Exploring Doctor Alister Mackenzie's Golf Course Mastery

One of my favorite parts of the walk we got to share at Cypress earlier this week was looking at Dr. McKenzie's architectural touches and knowing that you and your partner, Bill Coor, are two of the best in the world at both creating original designs, but also kind of refining and restoring classic courses. When we're standing on certain greens and you're saying, look at the spine right here, this inspired some work I did somewhere else. A notebook, whether it's a literal notebook or a metaphorical notebook, where are the sort of pieces of inspiration, whether it's architects or places or holes, do you feel like over the years have filled up, you know, it really informed your architectural approach? Well, it really has. We're very much, Bill Coor and I are great fans of Dr. McKenzie. You know, later on, his... Dr. McKenzie was joined by another great favorite of ours, Perry Maxwell. Yes. And Perry Maxwell did Prairie Dunes. He did Crystal Downs. But they were very simpatico in working with nature. They, they... After all, Dr. McKenzie was a camouflage artist in the First World War. And they retained him. The British Army retained him. Um, so he directly worked with nature and it's uncanny to me when I see the actual piece of property and how it swings and moves, uh, how he worked all the holes in there. And it just, it's seeming like he did not move a lot of material. He let the character of the holes just reflect its immediate surroundings and the flashes The bunkers that he built and the mounds. They all fit, they fit beautifully, natural. It's so funny, there are tools that I think about when I think of Dr. McKenzie is 10 at Augusta and six at Cypress, where nobody would ever build that hole today with this massive elevation change in the rolls and the hills. But just the way he worked with that land and created some of the best holes you'll ever see, it's just you can't replicate it. Dramatic, dramatic. You know, actually. You know, in the case of Augusta National, number 10, Dr. McKenzie first built it when the first couple of years was a little bit short, and Perry Maxwell pushed the green back on the hill later on. With that little dip in front of the green. There you can see remnants of a little green and bunker in the front of the green, and then across on the hill, that's where Perry Maxwell built the green, in its present state. So that was one of the few changes that Perry Maxwell made going into Dr. McKenzie. But Dr. McKenzie will always be known as the natural architect, the one that really worked with the land and no more. Yes, he had work crews back then. You know, actually, back then, I think Dr. McKenzie was one of the very first to use a bulldozer. Interesting. Very, very, you can see pictures of it on a couple of other courses that he did. And he probably, you know, he being the Scot, being a thrifty Scot, probably said this is going to cost too much money.