37 Above, ‘A group of artificial hazards dividing fairways’, Tom Simpson, 1924 (Image: from ‘Lawns for Sports’ by Reginald Beale) Right, art for ‘The Motor Owner’, Charles Ambrose, 1930 (Image: British Newspaper Archive) object in a way that snapping a picture could never replicate.” Probably the first golf architect who was known for his art almost as much as his work was the late Mike Strantz, who used his watercolour painting skills to brief his shapers on how he wanted holes to look. If you have seen any of Strantz’s work, this isn’t hard to believe: words like ‘artistic’ and even ‘painterly’ spring immediately to mind when viewing the forms he created. Strantz’s influence is strong and wide. Davis, another fine artist, says he doesn’t feel he can ever reach that standard, but it doesn’t stop him trying. “I don’t think I am near as good as Mike Stranz was, but I learned a lot from his pencil and brush strokes,” he explains. “I started drawing plan view sketches of golf holes when I was 13 or 14, when I did my own yardage books for tournaments I was playing in and I eventually sketched concept holes. I didn’t start doing perspective sketches until I became a golf architect, mainly focusing on bunkers in detail or how they fit in the landscape to impact how you see a shot. Kyle Downs, who works for me, is really good and I have learned from him too. Good sketches have good scale – every part of the sketch has the same sense of scale, so others can see and feel what the sketch is trying to convey. “At first my sketching was completely about communicating with shapers and construction crews,” says Davis. “A lot of our clients have taken to wanting to frame these and hang them around the club. I have in the last few years also started to use Photoshop to ‘paint’ options in perspective, which has become a way to show a potential client our ideas. Pencil sketches can more easily show detail and ground movement, while the Photoshop paintings show more wow. I can do these ‘paintings’ in smaller areas on a smaller scale, but I am always amazed at the quality graphic companies like Harris Kalinka can do on a large scale.” Don Placek, principal at Renaissance Golf Design, is another that is known for illustrative drawings and routing maps. “My dad was a teaching professional by trade, so I have been around golf my entire life,” he says. “My parents encouraged drawing and sketching for as long as I can recall. I was never any good at illustrating people or faces and not too good at animals either, but for some reason landscapes came easy… largely because
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