Nick Schaan works side by side with architect David McLay Kidd out of their offices in Bend, Ore. Kidd is one of the most esteemed and decorated designers in the business over the last 25 years, and since 2006 Schaan has been instrumental in bringing to life acclaimed courses like Tributary, Mammoth Dunes and the… Read More Read More The post Episode 89: Nick Schaan appeared first on Feed The Ball ..read more

Mike Cocking is the “C” in the Australian golf design firm OCM. His partners are former tour player and 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy and Ashley Mead. The trio have built courses in Australia and Asia and consult with some of the top historic clubs Down Under including Victoria and Kingston Heath. Over the… Read More Read More The post Episode 88: Mike Cocking appeared first on Feed The Ball ..read more

Lee Schmidt’s lengthy golf architecture career began in the early 1970s working for Pete Dye and took many different detours through the decades. He worked closely with Landmark Land Company on numerous Dye projects in the 70s and 80s before taking a job with Jack Nicklaus’ design firm. In the late 1990s he created his own firm with Brian Curley, and the two built courses across the U.S. and also made deep inroads into the Asian market, becoming the most influential American architects in the region–they designed and built over a dozen courses at China’s Mission Hills development alone. Today ..read more

If might seem like golf course architect Scott Hoffman came out of nowhere with his design at Lost Rail, opened in 2022 outside of Omaha. However, he’d previously worked for over a decade with Tom Fazio, designing courses in the western U.S. He then worked with Tim Jackson and David Kahn for a number of years. Hoffman wasn’t pursuing new work when he was approached about looking at land for a club near Omaha, where he’s from, and those interests turned into Lost Rail, Golf Digest’s runner up for Best New Private Course for 2023. He’s now busy constructing Mapleton, another new stand-alone clu ..read more

Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw joins golf course builder Jim Urbina and Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss his long time partnership with architect Bill Coore and the beliefs and impulses that define the many courses they’ve built, from Sand Hills to Friar’s Head to Bandon Trails, all the way through to their newest courses including Point Hardy at Cabot Saint Lucia. Crenshaw talks about meeting Urbina for the first time, Coore grooming green contours down to the quarter inch, how his roots playing dry and windy courses influenced his preference for designing towa ..read more

Golf course architect Greg Letsche, lead designer for Ernie Els Design, joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina to discuss his early years working for Pete Dye, how running projects for Jack Nicklaus differed from his experience with Dye, the design similarities between Dye and Nicklaus, the sometimes absurd challenges and hiccups working internationally in different cultures, how Els’ sympathy for poor golfers manifests in his designs, reuniting with Nicklaus at The Bear’s Club and transitioning into renovating older courses like the Scarlet Cour ..read more

In less than 10 years in the profession, Blake Conant has risen from crew member to shaper to the co-designer of Old Barnwell, a stunning new course near Aiken, S.C. Conant has primarily shaped greens and bunkers for Tom Doak at projects like Houston’s Memorial Park, Bel Air, The National’s Gunnamatta Course in Australia and St. Patrick’s in Ireland while working closely with Doak’s associates Eric Iverson, Don Placek, Brian Slawnik and Brian Schneider, who is his co-designer at Old Barnwell. Conant joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the difference between being a shaper for someone e ..read more

Shortly after Tom Weiskopf broke with design partner Jay Morrish in the late 1990s he turned to architect Phil Smith. Smith had been working with Nicklaus Design in Arizona, but the opportunity to partner one-on-one with Weiskopf was too good an opportunity to pass up. Over the next 24 years, Smith and Weiskopf designed courses in numerous countries with most of their best work occurring at gorgeous sites in the U.S. west, in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Their latest work, completed after Weiskopf succumbed to cancer in 2022, is at Black Desert Resort in southern Utah, a dazzl ..read more

Golf course builder Allan MacCurrach began working on crews for Pete Dye in the late 1970s and opened his own golf course contracting company in 1987. He’s been involved in building or remodeling over 20 courses for Dye, who passed away in early 2020, as well as architects like Tom Fazio, Bobby Weed and Rees Jones. MacCurrach is also responsible for constructing–and designing, through interpretation of the numerous conversations and planning sessions he had with Dye —The Dye Course at White Oak, Golf Digest’s Best New Private Course of 2022. White Oak, located near Jacksonville on the Florida ..read more

Designer and historian Josh Pettit began collecting the writings of Alister MacKenzie for his new compendium of essays, “The MacKenzie Reader,” years ago, and was ready to publish in 2020 when the pandemic postponed printing until the summer of 2022. The wait was worth it–the Reader is a gorgeous volume of Pettit’s selections of the architect’s best and most important writings, presented with sketches, prints and routing maps. The volume will soon be in its third edition. Powered by pan card agency Pettit visits the Salon to speak with hosts Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina a ..read more