Top golf course designers and architects share the lessons they’ve learned about creating courses that deliver playability, efficiency and long-term value.
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Great golf courses rarely come from a single idea or a perfect set of plans. They evolve through experience, collaboration and hard-earned lessons learned in the field.
For owners and operators, those lessons matter. Every design decision affects how a course plays, how it performs financially and how well it serves golfers over time. The most successful projects balance creativity with practicality, delivering an experience that is enjoyable to play, efficient to maintain and aligned with the long-term goals of the facility.
Over the course of their careers, leading golf course architects have seen what works and what doesn’t. They have learned that fun often matters more than difficulty, character of the land should guide the design, and sustainability is as much about budgets and operations as it is about environmental stewardship. They have also seen how strong collaboration, clear vision and the right team can shape outcomes long after construction begins.
Today’s golfers bring new expectations as well. They want courses that are engaging without being punishing, memorable without being excessive and welcoming to a wide range of abilities. At the same time, owners are focused on asset value, maintenance efficiency and projects that deliver measurable returns.
To capture the insights behind great design, Golf Inc. asked respected architects in the industry to share the lessons that have stayed with them over the years. Their responses reflect decades of experience across private clubs, resorts, public facilities and renovations of every scale.
Together, these perspectives offer practical guidance for anyone planning improvements or thinking about the future of their facility. At their core, the lessons point to a simple truth: The best golf design serves both the game and the business that supports it.
Steve Dana
Landscape Architect/Senior Design Associate
Jerry Pate Design
The first project of my career was the second 18 holes for a growing private club community in Coachella Valley, California. The owner had directed us to create a dramatic and challenging golf course to counter the existing course which was quite subdued in its character and simple in its challenge. We did as the owner desired … bunkers were deep, hazards were plentiful and greens were severe.
The result was a course that was recognized as a best new course in the area and was applauded for the efficiency with which it was built. However, the members eventually rejected our course with only 20% of the club’s rounds being played on it; it was under-utilized. The other course had 80% of the play, completely taxing it.
Sometime after opening, the ownership asked us to simplify our course to encourage more play on it. The resulting softening did balance out the play between the two courses, and the members could now fully enjoy both of their amenities.
The lesson was clear. Golf is recreation. It’s supposed to be fun. Golf is hard … hard enough on its own. Design accordingly.
Tom Doak
Architect
Doakgolf, Inc.
My No. 1 observation over the years is that the projects where the construction crew had the most fun are the ones that turn out the best.
That was true of Long Cove Club, the first project I did for the Dyes, where a young crew worked grueling hours in the heat and then played softball together in the evenings. It was true at Pacific Dunes, where we were all in awe of getting to work on such a beautiful piece of ground. It was true at Ballyneal, where my shapers watched rented comedy movies every night at their rental house in a small town with little to do; or at Rock Creek Cattle Company, where they instituted a bowling night every week in Deer Lodge.
All it takes is finding good people who get along well together, and a client who is on the same page.
Forrest Richardson
Architect
Forrest Richardson Golf Course Architects
Lesson one: It must be entertaining. I joke with my actor daughter that “Your dad is in the entertainment business.” With a degree of pushback, she admits this is so. Golf design is entertainment. In the end, it is our job to create a stage where ordinary people gather to socialize, recreate and engage in the game. Each day across the world about 12 million hours are spent by people playing golf — on a golf course. That’s over and above the time spent in simulators, on the range or putting on a miniature golf format. One thing I’ve come to appreciate is that the game needs to be fun. It sounds simple, but that single tenet of my work is always first and foremost. Whatever we do to a course to change it or make it better, one of the guiding principles needs to be to create more fun and enjoyment.
Lesson two: Growing the asset value. While it sounds simple, I’m often surprised at what an impactful question it is to ask a group of members, owners or operators whether the plan will “grow the asset value.” Will the remodel, renovation or addition create a more valuable golf course? Will the membership fee be worth more? Will we be able to increase the green fee? Will it attract more people to the resort? Will the work help create a waiting list? All these boil down to growing the asset. At every turn this is a great question to pose as you look at improvement work. Is what we’re about to do going to create a better, more valuable golf facility?
Lesson three: Think big. It doesn’t pay to think small and leave potentially great ideas on the table. My friend Robert Trent Jones, Jr. is famous for pointing out to clients that “The process of sketching ideas on paper is among the most valuable, yet least costly parts of any project.” When you’re brainstorming with your golf course architect, you are investing in dreams and ideas. Besides the time involved, there is no cost for construction, earthmoving, shaping, irrigation or permitting. It is the most important part of any project. “Think Big” is a way of reminding us that we can always rein back our plans. But, if we fail to depict them on paper, there is little hope of ever realizing them. Many of the greatest ideas in golf have, unfortunately, never seen the light of day because they never got visualized to ever be considered. That’s a shame. The lesson to be learned is that ideas can only be truly analyzed when we share them in visual form. Otherwise, they might as well be lost forever.
Bruce Charlton
President
Robert Trent Jones II Golf Course Architects
Lesson one: Early in my career, I learned the importance of the architect/shaper relationship. We can draw plans till we’re blue in the face, but it’s the shapers who bring it to life. If you haven’t worked with a shaper, or if you have but you’re going for a different look, playability or style this time, there’s always what I call “the three-hole learning curve.” It takes about three holes for everyone to get on the same page and understand that this is what we’re after. (It takes about three holes for the client to get on that page too.) Then, when working with a shaper and they do something just right, I like to say, “Give me more of that. Whatever you did to accomplish that, keep doing it.”
