Tom Simpson (golf architect)
Tom Simpson (* 1877 in Winkley Hall Estate, Lancashire , † 1964 in Basingstoke ), full name Thomas G. Simpson, was a golf architect who was one of the main representatives of the golden age of golf architecture .
life and work
According to Bernard Darwin , the notorious Woking Central Bunker inspired attorney Tom Simpson to close his office and take up the profession of golf architect instead. For a whole day in stormy weather he studied the fourth hole of Woking to understand the strategic considerations behind it. In 1910 he joined the Herbert Fowlers company , who became his mentor until he went self-employed in 1928 and promoted his assistant Philipp Mackenzie Ross to partner. A year later, the book "The Architectural Side of Golf", written together with Herbert Newton Wethered, was published, in which he presented the strategic design philosophy and - albeit in a different context - introduced the concept of the Golden Age.
Simpson was an uncompromising eccentric who staged the personal appearance with a beret, silk-embroidered coat and Rolls-Royce no less spectacular than his golf courses. Often his designs were criticized as too capricious, which he interpreted as proof of the quality of his work. For all his creativity, however, he was also known for serious calculations, so that he occasionally even fell short of his budget. One of his specialties were small and seemingly insignificant depressions and faults around the green, which distracted many supposedly well-played balls and caused them to roll over the short-cut grass into a difficult position. He considered length to be the wrong way to make a golf course more difficult for the sake of length, instead he gave a lot of space to chance and optical illusion up to half-blind greens. This attitude ran counter to the thinking of most golfers, and even today few golf architects take this point of view as consistently as Simpson did. Bernard Darwin spoke of "diabolical antics" (devilish antics) and Simpson himself of "mad masterpieces" (crazy masterpieces).
He built his best places in France with Chantilly (1909), Fontainebleau (1909), Morfontaine (1911, 1927), Chiberta (1927) and Hardelot Les Pins (1931). Simpson also played an important role in Belgium: Royal Golf des Fagnes at Spa (1930), Royal Hainaut (1933) and Royal Sart-Tilman (1938) were created by him. His redesigns are also particularly well-known, such as Royal Lytham and St Annes, Cruden Bay (with Herbert Fowler, 1926), Royal Antwerp (1930), New Zealand (1931) or Royal Porthcawl (1937). Ballybunion (1936) is also mentioned, but he went to work there extremely sparingly, since in his opinion the place was almost perfect. He worked with Molly Gourlay frequently in the 1930s , for example on the County Louth design (1938), becoming the first golf architect to consult a woman.
Tom Simpson attached particular importance to personally monitoring the construction of his seats, so that, including a series of collaborations, he only came up with just under 50 new layouts and 30 revisions.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Geoff Shackelford: Lines of Charm . Sports Media Group, Ann Arbor 2005, ISBN 1587262606
- ^ Tom Simpson, Herbert Newton Wethered: The Architectural Side of Golf . Longmans, Green and Co., London 1929.
literature
- Geoffrey S. Cornish , Ronald E. Whitten: The Architects of Golf . HarperCollins, New York 1993, ISBN 0062700820
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Simpson, Tom |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Simpson, Thomas G. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English golf architect |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1877 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Winkley Hall Estate, Lancashire |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1964 |
| Place of death | Basingstoke |