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They were far from the most prolific pre-World War II architects, but no one has influenced recent golf course design quite like Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor.
Macdonald, Raynor and later protege Charles Banks laid out some of the most fascinating golf courses built prior to World War II, including the National Golf Links of America, Chicago Golf Club, Yale University, the Country Club of Charleston, Waialae (host of the PGA Tour's annual Sony Open) and many more.
Despite their diverse settings, these courses and a few dozen more share an aesthetic and design vocabulary that fascinates and inspires current architects. Contemporary tributes range from subtle nods to not one but two meticulous reproductions of a bygone Macdonald masterpiece.
Central to the “MacRaynor” (golf-nerd shorthand) style is the concept of templates: course features and entire holes Macdonald adapted from his favorite courses in the British Isles and continental Europe.
Macdonald/Raynor templates: 4 par-3 concepts
Redan: Inspired by the 15th hole at North Berwick Golf Club in Scotland, this is usually a longish par 3 with a green that tilts from front-right down to the back-left, with deep fronting bunker guarding the steeply-banked green. It should be possible to sling a ball down the length of the green using its slopes. Occasionally there will be a Reverse Redan, whose green runs from front-left to back-right.
Biarritz: Inspired by a no-longer-existent hole in Biarritz, France, this is a long-iron or fairway-wood par 3 with a deep green separated across the middle by a trench. In some cases, the front portion is maintained as fairway so that only the area in front of the trench is pinnable.
Short: True to its name, this hole is usually meant to be attacked with a short iron or even a wedge. As a result, the green is well-defended by bunkers (and sometimes water) and undulating, though it is not always of small size.
Eden: Patterned after the 11th hole on the Old Course at St. Andrews, this mid-length par 3 typically features a sizable bunker left of the tilted green and a smaller, deep bunker short-right. These pits refer to the famous Hill and Strath bunkers on the original hole, respectively.
The strategic and aesthetic interest of these holes was well-known to golfers, and Macdonald and Raynor adapted them into the landscapes in which they worked, from rocky, wild New England uplands to the Lowcountry flats of South Carolina and beyond. Hole names like Redan, Biarritz, Double Plateau, Punchbowl and others feature throughout the MacRaynor catalog, and well-traveled architecture buffs love to debate whether the Redan hole at Mountain Lake in Florida is better than the Redan at The Greenbrier, or whether the Biarritz at Fishers Island in New York measures up to its counterpart at Yale. The general look and layout of these holes may be similar, but the subtler differences – to the interior green contours, scale of the bunkering and their general fit into the surrounding land – make every MacRaynor course feel distinct.
Latter-day architects have used template holes and features in the decades since Macdonald (1939), Raynor (1926) and Banks (1931) passed away, but the most recent revival can be traced to 2000, when architect Brian Silva debuted Black Creek Club, a private real-estate community course near Chattanooga, Tennessee that was a full MacRaynor homage, complete with template holes, features and their distinctive look.
But Macdonald and Raynor’s work has earned a new level of attention in the last decade-plus, to the point where there are now seemingly as many courses that pay homage to them as there are courses they themselves designed. And the trend is not showing any signs of slowing down.
The MacRaynor revival: A spectrum
Central Wisconsin and Bangkok, Thailand, have thousands of miles between them, but they are home to two takes on Lido Golf Club, a course on New York's Long Island that debuted in 1917 but closed just 25 years later. In its short lifespan, it gained a reputation as one of the world’s great golf courses, with epic features and uncommon challenges complimented by its seaside setting.
In the decades since it closed, golf historians and architects have longed to revive Lido and its own bold set of template holes and stirring one-off challenges, including a hole designed according to an entry into a magazine contest, submitted by a young Alister MacKenzie.
In the last two years, two firms have succeeded in reviving the revered course in different ways. At the Ban Rakat Club near Bangkok, Gil Hanse’s team recently unveiled Ballyshear Golf Links, a hole-by-hole replica of Lido that is faithful to the original course but for two holes, whose places in the routing were switched due to the Thai site’s constraints.
In Wisconsin, Tom Doak has taken the process even further. In his book The Anatomy of a Golf Course, he described Lido as “the first and best artificial ‘links’.” Thirty years later, on a sandy, 850-acre blank-slate of a site next to Sand Valley Golf Resort, Doak and his associates have reproduced the entire Lido course, with hole sequencing and routing intact. Even the typical wind directions relative to the holes’ orientations are similar to the original.
