Herbert Fowler

Herbert Fowler was a golf course architect, born on May 28, 1856 at Tottenham in London. His full name was William Herbert Fowler, and his father was a barrister. As a young man he was known as a cricketer, playing 26 first-class matches between 1880 and 1885 for Somerset and for the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club). He came to golf in 1879, at the age of 23, on the links at Westward Ho! in Devon. He went on to make a name for himself as an amateur: he tied for 26th at the Open Championship of 1900, and from 1903 to 1905 he played for England against Scotland. In 1894 he was elected a member of the R&A.

His first work as an architect was Walton Heath Golf Club in Surrey, England. His brother-in-law Cosmo Bonsor consulted him about laying out a course on the ground there and left the design in his hands. The Old Course opened in 1904, and Harry Vardon, James Braid and J. H. Taylor played it on the opening day. Braid became the club’s first professional in the same year. The first nine holes of the New Course opened in 1907, and it was completed as eighteen in 1913; the club’s own website says that Fowler designed the New Course to ask a different line of attack from the Old. Walton Heath went on to stage the Ryder Cup in 1981 and the AIG Women’s Open in 2023.

In Britain he lengthened the course at Burnham & Berrow Golf Club in 1910 to more than 6,000 yards, and he also laid out Beau Desert Golf Club in Staffordshire. In the United States he was given the remodelling of Del Monte Golf Course in California in 1920. At Pebble Beach Golf Links, in the same state, complaints about the shortness of the 18th hole after a tournament in 1921 led Fowler to rebuild what had been a par 4 as a par 5. He died at Chelsea in London on April 13, 1941. GoGolf does not at present list any course designed by Herbert Fowler.

See the other golf course architects here.