Geoffrey S. Cornish (1914–2012)

Although now severely out of date, this book is a great reference for golf courses and their designers pre-1987. The book has three distinct parts: Part One is a history of golf course design, from its origins in Scotland to its exportation to the United States and its explosion to every corner of the globe; Part Two is a list of hundreds of golf course architects with short biographies and listings of completed courses; Part Three is a list of over 10,000 international courses with name, location and architect. The first part does a great job of highlighting the merits of good design and the efforts of those producing some good tracts, something much needed at the time; the authors argue that the appreciation of good courses helped to shape the game into what it is today, making it more popular along the way. The second and third parts work together to give golfers of even lackluster courses a sense of history about where they have played. I was surprised to find the home course for the high school team I played on, as well as the course where I caddied for many years. One of my favorite courses from those years, Pine Meadow in Mundelein, is in the book, having won Golf Digest's Best New Public Course award the year before the 1987 edition of the book was published. It's great to learn, all these years later (I picked up this book a couple months ago), about a course that shaped my appreciation of good golf course design.… (más)