Architect Tom Doak’s take on minimalism

What is minimalism in golf course architecture, anyway? 

Several modern designers are frequently lumped into the same category of design under that stylistic banner, despite their sometimes wildly different products. Minimalism has become almost a catch-all for courses built by the likes of popular designers such as Tom Doak, David McLay Kidd, Gil Hanse, the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and several others. 

The term is meant to contrast with the golf architects who came directly before them, designers who relied on heavy equipment and millions of cubic yards of earth moving to create new layouts. Greens would be pushed high above surrounding grade, hazards predominated and fairways would be sculpted by man. Think mounds – sometimes lots of mounds. Many of the courses built since the 1960s tried to create something out of nothing, or to greatly enhance what already lay waiting on the ground. 

Minimalists, to the contrary, look for natural landforms to accent their designs, allowing and usually encouraging the ground to influence the path of the ball after it lands. Golf balls are round, after all, and they’ll roll if the architects and course conditions allow.

But is it fair to lump all of a designer’s work into one such category? Any of the top architects have laid down many courses that exude their own character. It’s not a copy-and-paste procedure. Is it appropriate to use the same term – minimalism – to describe courses of wildly differing routings and tone in various regions of the globe? 

Doak, for one, is fine with it. 

Check out our recent rater’s notebooks for several Tom Doak-designed courses and a restoration:

The meaning of minimalism

Tom Doak at Cabot Highlands, formerly known as Castle Stuart, in Scotland (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)

“The minimalist thing, I didn’t come up with that term originally, but I sort of like it from the standpoint of trying to use what we are given to work with as much as possible and kind of minimize the amount of artificial stuff that we have to do,” said the man behind top designs such as Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Ballyneal in Colorado and Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania, among dozens of others. His recent work includes the new Pinehurst No. 10 in North Carolina plus the short and fascinating Sedge Valley at Sand Valley in Wisconsin.

For Doak, it’s all about a philosophy. He lets the ground dictate how the game will be played on any given site instead of…