Stanley Thompson

Stanley Thompson (born September 18, 1893 in Toronto , † January 4, 1953 ibid) was a Canadian golf architect and main representative of the Golden Age of golf architecture .

life and work

Stanley Thompson often staged his golf courses against a spectacular natural backdrop, for example in Banff . This picture shows the previous place of Donald Ross in 1915.

As one of ten children of Scottish emigrants, Stanley Thompson grew up in Toronto, hired himself out early as a caddy and, together with his brothers, was one of the best golfers in Canada for many years. As a teenager he saw Harry Colt at work in Canada several times, which is how his interest in golf architecture arose. For the First World War he was enlisted by the Canadian artillery and used every opportunity to play the famous links and heath courses of Great Britain. After his return he founded a golf course construction company, initially with his brother Nicol and George Cumming, which he took over on his own from 1922. In the 1930s he worked frequently with Robert Trent Jones , who counted him among his mentors alongside AW Tillinghast .

With the Bigwin Inn project (1921), Stanley Thompson earned a reputation right at the beginning of his career for “Rock and Forest Courses”, ie golf courses that were, with great effort, cut and blasted out of spectacular forest and rocky landscapes. Various Canadian railway companies and national parks subsequently commissioned him with large-scale projects that had hitherto been considered impossible, such as Jasper Park Lodge (1926) and Banff Springs (1929), which are still among the most famous resorts in Canada. Other significant places are Halifax (1924), St. George's (1930), Seigniory (1931), Gávea ( Rio de Janeiro , 1933), Capilano (1936), Highlands Links (1939) and Beaconsfield (1943). Occasionally Thompson also worked abroad, including Constant Springs (Jamaica, 1931), San Andres (Bogota, 1946) and North Oaks (Minnesota, USA, 1951). In total, he brought it to more than 120 new places and around 40 redesigns.

His only publication is the short essay "General Thoughts on Golf Course Design" (1923), in which he explained his design principles. Accordingly, the most important criteria for a golf course are the soil quality as well as the beauty of the landscape and the traffic-related accessibility. In addition to the strategic design customary in the golden age, Stanley Thompson placed particular emphasis on the aesthetics of the landscape and the influence of agronomic factors on playability. Like Harry Colt before him, he first determined the par 3 holes during the routing and built the rest of the course around them, so that his short holes are often of outstanding quality. Thompson was also happy to use naturally designed streams, ditches and ponds, although water hazards were frowned upon at the time due to their punitive nature. His bunkers are mostly elaborate and individually designed, occasionally he even placed them purely for aesthetic reasons in places where they had no influence at all on the game.

In addition to a particular preference for dramatic productions, Stanley Thompson is also said to have a sense of humor. He named the 9th hole in Jasper Park “Cleopatra” and gave it the shape of a woman lying on her back. This makes Stanley Thompson the first golf architect to integrate symbolic set pieces (faces, horseshoes and an octopus were also found) into his courses.

Stanley Thompson was a founding member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects , along with Robert Trent Jones, William Langford, Perry Maxwell and Donald Ross , and was president of the association in 1949.

literature

• James A. Barclay: The Toronto Terror . Sleeping Bear Press, Chelsea 2000. ISBN 1886947937 (via Stanley Thompson)
• Geoffrey S. Cornish , Ronald E. Whitten: The Architects of Golf . HarperCollins, New York 1993. ISBN 0062700820