Chapter Two Design Style

His minimalist design philosophy - characterized by the utilization of natural topographical features and restraint in earthmoving - was formed during his year abroad, when he visited and played 172 different courses around the world, and during the period he worked with Pete Dye.

Historical background

In order to better understand better his way of designing, it is useful to have a look back to the work of architects that came before him, and to the art movements of the period when he grew up as a student.

After the Second World War, the new wave of golf architecture was led by the firm of Robert Trent Jones, and later from the beginning of the 70s from Pete Dye’s company.
During those years the evolution of design brought to the construction of golf courses that were characterised by massive earth movements, filling holes with many features, like water, bunkers and mounds.
From the beginning of the 1950s to beginning of the 1980s, golf architecture went away from the principle that led it from its origins at the beginning of the 19th century and through the “Golden Age” till the first 30 years of the 20th century. Shapes became less natural and it seemed like everything could be built everywhere without considering the existing features of the natural site shaped thousands of years by the effect of the elements of nature.

From the beginning of the 70’s under the influence of Pete Dye and his wife Alice, things started to change and shapes became, if possible, bolder and sharper.
During this period Landscape Architecture, and the Art Movement were influenced by the work and the shapes of the earth sculptor Robert Smithson. The way in which he created forms became the basis of a new wave of Landscape Architecture at the end of the 1970s, such as the one of Robert Hargreaves and Catherine Gustafson. It is also possible to see his influence in golf architecture as from the two picture below that show the 17th hole a the TPC of Sawgrass, designed by Pete Dye and Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.