Alister MacKenzie

Alister MacKenzie (born August 30, 1870 in Yorkshire , Scotland , † January 6, 1934 in Santa Cruz , USA ) was a Scottish golf architect . He is considered to be one of the main representatives of the so-called golden age of golf architecture , a period in which an unusually large number of outstanding golf courses were built.

Life

Alister MacKenzie (alternative spelling: Alister Mackenzie) studied medicine at Leeds University Medical School and at Cambridge University and started his first position in his father's practice after graduating. Soon afterwards he was called up as a troop doctor for the Boer War , but soon specialized in camouflage. The positions of the Boers were indistinguishable from natural land forms, so that they were able to stand up to the British superiority again and again by a surprise factor. MacKenzie developed the idea that golf courses would also benefit if they looked natural through and through. After his return from South Africa, he worked as a doctor again, but recommended his patients to take up golf again and again , as he believed it had a positive effect on their health.

Unlike most other golf architects of the time, MacKenzie was just your average golfer, but with a great dedication to the sport. Although he was already a member of two golf clubs near his hometown (Headingley and Leeds Golf Club), he founded the Alwoodley Golf Club with friends in 1905, of which he became club secretary in 1907. This was preceded by an unsuccessful attempt to be elected captain of the Leeds Golf Club; members feared his radical ideas about redesigning the square. But even in Alwoodley he was only able to assert himself when the well-known golf architect Harry Colt was called in as a consultant and MacKenzie's proposals were approved. Despite the initial skepticism of some members, Alwoodley was finally a great success, so that more orders followed in northern England and MacKenzie was able to give up his medical practice.

He became known nationally in 1914 when he won a design competition for Country Life magazine. After the end of the First World War , he finally concentrated on designing golf courses and in 1920 published his first book, Golf Architecture , which is still considered a standard work today.

In total, he designed around 60 golf courses and redesigned 40 other layouts, for example on the famous Old Course in St Andrews . Of great importance for his work, but also for the development of golf in Australia , was his two-month stay there in 1926, during which he advised a number of golf clubs on the redesign of their courses. Royal Melbourne West, Royal Adelaide, Kingston Heath and New South Wales, and Titirangi in New Zealand are the best-known results of this work.

But he also worked in the USA and Ireland before he finally moved to California in 1929 . Apart from a detour to Buenos Aires (The Jockey Club, 36 holes, 1931), he designed Cypress Point and Pasatiempo, two such outstanding golf courses that Bobby Jones noticed him: he surprisingly made the first round of the 1929 US Amateur Championship eliminated and used the time to play these two courses. A little later he chose MacKenzie over other, more well-known in the USA architects for his personal project Augusta National . This golf course, Alister MacKenzie's last, was also the culmination of his life's work. Shortly before today's major US Masters tournament was held for the first time , he died in his house, which still stands on the edge of the sixth fairway in Pasatiempo.

plant

Bunker landscape on hole 2 of the Headingley Golf Club near Leeds

Before Alister MacKenzie, working as a golf architect was not seen as a separate profession, but rather an honor bestowed on particularly good players. MacKenzie, on the other hand, was an average recreational player (handicap −18) who therefore had to gain respect and recognition through his work alone. Since there were no heavy machines with which one could move tons of earth in his time, he had to try to wrest interesting golf holes from the existing nature.

The trademarks of his golf courses are therefore primarily the natural appearance and the variety of strategic alternatives. Then there are the few, but well-placed, huge and often artistically designed bunker landscapes . He achieved special optical effects by not only covering the floor of a bunker with sand, but also the side walls. MacKenzie believed that an obstacle could never be unfair simply because of its location, and that obstacles in the direct line of play often make the most interesting holes. On Rough he renounced mostly, instead he defended his holes with difficult greens and tried to use the natural conditions as difficulties of the terrain. Blind blows, as they are common on the traditional Scottish links , are rarely found on him.

Elaborate green complexes like this one in Sitwell Park determine the strategy all the way back to the tee.

