THE POPULARITY OF TOM DOAK

Nowadays his firm has completed more than 25 golf courses and it currently has courses ranked in the top 50 in the world according to Golf Magazine's Top 100 Courses in the world list [5].
The name of his company started to become popular first in the United States and , especially after the construction of the Pacific Dunes Golf Club, everywhere else in the world. This project in fact brought Tom Doak a lot of fame throughout the whole world.

During the time he spent traveling around the world and the United States reviewing golf courses, he realized what, from his point of view, was good or bad architecture, he therefore decided to combine all those essays in one book. “The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses” was his first book, initially released only in a private edition for forty friends. It became very popular in the golf aficionados’ environment, as he was the first golf writer who sharply criticized other architect’s work, and soon many copies were printed.
Not even magazines, especially for marketing reasons, had had bad press on any golf-course, and for this reason many golf architects felt infallible. Because of this episode we can understand how Tom Doak became so unpopular among his colleagues, and this might be the reason why he is not anymore a member of the “American Society of Golf Course Architect” [6], however without doubts it helped himself to became popular in the golf environment and made people speaking about him.