Book Review – The Golden Age of Golf Design

The Golden Age of Golf Design by Geoff Shackelford

Published by Sleeping Bear Press, 1999

It has been 10 years since the publication of this beautiful book by Shackelford. Shackelford sets the tone for his work in the first sentence by saying, “At some point in their life every adult longs for the good old days.” Obviously Geoff does as well. His focus of this book is golf course architecture from 1911 through 1937. Personally, I think his end date might have been a little short as he probably could have extended it to 1941 and the entry of the Untied States into World War II. But that is just nit picking.

The basic premise of the book is to spotlight the dominant individuals and courses from this era of golf course design in America. To do this he has split the entries in the book into distinct “schools”. A “school” would be a group of designers or courses that share various traits and is distinctive from the other schools presented.

The major categories are the National School, the Philadelphia School, The Ross School, the MacKenzie School, the Monterey School, and a catch all of others in the other school section. But what happened prior to 1910 is not forgotten. Shackelford also tries to pay homage to those that were prominent prior to this day and identifies them as the Early Influences. I would have loved to have seen a section devoted to the “Heathland School” that formalized the profession of golf architect and some of those early courses from that era.

The structure of the book is easy enough to follow and the sheer abundance of vintage photos and course drawings are brilliantly showcased. Some of the aerial photos of the original course layouts of Pine Valley and other courses could be a book unto themselves. The information that Shackelford does provide is gorgeously presented and is still an example of how well produced book can look. Mike Miller’s stunning paintings that are showcased on the cover and throughout the book also fit in perfectly with the motif. The one thing about what existed in the book that I would complain about would be the background used on the bio pages. It was distracting when a plain sepia background would have more than sufficed.

But there are some things that I have found that I wish would have been done differently with this book. The first thing I am not sure about is why the Monterey and MacKenzie schools were listed separately. I can understand highlighting the importance of MacKenzie, but one course is all the Monterey school really has going for it and even the Good Doctor worked on Pebble Beach.

The next thing I would like to point out is that I am grateful for Donald Ross, or no one would think that golf courses were created anywhere except the upper East Coast or California. If Shackelford intended this to be an almost all encompassing catalogue of the era then he falls short in that regard. Yes, a large number of excellent courses were built in these areas of the country by CB Macdonald, AW Tillinghast, William Flynn, Seth Raynor and MacKenzie, but they were not the only ones that were doing this during the era of the Golden Age. This is my primary beef with the book in total. It seems that Shackelford was obviously playing favorites as he devotes 17 of the 204 pages to George Thomas, a man with less than 20 designs to his credit (Shackelford also wrote a biography on Thomas). I have no problem with that much space being devoted to the man, but I would think it would be in proportion to his impact on the era. By comparison, three men are listed in the other school section (William Langford, Stanley Thompson and Perry Maxwell) that have much larger portfolios and were just as influential, if not more so, but have a scant 8 pages between them all.

Perhaps the greatest error was not including anything at all about the “Chicago School” that built so many courses in the Chicago area and much of the Midwest. If anything it may be just as influential today as many of the people practicing in the business still use some of the same concepts and design ideas today in their courses around the country and trace their design roots back to individuals like Langford and Charles Maddox.

Overall, the book is well worth the money just to see the photos of the courses from their beginnings. At first blush it appears to be a complete tome to the topic. I would recommend the book to anyone, but after further review I just wish it was a little bit more. After doing this review it has prompted me to consider doing a blog about each of the “schools” presented in the book. Hmmm…

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