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Tom Doak
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Tom Doak is a golf course architect. He currently has 4 courses ranked among the top 100 in the world according to Golf Magazine
Golf Magazine
Golf Magazine is a monthly golf magazine owned by Time Inc.. It was started in 1960 by Universal Publishing and Distributing, who sold it to Times Mirror in 1972. Time Inc. acquired it in 2000. It was the world's most widely read golf publication from August 2006 to January 2007. The magazine is...

's "Top 100 Courses in the World" list, including Pacific Dunes in Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

, Ballyneal in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 http://www.ballyneal.com, Barnbougle Dunes
Barnbougle Dunes
Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links is a golf course located near the seaside village of Bridport in Tasmania's North-East. The 18 hole championship layout was designed by well known course architects Tom Doak and Mike Clayton, and is set among spectacular sand dunes overlooking Bass Strait...

 in Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

  and Cape Kidnappers
Cape Kidnappers
Cape Kidnappers is a headland at the southeastern extremity of Hawke Bay on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. It is located 20 kilometres southeast of the city of Napier...

 in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. Doak currently resides in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

.

He was a student of golf course designer Pete Dye
Pete Dye
Paul B. "Pete" Dye is a world-renowned golf course designer and a member of a famous family of course designers. He is married to fellow designer and former amateur champion Alice Dye.-Early life:Pete Dye was born in Urbana, Ohio...

, although perhaps his greatest influence comes from Alister MacKenzie
Alister MacKenzie
Dr. Alister MacKenzie was an internationally renowned, British golf course architect whose course designs, on three different continents, are consistently ranked among the finest golf courses in the world...

 (whom Doak wrote a book about), designer of Cypress Point, Royal Melbourne, and consultant to Bobby Jones
Bobby Jones (golfer)
Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones Jr. was an American amateur golfer, and a lawyer by profession. Jones was the most successful amateur golfer ever to compete on a national and international level...

 at Augusta National. In 2007, Doak restored Alister MacKenzie's home course, Pasatiempo, a Golf Magazine Top 100 course located in Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...

.

Early on in his career, before his recent acknowledgments, he was known for his sharp criticisms of other golf course designers in the book The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses (now out of print).

Education

Doak attended Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 where he studied Design and Landscape Architecture. After graduating Cornell, he won the Dreer Award from the Department of Floraculture and Horticulture. He used the Dreer Award to travel to Great Britain and Ireland, between 1982 and 1983, to study their best golf courses. He caddied at St. Andrews during the summer of 1982.

Design philosophy

Doak has become known as a "minimalist" designer. Minimalism being a school of golf design which, put simplistically, philosophy focuses on concentrating design of a golf hole (or routing) around the natural features of the land. His most successful courses have been built on sand dunes, taking advantage of the sandy soil for drainage also allowing for the reuse of native elements.

Doak credits most of his accomplishments and success to Pete Dye. Doak worked with Dye to learn how to construct golf courses during graduate school. Doak was exposed to several different schools of design on multiple continents in a variety of conditions. Dye taught him how to run a bulldozer allowing for Doak to think in three dimensions and how to use the materials around him.

Books

Doak has written 4 books about Golf Course Design. His books include:
  • The Anatomy of a Golf Course ISBN 978-1580800716 (1999).
  • The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses ISBN 978-1886947092 (1996)
  • The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie ISBN 978-1585360185 (2001) by Tom Doak, James S. Scott, Raymund M. Haddock, Ray Haddock, and James Scott
  • The Making of Pacific Dunes (yet to be published)

Public and resort courses


Private courses


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
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