1 I received an email recently from someone who had just reread a GCA article from our January 2018 issue that tried to predict how the golf design industry would evolve over the next few years. They asked if our predictions had proved accurate. I naturally went back to the article itself (you can too by visiting bit.ly/3A3CqgK). There was one big hole in our prognostications, though it was perhaps a forgivable one. We did not foresee the global pandemic, and the dramatic effect it had on the golf industry. For whatever reasons, the rebound in golf after the pandemic was remarkable, and it has transformed the golf architecture industry. Around the world, architects are busier than they have been in over 20 years; several are booked up for the foreseeable future. We suggested that the design and shape construction model pioneered by architects such as Tom Doak and Coore & Crenshaw would probably continue to prosper, and it has. Several architects have gone a step further and taken on full-scale design and build contracts, even when the job involved large-scale earthmoving. We also suggested that technology would play a larger role in golf design in the future, and here I would suggest we were clearly correct. Doak’s reconstruction of CB Macdonald’s lost Lido course at Sand Valley in Wisconsin, which involved GPS-enabled bulldozers shaping the site according to a detailed computer model of the original creation, is the most obvious example of this trend, but it is hardly the only one. Chad Goetz of Nicklaus Design is creating Rocabarra Cliffs, a ‘metaverse’ course that will be playable only by members of the virtual Hyperscapes Golf Club. And the closing page of this issue has a Holing Out story about three golf course architects who have contributed to a tech-fused golf project. For certain we have not seen the end of this trend. Reviewing the future WELCOME ADAM LAWRENCE
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