Tom Doak

Tom Doak is a golf course architect, born on March 16, 1961 in New York State and brought up at Stamford in Connecticut. After a single term at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he moved to Cornell University and read landscape architecture. While a student there he won the William Frederick Dreer Award, and from 1982 into 1983 he travelled through Britain and Ireland looking at courses, caddying at St Andrews in the summer of 1982. Walking and measuring the old links for himself on that journey became the starting point of his own design.

He learned the practical side of the work under Pete Dye and Alice Dye. He joined the Long Cove Club site in 1981, then spent some four years travelling with the Dyes’ work, and at PGA West and elsewhere came little by little to take a part in the design decisions themselves. In time he set up a firm of his own, Renaissance Golf Design, at Traverse City in Michigan (the founding is given as 1987), and High Pointe Golf Club in Michigan, opened in 1989, was his first course. Gil Hanse was the first architect the firm employed. What Doak stands for is what is called minimalism: before moving earth to shape anything, he settles the routing by finding as many holes as he can that can be played over the contours already lying in the ground.

What carried his name around the world was Pacific Dunes, opened in 2001 at the Bandon Dunes resort in Oregon. Well-regarded work followed: Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand (2004), Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania, Australia (designed with Michael Clayton) and Ballyneal in Colorado (2006). At Sebonack Golf Club in New York State he worked together with Jack Nicklaus. In New Zealand, Tara Iti Golf Club, opened in 2015, stands high in the world rankings, and on the same coast the North course at Te Arai Links opened in October 2023. The Loop at Forest Dunes in Michigan is known as a course whose same eighteen holes can be played both clockwise and anti-clockwise.

He is as well known for his writing as for his design. The Anatomy of a Golf Course, published in 1992, set out a way of looking at course design, and The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses of 1996 gave blunt ratings to courses around the world and caused a good deal of argument. In 2001 he published a life of Alister MacKenzie, The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie, and in 2017 Tom Doak’s Little Red Book of Golf Course Architecture. He was inducted into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in 2013. In recent years he has stepped back from the day-to-day running of the business, and Renaissance Golf Design is led by four senior associates, Eric Iverson, Don Placek, Brian Slawnik and Brian Schneider.

See the other golf course architects here.