With the help of golf historian Peter Flory, Doak and company were able to transplant the course using historical aerial and on-the-ground photography. They have also been able to recreate the original Lido’s contours using sophisticated GPS mapping, made real by contemporary earthmoving equipment. Set to open in summer of 2023, the “new” Lido is not so much a new build as a faithful revival of a lost legend.
This is far from Doak’s first foray into MacRaynor homage. He and his Renaissance Golf firm have restored several existing classics, including Yeamans Hall outside Charleston, S.C., and Camargo Club in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio.
In 2010, Doak unveiled Old Macdonald at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. Under the guidance of resort developer Mike Keiser, Doak, Jim Urbina and others vamped on Macdonald’s template concepts, interpreting them in their own way while fitting them onto Oregon’s wild coastline. In his detailed review of Old Macdonald on GolfClubAtlas.com, current GOLF Magazine architecture editor Ran Morrissett wrote, “each of the holes sits so well upon the land and makes it look as if any other type hole would have been a poor substitute.”
Several other architects, each with their own perspective on MacRaynor courses and their place in the arc of architecture history, find themselves inspired as well. At the forthcoming Astor Creek Country Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida, architect Chris Wilczynski’s design sprinkles in select references to the old guard, but with a twist. For example, Astor Creek’s third hole is called “Biarritz,” but unlike the now-lost original hole in France and Macdonald and Raynor’s later versions, Wilczynski’s is a par 4. Its large green has the trademark trench running through its midsection, but because golfers will be approaching it from an oblique angle, it will function rather differently than a classic Biarritz – a long par 3 where golfers attack the green directly up its length, with bracketing bunkers flanking the green.
“I think they’re all very interesting concepts; obviously they’ve stood the test of time and have been replicated in different variations,” said Wilczynski, who worked for the prolific Arthur Hills before striking out on his own.
At the same time, Wilczynski is not interested in building historically accurate representations of the template holes. “I feel like all of a sudden we’ve become obsessed. Everybody’s doing these template holes, every new golf course or short course has all these template holes,” he said. “I just hope people are doing variations of them, and fitting them into the landscape that was there.”
Why MacRaynor revival benefits golfers everywhere
Reasonable minds can disagree about how far to take the movement, but one of the positive takeaways from MacRaynor revivalism is that modern-day architects are exposing more and more current golfers to holes and features whose original versions mostly feature at exclusive private clubs that few will get to play.
About two hours northwest of Astor Creek, in the central-Florida community of Lady Lake, architects John Sanford and David Ferris recently unveiled a complete renovation of Water Oak County Club, which sits at the center of a modest 55-plus community.
The 6,126-yard, par-70 course features holes named for most of Macdonald and Raynor’s templates – the par-3 second hole is called “Short,” the par-5 ninth “Double Plateau” and the par-4 14th is “Hogs Back.” On other holes, Sanford and Ferris tied in their own ideas with those they adapted from Macdonald and Raynor.
What excites about Water Oak is its affordability. Green fees top out at $54 for walkers in the high season, offering an affordable look at some of the most influential concepts in golf course architecture history.
Another Florida course, the municipal St. Johns Golf Club outside St. Augustine, offers a similar opportunity. The course reopened in late 2022 after a full-scale renovation by architect Erik Larsen, who mixed MacRaynor template features into a course that uses their overall style, with sharp bunker and green edges with compartmentalized contours. Peak rates for non-residents are $59.50 with cart. For walkers, the rate after 1:00 pm is an incredible $25.
Perhaps America’s greatest community-oriented MacRaynor revival is Charleston (S.C.) Municipal Golf Course, where architect Troy Miller overhauled a beloved city amenity with a mix of straight-up template holes and his own interpretations of features he loves from nearby Yeamans Hall and the Country Club of Charleston. Charleston Muni has first-rate Redan and Short par 3s, but it also has wonderful one-offs that defy any specific template but nevertheless fit right in alongside them.
For a long time, the best golf course architecture was primarily available only to wealthy members of elite private clubs or guests of upscale resorts. Contemporary figures’ embrace of the greatness of Golden Age design – not just Macdonald and Raynor but Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast and others – continues to filter into the mainstream, giving millions of golfers a renewed look at just how much fun the game can be on a compelling course.
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