- Lifespan
- November 14, 1855 – April 21, 1939
- Birthplace
- Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada (raised in Chicago)
- Playing record
- winner of the first U.S. Amateur (1895) / World Golf Hall of Fame (2007)
Charles Blair Macdonald was an American golfer and golf course architect, born on November 14, 1855 at Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, and brought up in Chicago. In 1872, at the age of sixteen, he went to the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and it was there, taught by Old Tom Morris, that he took up the game. When the United States Golf Association (USGA) was founded in 1894 he became its first vice-president, and in the following year, 1895, he won the first U.S. Amateur, played at Newport Country Club. His winning margin in that final, 12 & 11, is still the largest in the final of the championship. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2007, and died at Southampton, New York on April 21, 1939.
His work in design began with the Chicago Golf Club, which he had a hand in founding in 1892. The eighteen holes he laid out there are held to be the first 18-hole course in the United States. He afterwards travelled through Europe to look at its great courses, and in 1908 found a piece of ground by the sea at Southampton on Long Island, New York, where he built the National Golf Links of America. The first Walker Cup was played over that course in 1922. Seth Raynor, the surveyor who directed the construction, later became the architect who carried Macdonald’s work forward. Among the other courses known as his are the Old White course at The Greenbrier in West Virginia, St. Louis Country Club in Missouri, the Yale University course in Connecticut and Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda.
What marks Macdonald’s design is the template hole, modelled on the celebrated holes of Scotland and England. At the National Golf Links of America he worked in holes of the Redan, Eden and Alps type, and the method passed from him to Raynor. In 1928 he published a book, Scotland’s Gift: Golf, an account of how the game took hold in America. At the Memorial Tournament hosted by Jack Nicklaus he was chosen as the honouree of 2008 and introduced as the father of golf course architecture.
See the other golf course architects here.
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