Retief Goosen

Retief Goosen is a professional golfer and a golf course architect, born on February 3, 1969 at Pietersburg, now Polokwane, in South Africa. He won 30 times as an amateur and turned professional in 1990. He took the U.S. Open twice, at Southern Hills in 2001 and at Shinnecock Hills in 2004, for two majors. On the European Tour he topped the Order of Merit in 2001 and 2002, and in 2001 he was also named the tour’s Golfer of the Year. He has won 7 times on the PGA Tour and 14 times on the European Tour. Between 2001 and 2007 he spent more than 250 weeks in all inside the world’s top ten. He played six Presidents Cups for the International team. In 2019 he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, and in the same year he won for the first time on the senior tour, PGA Tour Champions. His unhurried manner on the course earned him the name the Iceman, while the Goose comes from his surname.

He runs his own firm, Retief Goosen Design, and takes a project from the drawing through to construction. On the firm’s site Goosen says that what he is after is a championship course, but that it need not be a long one: a course that makes a player think, that can be attacked from several angles, and that professionals and amateurs of differing ability can both enjoy. The projects listed by the firm include The Legend Golf & Safari Resort in South Africa and Dayi Smokey Mountain Resort in China. The Legend Golf & Safari Resort lies within the Entabeni Safari Conservatory in the province of Limpopo, and its Signature Course was laid out by several professional golfers working together: besides Goosen, Pádraig Harrington, Sergio García, Bernhard Langer and Vijay Singh among them.

In Asia he has five Asian Tour victories. He won the Volkswagen Masters-China in 2005 and again in 2006, and in 2008 he took the Iskandar Johor Open in Johor, Malaysia. GoGolf does not at present list any course designed by Goosen.

See the other golf course architects here.

Photo: Matt Muskovac / CC BY-SA 3.0