Dr. Alister MacKenzie and The Design Team
Dr. Alister MacKenzie was acknowledged to be one of the three leading golf course architects of his day (along with A. W. Tillinghast and Donald Ross) and was the author of Golf Course Design which told of his design philosophy. MacKenzie influenced countless architects from that time to the present. He also wrote The Spirit of St. Andrews, which became the famous “lost manuscript” until it was rediscovered and published long after his death in 1934.
Robert Hunter was a good golfer and a socialite with “connections” that helped bring attention to various MacKenzie course design projects. He oversaw construction of the course in collaboration with Dr. MacKenzie. His gregarious manner also helped to build membership after the club was formed. Moreover, Hunter was a devotee of links-style golf courses and published a seminal book on golf course architecture titled Links.
H. Chandler Egan, was a golfing champion of national stature having won the U. S. Amateur Championship in 1904 and 1905 and the Pacific Northwest championship in 1915, 1920, 1923, 1925 and 1932. He was also an accomplished architect in his own right, having designed several outstanding courses in Oregon. He also achieved considerable acclaim for his remodeling of Pebble Beach Golf Links in preparation for the 1929 U. S. Amateur Championship. He redesigned the greens and bunkering giving them a ragged, natural seaside look that was very dramatic. (It is worth noting that Egan finished second in that 1929 U.S. Amateur Championship). Dr. MacKenzie, however, redesigned the eighth hole which has been acclaimed as one of the great par fours of the world. Significantly, Bobby Jones was defeated early in that 1929 championship which led to his visiting Cypress Point and Pasatiempo. These visits prompted Bobby Jones to select Dr. Mackenzie for the design of Augusta National in place of Donald Ross and a tradition was born.
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Famous quotes containing the words mackenzie, design and/or team:
“Rarely do American parents deliberately teach their children to hate members of another racial, religious, or nationality group. Many parents, however, communicate the prevailing racial attitudes to their children in subtle and sometimes unconscious ways.”
—Kenneth MacKenzie Clark (20th century)
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“I doubt if men ever made a trade of heroism. In the days of Achilles, even, they delighted in big barns, and perchance in pressed hay, and he who possessed the most valuable team was the best fellow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)