In particular, MacKenzie became known for his large, highly contoured greens, which have several very different areas, each requiring different approaches. Alwoodley was one of the first inland courses ever to feature this type of greens, where you had to take into account when teeing off which part of the fairway it was best to play from. Traditionally, golf courses were planned and played from the tee to the green, MacKenzie was one of the pioneers of the reverse view: the green determines the strategy, from there you count back to the tee. For the first time, he also defined exactly how the undulations of the greens should be made: he compared them with calm waves, i.e. wide valleys and narrow plateaus, no abrupt ramps or breaks, no barely visible edges near the hole. The effect of generous undulations can be quite dramatic, says MacKenzie of the natural greens in Machrihanish, where a putt of 20 to 30 meters in length was occasionally required for a distance of 5 meters to the hole. Much to their regret, the club replaced these greens with flatter ones that were supposed to be "fairer".

Together with the other protagonists of the golden age of golf architecture, MacKenzie is considered to be the conqueror of the punishing design philosophy, in which the obstacles were placed exactly in the line of play and thus anything but the stroke demanded by the architect was punished. Instead, the strategic (multiple paths to the goal) and the heroic (the more risk, the higher the reward) design philosophy are put in the foreground. A welcome side effect is that golf holes designed according to these principles are easy to play for both better and worse golfers. According to MacKenzie, no hole can be considered perfect if it cannot be played with the putter alone.

Alister MacKenzie was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2005.

The 13 principles of golf architecture

In his book Golf Architecture , published in 1920 , MacKenzie set out “13 General Principles of Architecture”, most of which are still valid today and are often quoted by golf architects and other experts.

1. If possible, the golf course should consist of two 9-hole loops.
2. The medium to long par 4s should have a large share, with two or three short par 4s and at least four par 3s.
3. The path from the green to the next tee should be short, but lead in a forward direction so that the lanes can be easily extended if this should be necessary later.
4. The greens and fairways should be undulating, but the round of golf must not become a climbing game.
5. Each track should have a different character.
6. The strokes into the green should be blind as rarely as possible.
7. The golf course should be laid out in beautiful surroundings and all artificial elements should appear so natural that a stranger cannot distinguish them from nature itself.
8. There should be enough heroic carries from the tee, but the weaker player should also be offered an alternative route while losing a shot or part of it.
9. The greatest possible range of strokes should be required on the various holes.
10. Searching for lost balls is annoying and should therefore be avoided completely.
11. The course should be so interesting that even the plus handicapper is encouraged to try unusual strokes that they actually do not have in their repertoire.
12. The course should also enable the high handicapper and even the beginner to enjoy his round, even though he is playing a high score.
13. The playability of the course should be equally good in summer and winter, the fairways should have a perfect texture and the approach areas should have the same consistency as the greens.

Alister MacKenzie's most famous golf courses

• Alwoodley (UK, 1907, with HS Colt)
• Moortown (UK, 1909)
• Royal Melbourne (Australia, 1926)
• Lahinch (Ireland, 1927)
• Cypress Point (US, 1928)
• Pasatiempo (US, 1929)
• Valley Club of Montecito (USA, 1929, with Robert Hunter)
• Crystal Downs (US, 1931, with Perry Maxwell )
• Augusta National (US, 1933, with Bobby Jones)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Dr. Alister MacKenzie: Golf Architecture . Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co. Ltd., London, 1920.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Dr. Alister MacKenzie: The Spirit of St. Andrews . Sleeping Bear Press, Chelsea (Michigan) 1995. ISBN 1886947007

literature

• Tom Doak, Dr. James Scott, Ray Haddock: The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie . John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2005, ISBN 158536018X .
• Peter Pugh, Henry Lord: Masters of Design: Great Courses of Colt, Mackenzie, Alison and Morrison . Icon Books Ltd, London 2009. ISBN 1848310900 .
• Mark Rowlinson: Dr Alister MacKenzie . In: Golf Course Architecture , October 2005. Tudor Rose, Leicester.

Web links

• The Alister MacKenzie Society