Lesson two: Never fall in love with your drawings. We put something on paper and conceptualize green sketches, but sometimes you get out in the field and for whatever reason — winds, contours, drainage — you have to say, “You know what? That doesn’t work.” You have to adjust to the site conditions, and sometimes you have to adjust to the client. Drawings are a good start, but it has to work in the field.
Finally, when people ask what is my most important tool as a golf architect, I point to my two ears. I need to listen to what everyone is saying, feeling and hearing. One of the most important things to listen to is who is going to use the course. Have the ability to listen and don’t block out comments as you get them.
Timothy Liddy
President, Timothy Liddy + Associates, Inc.
Fellow, American Society of Golf Course Architects
An invisible pencil in the field. This lesson may sound like a quirk, but it’s one I hope you remember if you pursue a career in golf course architecture.
In architecture school, the best design tool you have is a pencil. Constant sketching — exploring ideas, testing alternatives and drawing through problems — is how you learn to think as a designer. This usually happens in a quiet, controlled environment. Even today, if your tool is a mouse and a computer, the principle is the same: Drawing is thinking.
The field is different.
On a golf course construction site, you will make dozens of design decisions every day. How high should this green site be? How far should this bunker intrude into the fairway? How much of the green surface should be visible from the approach? Each decision matters, and each one affects the next.
What makes this challenging is the environment. Construction sites are hot, dusty, loud and chaotic. Bulldozers, excavators and loaders are running constantly, engines roaring and backup alarms beeping. Contractors need answers immediately to keep schedules moving and budgets intact.
Early on, both working with Mr. Dye and on my own, I struggled to concentrate in this setting. What I learned was to ask for time. I would tell the shaper, “Give me five minutes and I’ll have an answer; I just need time to marinate.” As architects, time is your best friend. At first, people may roll their eyes, but if your answers are good, they will learn to trust the process.
I also developed a small personal trick that helped my concentration enormously. I would pretend I was holding a pencil while studying a green, bunker or fairway. As soon as my hand wrapped around that imaginary pencil, the right side of my brain switched on, and I began to think artistically instead of reactively. It helped me reconnect with the same design instincts I had in the studio.
After more than 30 years in the profession, I no longer need these crutches — but they were invaluable early on. The larger lesson is this: Good site design rarely comes from rushing. Whenever possible, stay a few holes ahead of construction so you have time to think, reconsider and let better solutions emerge.
If you remember anything from this, remember that design thinking doesn’t stop when you leave the studio. You just have to learn how to carry it with you into the field.
Nathan Crace
American Society of Golf Course Architects
My background is part of what makes me a better golf course architect. Before becoming an architect, I worked as an assistant golf professional and eventually as a director of golf/general manager. Those experiences helped to shape my thoughts on golf architecture as more than just “eye candy” for the pages of golf publications and helped me to better understand how form truly follows function.
When a golf course architect finishes a project, the client, the superintendent and the staff must have a facility that can be operated and managed within their budget, or the improvements will not last. With proper planning and the right team, we can create the aesthetic that golfers desire while still producing a course that can be maintained in a sustainable manner, both environmentally and financially.
In my 30-plus years as a golf course architect, I have worked with a wide range of client types with the full spectrum of budgets from high-end private clubs and resorts to public courses, municipalities and even the United States Air Force. At the end of the day, they all have one thing in common: a love for the game of golf and the desire to provide the best product they can, day in and day out.
As golf course architects, part of our mission is to create a finished product that enables them with the ability to do just that.
Lloyd “AJ” Bridges
Design Associate
DMK Golf Design
One of the first things experience teaches you is that great golf courses aren’t born from drawings drafted at a light table, alone. They’re shaped by process and iteration — by Mother Nature, climate, budget and what happens once you start moving dirt.
Clubs often underestimate how crucial it is to agree early on what truly matters in their vision for this endeavor. Is the goal to provide a challenge or enjoyment for the membership? Is the solution manufactured elegance or an emphasis on simplicity and raw elements? Is the cornerstone of the development hustled ambition or long-term sustainability? If these questions aren’t answered at the start, the design spends the rest of the project trying to catch up.
Another lesson is that constraints aren’t the enemy of creativity — they’re the framework that gives it meaning. Environmental limitations, water availability, soils and maintenance resources should shape the design from day one. Fighting those realities only leads to short-term results and long-term problems. The most sustainable courses are the ones that feel “inevitable,” as if they could only (and should only) exist on that singular piece of land and nowhere else on the planet.
The modern golfer has changed how architects think about design. Players today want courses that are engaging but not exhausting; strategic rather than severe and punishing; enjoyable on the first round or the 50th. That notion has reinforced the value of restraint. Less tends to be more. Fewer massive earth moves, simpler ideas, clearer strategies to enhance the narrative — executed well — create golf that lasts.
At the end of the day, golf is about experiencing a place. When sustainability, playability and the character of the land are respected, the course doesn’t need to shout. It simply belongs. It’s something of a unicorn.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2026 issue.
