Donald Leslie Harradine

Donald Leslie Harradine (* 1911 in Enfield near London; † September 26, 1996 in Caslano ) was a Swiss golf course architect. In many European countries he planned golf courses and was in charge of construction. In Germany he created almost fifty golf courses, almost all of which are classified as "scenic" golf courses.

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Donald Harradine was born in Enfield near London in 1911. He grew up with his stepfather, the golf professional JA Hockey, who made golf clubs for London golf clubs. Harradine's stepfather also taught at Harrods, a London department store, as one of the first golf instructors at an indoor golf school he founded. The early contact with the traditional English golf world gave Don Harradine a passion for this sport and he soon became a scratch golfer . Donald Harradine studied on a scholarship at Woolwich Polytechnic and worked in his spare time as a helper on the local golf course .

JA Hockey was commissioned to expand the golf course from eight holes to a 9-hole course in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland. Harradine who worked with him now had the status of Adlatus . The golf course in Bad Ragaz was later converted into a model facility based on his designs. Then gradually orders for golf projects in Switzerland came in. B. in Davos, Vulpera, Flims and Bern, where he designed and built the first 9-hole golf course on the Gurten.

During the Second World War, Harradine served in the British legation in Bern . During this time he met his future wife Babette and started a family. The couple had two children, Peter and Kathleen. After the end of the war, Harradine found new tasks as a golf architect and he moved to Caslano near Lugano in order to completely rebuild and modernize the golf course there. Here he set up a planning office in his house and initially owned a construction company with whom he built individual squares.

With more than a hundred golf courses, his style was the unobtrusive design language of a golf course in the original landscape at a high sporting level.

Donald Harradine died on September 26th, 1996 in his house at Via Golf No. 32 in Caslano, Switzerland on Lake Lugano . With Harradine's son Peter and grandson Michael, the fourth generation of the family is already working in the architecture of golf courses.

Architecture of Harradines Golf Courses

Harradine was a self-taught golf architect . It was based on the English tradition of playing golf on the inland parkland course, which was already old at that time. His first courses were Swiss hotel golf courses at glamorous destinations such as Bad Ragaz, Davos or Arosa. Here he learned how to create and maintain lawns at high altitudes.

Harradine was a specialist in difficult terrain and was able to “accommodate” excellent courses even in landscapes that were critical from today's perspective. He moved completely freely in the design styles of "strategic and penal design", he sparingly distributed sand hazards on the fairways and remained a proponent of well-placed trees. His opinion was that a good par 69 golf course would be better than a bad par 72 course.

He paid special attention to the green-keeping because he wanted to raise the status of the nursing staff and because a poorly maintained space would ruin the architect's work. In 1969 he founded the "International Greenkeepers Association" with his wife, he published a trade magazine and held seminars for the training of greenkeepers. The IGA later became an umbrella organization that looks after the national associations. An annual golf tournament was even launched, the "Harradine Memorial Trophy" , which is organized alternately by the German, Austrian and Swiss Greenkeeper Association.

The "British Association of Golf Course Architects"

On July 14, 1971 in London at the Great Western Hotel, Paddington Golf Course Architects founded an association of professional golf architects, "The British Association of Golf Course Architects". The four founding members were: CK Cotton (1887–1974) J. Hamilton Stutt (1924–2008) Donald Leslie Harradine and Fred W. Hawtree (1916–2000).

Web links

• Obituary for Donald Leslie Harradine
• Daniel Koch: Pioneers in golf course construction ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), in: Handelszeitung from August 26, 1998, issue 35/98.