more. I’ve built 35 courses, they don’t all have a chance to be in that Top 100. Even if they were all terrific sites, there are only going to be a few of them rated in those lists. So I’ve stopped worrying about those lists at all.
What’s more satisfying, designing a phenomenal course on a good site or a really good course on a modest site?
My niche is the former, but in the end I’ve got a sense that some of our courses were harder to pull off than others in terms of construction issues or things to hide visually in the landscape – so it wasn’t just laying there ready to be mowed out. But at the end of the day golfers only care with what they play, the finished product. And they almost never could guess what was there and what wasn’t. I always ask people to point out where they think I did something; they point to things that are natural and then miss things that are artificial that they are literally standing on. To the extent I have an ego about it, it’s tied up with the finished product rather than how good do I think I did with it. Getting a great site is not pressure. It is opportunity.
How much is modern architecture influenced by how far the ball goes?
Depends on the architect. Too many architects watch TV too much. A couple of Tour players have said to me that when you turn on the Tour on Sunday and watch the top 10 play, that’s not even the Tour pros’ real game, that’s them when they are hitting it in the middle of the club and finishing in the top 10. That’s why they are in the final groups. So what you are watching on TV is misleading that it’s anything like everything that goes on day to day.
Does that influence extend to courses that aren’t even going to host Tour events?
If architects watched an average
‘I have the reputation of being a controversial architect and being hard to work for just because of what I wrote’
day of play at their courses, most of them would be horrified. They just don’t realise how much people struggle with what they are building. And they don’t realise what goes on because they don’t hang around with average golfers very much. Most architects got into the business because of their reputation as good players. Three handicaps play with other three handicaps and they don’t really have that much perspective on even the 15 handicapper, never mind the beginner. That’s to the detriment of their golf courses. There’s a lot of golf courses that aren’t fun for anybody. And there’s a lot of architects that don’t even relate to the idea that golf is supposed to be fun. They’re such good players that they think everyone is always out there grinding, just trying to shoot the lowest score that they can. They think that’s the only reason anyone would be out there. If that were true, we’d only need half as many golf courses as we’ve got because there’s a lot of people that makes no sense for at all.
Is that why Tour players need a strong collaborating architect if they turn to design?
Yes. They need someone to remind them of what most golfers’ games look like. Greg Norman’s former associate Bob Harrison is over here working (at Ardfin). I’ve played golf with Bob and he’s a 25-handicap lefthanded golfer who isn’t very good – hopefully he won’t take offence by that. I think he’d pretty much freely admit it. I’ve seen Greg’s courses in Australia and I’ve seen some in the States. Bob only worked on the ones in Australia and they are much more playable for the average golfer because he was strong enough to challenge Greg.
Do you have a fixed rate for your work?
I don’t really have a fixed rate. I have one but I have to be flexible on it. Some of the projects that interest me, they really can’t afford that. The heart always plays a part. And the problem with the heart thing is when you start making exceptions for these people over here, do you still ask the guy over here who can clearly afford to pay me what my fee is and what’s comparable to other architects. He doesn’t want to pay that much.
Has anyone famous got one of your Confidential Guides?
Sean Connery has a signed copy. I have a friend in Ontario that knows him pretty well from their holiday homes in the Bahamas. I was actually in the Bahamas a few years ago. I was playing with my friend, who said: “Sean is not feeling good today so he’s not playing with us, but he’s going to come out to find us to say hello.” And he did, which kind of shocked me.
‘If architects watched an average day of play, most would be horrified. They don’t realise how much people struggle’