ney began. Because no one in golf histo- ry has ever managed their way through a comprehensive, immersive and above all self-designed training regimen aimed at becoming a golf course architect as precociously, persistently, pragmatically and successfully as Tom Doak. That, he affirms with a nod, is the best he ever did. Doak began playing golf at age nine at Sterling Farms, a municipal course in Stamford, Connecticut, that was close to his family home and allowed juniors to play after 3pm for one dollar. “With- out that I would probably not be in golf at all.” A couple of years later, Doak’s father, also Tom, began taking his son on his business conferences, introducing him to courses like Harbour Town, Pinehurst No 2, Pebble Beach and Cypress Point. The boy was so captured by the beauty and majesty that he felt a yearning to be- come a person who created such places. When a family friend gave him a copy of the 1976 classic The World Atlas of Golf, Doak, gifted with exceptional retention skills, read it often enough to know it by heart. After entering MIT as a maths wizard, he told his parents before the end of his freshman year that he want- ed to drop out and find a way to have a career designing golf courses. As Doak recalls, “They weren’t shocked.” With no Plan B, Doak, then 18, began a passionate pursuit. He unleashed a torrent of letters to prominent figures in the game, including Herbert Warren Wind, Deane Beman, Frank Hannigan, Pete Dye, and Ben Crenshaw, asking for advice. “I’d tell them about myself and ask, ‘If you were me, what would you be doing?’” All would eventually respond, but the first was Geoffrey Cornish, the designer, coincidentally, of Sterling Farms, who suggested Doak get into a college land- scape architecture programme. Cornell had such a curriculum, one which Rob- ert Trent Jones in the late 1920s had customised for himself on the way to eventually becoming the most prolific course architect ever. Once in Ithaca, Doak set about an- other letter writing campaign, this one focused on greens chairs of clubs with architecturally significant courses,
that some of America’s greatest courses, including Pine Valley, Pebble Beach, National Golf Links, Merion and Oak- mont, were done by architects on their first tries. “I was eager to get started and had a lot of ideas, but, really, my philosophy hasn’t changed much since,” says the now 64-year-old who retains a boyish energy. “I try to err on the side of doing too little instead of too much. If you can do a lot to the green, you don’t have to do so much to the rest of the hole be- sides follow what the land gives you. That 13th green fits into the land so well, it’s a true original.” That’s about the highest praise Doak can give, though for our purposes, still non-committal. “I was a totally free- spirit writing .... Some people still hold a grudge, but that was me being true to myself.” Doak’s most renowned courses are Pacific Dunes and Ballyneal in the US, while Barnbougle Dunes (with Mike Clayton), Cape Kidnappers and Tara Iti are each ranked 30th or better on Golf Digest’s World 100 Greatest. But Doak also mentions two public courses more geared to the average golfer – Common- Ground in Denver, with its under $50 green fee, and Memorial Park in Hous- ton, where his green complexes offered enough challenge to host the PGA Tour. “My goal has always been to do special things,” says Doak. “You work to get all you can out of the land that you’ve got, and the golf ideas keep evolving as you go along. At the end of the day, you should have something that is different and special.” Sensing a conundrum, he digresses, wondering whether authoring more books than any architect ever should be considered his best work, or if his mentorship of other current architects, including Gil Hanse, would qualify. In the end, Doak was drawn back to what most set him apart – how his jour-
Tom Doak sits in the clubhouse at High Pointe Golf Club, where he took on his first
solo project in 1987 at age 26. He vividly remembers that any doubts he har- boured disappeared after one shovelful of the rich soil. “Right then I just knew, ‘Oh, this is going to be good.’” Such confidence has been associated with Doak ever since. But now, on his home turf of Traverse City, Michigan, reflecting on four decades of excellence in golf architecture, he turns unchar- acteristically hesitant. It’s not easy for someone who has only given his all to decide on the best he ever did. Doak is generally unequivocal, espe- cially in print. In 1994, he released the book The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses shaking up the golf world with his unsparing “Doak Zero-to-10 Scale” applied to more than 800 courses he’d seen around the world. More than a few ostensibly revered ones received luke- warm 4s and worse. Doak has proven far more than a flamethrower. His reviews were marked by deep knowledge and sound reasoning. Several astute judgments – like giving the then scruffy and ignored but charming and breathtaking North Berwick an 8 – advanced the current era of minimalism. Doak considers golf architecture an art, and as he wrote in The Anatomy of a Golf Course one of his ten published books on the subject, “Every art needs good criticism if it is to flourish.” At High Pointe, Doak was reminded of the heathland at Sunningdale. Accord- ingly, the property’s bold and rugged lines are softened by an elegant classi- cal naturalism, along with a spacious- ness that provides “room to play,” in the words of his friend and fellow architect Ben Crenshaw. Doak built and shaped all the greens at High Pointe by himself, the only time he has done so in more than 50 completed and current projects. He began with the 13th hole, creating a rum- pled throw rug of perplexing slopes that are exhilarating to try to figure out, which a few architecture aficionados still con- sider the best green Doak ever built. Doak doesn’t to- WHEN I’M 64 Doak walking
his first solo project, High Pointe GC.
tally reject the idea. He has pointed out
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 21
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