Alister MacKenzie

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Dr. Alister MacKenzie (August 30, 1870 – January 6, 1934) was an internationally renowned, British golf course architect whose course designs, on three different continents, are consistently ranked among the finest golf courses in the world. Originally trained as a surgeon, MacKenzie served as a civilian doctor with the British army during the Boer War where he first became aware of the principles of camouflage. During World War I, MacKenzie made his own significant contributions to military camouflage, which he saw as closely related to golf course design. [1]

Contents

[edit] Birth and early life

MacKenzie was born at the family home in Normanton, near Leeds in Yorkshire, England to parents of Scottish extraction. His mother, Mary Jane Smith MacKenzie had family roots in Glasgow. His father, William Scobie MacKenzie, a medical doctor, had been born and raised in the Scottish Highlands near Lochinvar. From the earliest, MacKenzie was raised as a Scotsman. Although christened after his paternal grandfather Alexander, he was called "Alister" (Gaelic for Alexander) from birth. As a youth, MacKenzie and his family spent Summers near Lochnivar, on what had been traditional Clan MacKenzie lands from 1670-1745. MacKenzie's strong identification with his Scottish roots featured prominently in many aspects of his later life.[2]

[edit] Early adulthood

MacKenzie attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, before heading for Cambridge University where he initially trained as a medical doctor. He served as a surgeon with the Somerset Regiment in South Africa during the Boer War.

[edit] Camouflage service

During his wartime service, MacKenzie became interested in camouflage, which was effectively used by the Boers. As a result, during World War I, when he once again served in the military, he worked not as a surgeon but as a camoufleur. In a lecture he gave on the subject, he said that “The brilliant successes of the Boers [during his service in South Africa] were due to great extent to their making the best use of natural cover and the construction of artificial cover indistinguishable from nature” (MacKenzie 1934, p. 42).

[edit] Golf course design

MacKenzie had been a member of several golf clubs near Leeds, England dating back as far as the late 1890s. These included Ilkley between 1890 & 1900 & then Leeds Golf Club from 1900 to 1910. In 1907, he was one of the founding members of The Alwoodley Golf Club, where he served as both Honorary Secretary (1907-1909) and Club Captain (1912-1913) and he remained on the Green Committee for many years till 1930. As the course was MacKenzie's original design when Alwoodley was laid out, it did provide him with his first opportunity to put many of his own golf course design theories to practical test. The Committee at the time however thought that some of his ideas were too expansive, so called in Harry Colt for a second opinion. Colt was one of the leading golf course architects of the time and was also the Secretary of Sunningdale. Colt, who came up on 2 occasions only, one on July 31, 1907, when he met MacKenzie for the very first time, & later on October 6, 1909. On the first occasion in 1907, 4 months after the course opened for play, having stayed at MacKenzie's house overnight he realised that MacKenzie's ideas were very much an extension of his own and he gave great support for MacKenzie's ideas at the meeting with the Committee. He did however mention the bunkering as MacKenzie's ideas had taken into account the new technology of the day, which was the Haskell wound ball (which bounced & rolled) and was now being used instead of the old gutta-percha golf ball. Some of MacKenzie's modern ideas under discussion included: undualting greens, long and narrow greens angled from the center of the fairway, fairly large and free form bunker shapes, substantial additional contouring. All of these would remain part of his "signature style" throughout his career.[3]

In 1914, MacKenzie won a golf hole design competition organized by Country Life, one of the era's leading magazines and the adjudicator was none other than Bernard Darwin. He then took an active interest in course improvements at his own clubs, serving on committees for this purpose, and gained fundamental experience in the newly-emerging discipline of golf course design. He charted the Old Course at St. Andrews in great detail and indeed he had already in 1915 become a member of the R&A, having been proposed by Harry Colt. It was in March 1924 that he produced the map which remains world-famous to the present day.[4]

Following World War I, MacKenzie left medicine entirely, and began to work instead as a golf course designer in the United Kingdom, in association with Harry Shapland Colt and Charles Alison in 1919, with whom he formed the London firm of Colt, MacKenzie & Alison. He excelled at golf course planning. This was not an easy relationship and eventually MacKenzie went his own way early in 1923.

