Signature Architect or Signature Designer?

I’m continually bemused by reports of young PGA Tour stars, in the prime of their playing careers, being paid exorbitant sums of money to apparently collaborate on the design of a golf course. Across Asia this is a regular occurrence, with developers often trying to hoodwink us into believing the players are golf architects, rather than what they truly are - celebrity consultants. For the players in question, this is about easy money and few consider how poor design work might risk their longer-term reputation.

Circulating the golf industry in China at the moment are rumours that England’s Paul Casey is to receive a seven figure sum for putting his name to an IMG course on Hainan Island. Aside from virtually guaranteeing that the first Casey course will be a stinker, longer term he risks damaging his brand in the sphere of golf course architecture. Should Casey decide later in life to seriously pursue an interest in golf design, everything he ‘collaborated’ with IMG on should, and will, be held against him and his prospects for future work.

Clearly Paul Casey is not yet qualified to design golf courses, and what’s even more obvious is that golf course design is hardly a genuine passion for him. If it were he would instead partner with quality golf architects, capable of producing the sort of courses he would be proud to put his name to.

Consider the opposite end of the spectrum, and the design partnership entered into by recently crowned Australian Open champion Geoff Ogilvy and fellow Melbournian Mike Clayton. Ogilvy lives and breathes golf course architecture, and chose his partner carefully. To Ogilvy this new business represents an opportunity to learn more about an art form that interests him greatly, while also creating some really cool golf courses. Having won a major and multiple WGC events, he could have easily named his price and sold out to any project wanting to use his smiling face to adorn their advertising.

The Clayton Ogilvy model is to do the hard yards and focus on quality over quantity. It will take them time to establish their reputation and be able to charge the sort of fees that IMG can demand with one of the big ‘design’ stars. Young guns like Casey and Luke Donald will certainly get rich quicker, but one has to ask, at what cost?

One of the hotbeds for new golf development in China is Yunnan Province, a certified tourism area where golf development is powering forward at break-neck speed. A prominent signature ‘designer’ who seems to be struggling to attract work in the area is Nick Faldo, possibly due to the fact that the IMG/Faldo course in Kunming, called Lakeview, which he supposedly co-‘designed’, is poor. Lakeside opened prior to Faldo taking the business seriously and establishing his own design practice. He is unlikely to send prospective clients to see the Lakeview course, but I’ll bet that competing architects suggest such a trip as soon as they learn Faldo is being considered for work. I have no idea what Faldo was paid for that project – but it turns out that it wasn’t enough.

For Casey and Donald, who will make close to double the design fee charged by Ogilvy’s business - and not have to worry about actually designing and supervising the construction of the golf course – there seems little downside to taking the money. If your golfing legacy is important, however, or you wish to establish a ‘proper’ design business in later life, then signing your name to golf holes churned out by a production factory might not be such a smart move.

My guess is that Donald and Casey will earn significantly more from design than Ogilvy during their playing careers, but that neither will enjoy longevity in the business nor leave the golfing industry with anything that future generations might admire and study. Shouldn’t that be the overriding ambition of every serious golf designer? I suspect that it is for Geoff Ogilvy.

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