Rick Robbins

Rick Robbins is an American golf course architect. His grandfather ran a tree nursery and a property development business, and his father worked under Peggy Kirk Bell at Pine Needles Lodge & Club, one of the best-known clubs in North Carolina. Growing up beside a golf course led straight into the profession, and in 1973 he took a bachelor’s degree in environmental design at the School of Design at North Carolina State University. He is a registered landscape architect (RLA) and belongs to the ASGCA as well as the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Urban Land Institute.

He began as an architect at von Hagge & Devlin, the office of Robert von Hagge, who had trained under Dick Wilson, and the Australian tour professional Bruce Devlin. After thirteen years there he became vice president for planning and golf course development at Nicklaus/Sierra Development Corporation, and then joined the Hong Kong office of Jack Nicklaus‘s design firm as senior design associate. Those Hong Kong years were the beginning of his connection with Asia, and after going out on his own in 1991 and founding Robbins & Associates International in North Carolina, he kept an office in Beijing to handle Asian commissions.

By his firm’s own account he has designed courses or drawn master plans in 24 states of the United States and eleven countries. His American work includes Millcreek Golf Club and Crow Creek Golf Club in North Carolina, Water’s Edge Golf Course in Illinois and Horseshoe Bay Golf Club in Wisconsin, and among his renovations are Camden Country Club and Pine Lakes International in South Carolina and Prestonwood Country Club in North Carolina. In 2016 he opened Compass Point at Leland, North Carolina, the first new course built in the state since 2008. His awards include Golf Digest’s Best New Affordable Public Golf Course, and he served as president of the ASGCA from 2013 to 2014.

In Asia he has worked in China, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Two of the courses listed on GoGolf are his design. Kedaton Golf & Country Club at Tangerang, about 30 minutes by car from central Jakarta, opened in 1993, and is marked by a strategic layout that brings a pond or a stream into play on very nearly every hole. IOI Palm Villa Golf and Country Resort at Kulai in Johor, Malaysia, is a 27-hole course built in 1998 as part of a development by the IOI group, some 20 minutes by car from the Singapore border.

Robbins courses you can book on GoGolf

• Kedaton Golf & Country Club (Tangerang, Indonesia) — opened 1993. A layout with a water hazard on almost every hole

Courses listed for information only

The following course is not currently open for booking through GoGolf. It appears on the site as an information page only.

• IOI Palm Villa Golf and Country Resort (Johor, Malaysia) — opened 1998. 27 holes: Palm, Putra and IOI

Tee times and rates for a given day can be checked on each course page or in the GoGolf app.

See the other golf course architects here.