Rees Jones

Rees Jones is a golf course architect, born on September 16, 1941 at Montclair in New Jersey. His father was Robert Trent Jones Sr., one of the leading architects of the twentieth century, and his elder brother is the architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. He grew up in a house that was also a design office, and he has said that he learned how a course is put together by walking, as a boy, the many A.W. Tillinghast courses that survive in the north-east. After taking his degree at Yale he went on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

He began his career at his father’s firm, Robert Trent Jones Inc., and in 1974 set up on his own as Rees Jones, Inc., with the office at Montclair, New Jersey, the town he was born in. Since then he has had a hand in more than 260 courses, counting new work, remodelling and restoration. He does not carry a settled formula from site to site; the answer changes with the piece of ground. What he looks for is a course that will test the best players in the world in a tournament and remain playable for the ordinary golfer at the same time.

What settled his name was the rebuilding of courses that hold major championships. In 1985 he went to work on The Country Club at Brookline, Massachusetts, in preparation for the U.S. Open of 1988. He dug out the sand of bunkers that had been filled in, used old photographs to restore the irregular movement of the ground around the greens, and added length as well; it was this job that earned him the name of the Open Doctor. One U.S. Open stage followed another: Hazeltine National in Minnesota (1991), Baltusrol in New Jersey (1993), Congressional in Maryland (1997), Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina (1999), Bethpage Black in a New York state park (2002) and Torrey Pines South in California (2008). His official site records work on seven U.S. Open venues, nine PGA Championship venues and six Ryder Cup venues, besides courses that have staged the Walker Cup and the Presidents Cup. The remodelling of East Lake Golf Club in Georgia is another of the better-known jobs.

Among his new courses are Haig Point Club in South Carolina (1986), Rio Secco Golf Club (1997) and Cascata (2000) in Nevada, and Quintero Golf Club in Arizona (2000). He was named Golf Architect of the Year in 1995, received the Old Tom Morris Award of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) in 2004 and the Donald Ross Award of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA) in 2013, and holds the Don A. Rossi Award among others. He has also served as president of the ASGCA. He is still in practice, and the architects Greg Muirhead, Steve Weisser and Bryce Swanson have joined the office.

See the other golf course architects here.