Baltusrol and Stanwich. It was a tremendous experience and left me wanting to make some sort of a career in golf rather than engineering, banking or management consultancy. However, I did not think that golf course design would be a possibility. I was not getting anywhere with my golfing job applications so thought I would train as an accountant and then get into golf that way, but then Donald Steel saved me from that fate!” Also a Cambridge man, Donald Steel became the Sunday Telegraph’s golf correspondent in 1960, a role he would hold for 30 years. In 1965, he became a consultant to the golf architecture firm of Cotton, Pennink, Lawrie and Partners; after the deaths of the other partners, he founded Donald Steel & Co. Given that he was rather busy in the booming golf market of the day, he needed help. Steel hired Tom Mackenzie in 1989, and Ebert a year later. “Although I knew of Donald while playing university golf, I did not meet him then,” says Ebert. “I did make contact to see if he would write an article for our tour brochure, but we only met when Tom’s brother, Andy, who I played with on the team, suggested that I get in touch with Donald and Tom as they were very busy. I knew Donald more as a writer, so I did not know if the position was in relation to his writing or designing. I am glad that it turned out to be the latter!” Steel was nominated to serve as president of the English Golf Union for 2006. He would be 68 on taking office and decided this was a good time to retire from the design business, so he closed his firm down, which left Ebert and Mackenzie with a decision to make. They decided to continue working together, but now as partners rather than employees, and founded Mackenzie & Ebert (M&E) in 2005. “Starting our own firm seemed to be the natural thing to do,” says Ebert. “We were also getting into a more technical way of designing, with AutoCAD providing the perfect tool for our plans. We had our very talented colleague, Chris Huggett, who had worked for Donald since 2000, to really push on with the advances on that front. We were very nervous about how things would go with the golf design business being so name-oriented; losing Donald’s was a concern. However, we did inherit the vast majority of the projects of the old company and the business was still buoyant in the first three years. Then the ‘crash’ happened, and we were not certain where the next project would come from. The new course market collapsed. With Donald, we were designing perhaps three or MARTIN EBERT Images: Mackenzie & Ebert Martin frequently uses a bicycle to make his way around site, as pictured at Moncayo in Puerto Rico (above is a visualisation that Mackenzie & Ebert produced in-house of the fifteenth hole) 44
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