"The Anatomy of a Golf Course" (and Other Books) by Tom Doak

[iacas]

Discuss “The Anatomy of a Golf Course” by Tom Doak here. Also discuss any other Tom Doak books here.

[boogielicious]

I picked up this book after reading the discussion on the TST Sand Valley trip and reading Tom Coyne’s A Course Called America. I wanted to learn more about architecture and course design. Pretty easy read and gave some good fundamentals and design features from a designers point of view. Doak references some other books in this one which I will probably read at some point. In addition to fairways and greens, he also discusses bunkers and their purpose and design, hazard types and their use (he’s not a fan of unnecessary water hazards), trees, rough, etc. There are also section on irrigation and course maintenance.

One funny part was him talking about the average driving distance in the PGA back in 1992 when he wrote it. Well Tom, those numbers have gone up!😀

I would recommend this to anyone who wants general knowledge of course design. 

[iacas]

I re-read this book every six or seven years. Or try to. I've probably read it three times.

[boogielicious]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

I re-read this book every six or seven years. Or try to. I've probably read it three times.

Do you have others like this about course design to recommend?

[iacas]

1 hour ago, boogielicious said:

Do you have others like this about course design to recommend?

There are a bunch of good ones.

Golf Architecture Books by Tom Doak

Any of the books by Doak are good.

• Grounds for Golf (Shackelford)
• The Spirit of St. Andrews
• Methods of Early Golf Course Architecture (and Volume II)
• Sand and Golf
• The Links
• Golf Architecture in America
• Dream Golf` (not entirely or mostly about GCA)
• The Evangelist of Golf (will set you back a bit, not $950 but a hundred plus)

FWIW I didn't make a big deal of it at the time, for reasons that are somewhat obvious, but I toured the Lido course that's being built near Sand Valley with Tom Doak on the Wednesday night we were all in Sand Valley. 😉