By his own admission, he thought he had learned a lot about golf course planning from having designed camouflage. There are references to the latter in his first book on course design, called Golf Architecture (MacKenzie 1920), such as when he writes that “there is an extraordinary resemblance between what is now known as the camouflage of military earthworks and golf-course construction” (p. 128), or later, when he states that there “are many other attributes in common between the successful golf architect and the camoufleur. Both, if not actually artists, must have an artistic temperament, and have had an education in science” (pp. 129–130). In that same book, he also writes that “the chief object of every golf course architect worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature [and presumably also the hazards] so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself.” [1]

"Golf Architecture" - once a very hard to find and sought after book - was selected by Herbert Warren Wind to be included in his Classics of Golf Library.

MacKenzie worked in an era before large scale earth moving became a major factor in golf course construction, and his designs are notable for their sensitivity to the nature of the original site. He is admired for producing holes that offer an ideal balance of risk and reward, and for designing golf courses that challenge yet also accommodate players with a range of skills.

[edit] Ability as a golfer

As a player, MacKenzie was a self described "good putter, but a mediocre ball striker" for most of his life. It was not until after his move to California, when he was already in his 60s, that MacKenzie had what he described as his "golfing epiphany". This was an improvement in his ball striking which enabled him to often score in the high 70s to low 80s for 18 holes. He described this in one of his books as "in the 70s after 60".[4] MacKenzie was one of the first prominent golf course designers who had not been a leading player.[3]

[edit] Legacy

In the late 1920s he moved permanently to the United States, where he carried out some of his most notable work, although he continued to design courses outside that country as well. Today, he is remembered as the designer of some of the world’s finest courses, among them Century Country Club (Purchase, New York), as MacKenzie was partners with Colt & Alison at the time the two built Century, from mid 1923 he was working with other partners when he designed Augusta National Golf Club (Augusta, Georgia), Cypress Point Club (Monterey Peninsula, California), Royal Melbourne Golf Club (Melbourne, Australia), Pasatiempo Golf Club (Santa Cruz, California), Crystal Downs Country Club (Frankfort, Michigan), Lahinch Golf Course (Lahinch, Ireland), and Meadow Club (Fairfax, California) [see extended list of his courses below].

He died in Santa Cruz, California. Discovered after his death was an unpublished manuscript on golf and golf course design, which was posthumously published as The Spirit of St. Andrews (MacKenzie 1995).

[edit] Further reading

  • Behrens, Roy R. (2009), CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books. ISBN 978-0-9713244-6-6.
  • Doak, Tom (2001), The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie. New York: John Wiley. ISBN 978-1-58536-018-5.
  • Green, John (2011), The Royal Melbourne Golf Club, History Of The Courses. ISBN 9780646555881.
  • MacKenzie, Alister (1915), “Military Entrenchments” in Golf Illustrated. Vol 3 No 1, pp. 42–45.
  • MacKenzie, Alister [unsigned article, but authorship claimed by MacKenzie] (1919), “Entrenchments and Camouflage: Lecture by a British Officer Skilled in Landscape Gardening” in Professional Memoirs, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army and Engineer Department at Large. No 47, pp. 574–638.
  • MacKenzie, Alister (1920), Golf Architecture: Economy in Course Construction and Green-Keeping. London UK: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co. Ltd.
  • MacKenzie, Alister (1934), “Common Sense of Camouflage Defence” in The Military Engineer. Vol XXVI No 145 (January–February), pp. 42–44.
  • MacKenzie, Alister (1995). The Spirit of St. Andrews. Sleeping Bear Press. ISBN 1-886947-00-7.
  • Muirhead, Desmond (1995), “Symbols in Golf Course Architecture” in Executive Golfer (July).
  • New York Times (1934), “Alister MacKenzie Links Designer, Dies.” (January 7), p. 31.

[edit] Selected courses

[edit] References

  1. ^ MacKenzie 1920, pp. 128–131; Behrens 2009
  2. ^ "The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie", by Doak, Scott & Haddock, 2001 pp=22-28
  3. ^ a b "The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie", by Doak, Scott & Haddock, 2001
  4. ^ a b The Spirit of St. Andrews, by Alister MacKenzie, 1995
  5. ^ Cavendish Golf Club Website
  6. ^ http://www.theage.com.au/sport/golf/royal-melbourne-back-at-no1-20120215-1t54m.html#poll
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