Alister MacKenzie

Hometown

Normantown, Yorkshire

England

Year Inducted

2005

Inducted Category

Contributor

Birthdate

Aug 30,1870

Date Deceased

Jan 06,1934

Accomplishments:

Codified 13 features of an ideal golf course
Credited with more than 400 designs or redesigns
Designs include: Augusta National, Cypress Point, Crystal Downs, Lahinch, Royal Melbourne, Pasatiempo and Yarra Yarra

Awards & Honors:

Northern California Golf Association Hall of Fame: 2017

Augusta National, Cypress Point, Royal Melbourne, Pasatiempo and Crystal Downs have two things in common – each golf course was designed by Alister MacKenzie and has a become veritable cathedral of the game.

Former United States Golf Association President Sandy Tatum called Cypress Point “the Sistine Chapel of Golf.” Since opening in 1928, Cypress Point’s par-3 16th hole has been called the most photogenic in the world. Initially, MacKenzie considered making No. 16 a do-or-die par 4, but he was convinced otherwise by U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Marion Hollins.

“The amazing thrill of driving successfully over the ocean at the 16th hole at Cypress Point,” MacKenzie said, “more than compensates for the loss of a dozen balls.”

“A good golf course grows on one like a good painting, good music, or any other artistic creation. It is not necessarily a course which appeals the first time one plays over it, but one that grows on the player the more frequently he visits it.”

Every April, the golf world descends on perhaps MacKenzie’s best known course for The Masters. The greatest player of his generation, Bobby Jones, handpicked MacKenzie to design Augusta National. When Jones was upset in the first round of the 1929 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, he played Cypress Point and marveled at the layout. When they met, the pair realized their shared affection for the Old Course at St Andrews, where Jones won 1920 British Amateur and the 1927 Open Championship. In 1923, MacKenzie was hired by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club to survey the Old Course. MacKenzie’s map hangs in the Royal and Ancient clubhouse to this day.

A wonderful partnership was formed. “MacKenzie and I managed to work as a completely sympathetic team,” Jones wrote in his book Golf is My Game. “Of course, there was never any question that he was the architect and I his advisor and consultant.”

With Jones hitting test shots at his side, MacKenzie created what many call the perfect puzzle for the masters of the game. Sadly, MacKenzie never got to see the final product of his masterpiece. He died before the club opened in 1934.

Like the artist Vincent Van Gogh, MacKenzie’s work has been better appreciated following his death. Royal Melbourne in Australia has been called the best course south of the equator and hosted Presidents Cup competitions in 1998 and 2011.

Fact

Alister MacKenzie developed the groundbreaking camouflage techniques employed by the British military during WWI.

MacKenzie’s book published in 1920, Golf Architecture, was the first to present and explain the fundamentals of golf course design. MacKenzie combined modest golf holes with more heroic challenges, always allowing room for the lesser player to enjoy the game.

MacKenzie’s forte was his greens. He refrained from flattening natural undulations and contrived to create artificial undulations that were “indistinguishable from nature.” MacKenzie practiced before the era of bulldozers, which left him little capacity to force golf holes where they didn’t belong. His approach to providing fair and strategic golf without disrupting the site is a model for golf course design that lasts to this day.

Originally a surgeon in England, MacKenzie served in the Boer War and World War I. MacKenzie abandoned medicine and joined H.S. Colt, the first architect to devote a career solely to designing golf courses, and began working in the British Isles. His greatest work was to come after he immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1920s. By the end of his career, MacKenzie had laid out some 400 golf courses.

MacKenzie died of heart failure on January 6, 1934 in Santa Cruz, Calif. His ashes were spread over the Pasatiempo golf course. He left behind a wonderful legacy of golf architecture. During his final years, he wrote The Spirit of St Andrews, and it included a foreword by Jones. It was never published during MacKenzie’s lifetime, but a copy was found by his step-grandson and was published in 1995. It gave those who admire his work one last treasure from a man whose golf courses will be treasured for generations to come.

Alister MacKenzie was originally inducted under the Lifetime Achievement category.