Discovering Donald Ross: The Architect and His Golf Courses
Despite its outsized dimensions, this is not a coffee table book, in the traditional sense of a book long on pictures and short on text.
To be sure, the photographs are stunning, but Klein’s way with words is equally impressive.
Brad Klein came to this massive biography/golf architecture study with the right credentials. He’s the founding editor of Golfweek’s Superintendent News, a design consultant, and a well-known golf writer.
His latest creation is an extensive study of one of golf’s most prolific course designers. As Klein notes, however, Ross’s record is not as extensive as some have claimed over the years. Even so, he managed to handle over 450 projects, and was directly responsible for at least 399 courses.
Using a wide range of original source material, combined with up-to-date aerial photography and other useful data, Klein set out to “place Ross’s life in the context of his own evolving design work.” In addition, Klein shows how the intervention of club committees, insufficiently appreciative greens keepers, and others altered Ross’s original concepts, and usually not for the better.
The aerial photographs are particularly useful in supporting Klein’s interpretation. For example, the contemporaneous overhead shot of Skokie Country Club, host of the 1922 U.S. Open, shows a near-total absence of trees on the course. The aerial picture from 1997 shows how the area is now nearly overrun with forest.
It’s just not what Ross intended. Klein notes that the course is currently undergoing a restoration, with over 400 trees already removed.
In Chapter 7, Klein also describes the basic elements that distinguish Ross’s work, such as efficient routings, generous fairways, and demanding iron play. On several occasions Klein demolishes the notion that Ross’s preferred green design was epitomized by the turtle-back greens at his beloved Pinehurst No. 2. Ample proof of Klein’s argument can be seen and played at nearby Mid-Pines, one of my favorite Pinehurst-area courses.
For fans of golf architecture in general and Donald Ross in particular, Klein has performed a valuable service.
Review Date: December 15, 2001