Ron Kirby went to Washington Elementary and Briscoe Junior High, graduating from Beverly High School in 1950. He then went to turf school at the University of Massachusetts on a Francis Ouimet Caddy Scholarship, attending Saturday morning art classes at Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He left his studies due to a change in his draft status classification, joining the Coast Guard in 1951.

Ron returned to complete his schooling for an Associate Degree in Agronomy at UMass, Stockbridge Turf College in 1957 then looked for greenkeeping positions in New England, securing his first job at Petersham Country Club in Massachusetts. Winters were spent in Florida, where he successfully interviewed for the post of head greenkeeper at Bahamas Country Club in the winter of 1959.

His three years in the Bahamas saw him help renovate the course at his home club and work with Dick Wilson’s design team on the construction of an 18-hole resort course across the bay from Nassau on Paradise Island for the Ocean Club.

In 1963, Ron became a design associate with Robert Trent Jones, assisting the old master with a number of assignments in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. Based in Yorkshire for seven years, Ron worked on projects in England, Italy, Switzerland and Morocco before deciding to branch out on his own.

Establishing an Atlanta office in 1970, Ron teamed up with Arthur Davis and Gary Player: Arthur produced the drawings and specifications, Ron developed clients and supervised construction and Gary promoted the team.

Arthur left after two years but Denis Griffiths was already on board as an associate. Projects were undertaken in the USA and further afield in the Philippines, South Africa and Spain. Office staff included people like Rodney Wright and Clyde Johnston.

Ron then joined Nicklaus Design, relocating to Monaco in 1986. Describing this opportunity as “attending a finishing school in golf design,” the architect worked on projects such as La Moraleja in Madrid, Gut Altentann in Salzburg and La Robinie in Milan.

Moving to London in 1989 to team up with the likes of Russell Talley and Dick Bouts, Ron worked on courses at the London Club, Gleneagles and Paris International. 

Ron retired from the Nicklaus organization in 1992 and was asked by the famous Irish amateur player Joe Carr to help him with what became one of his most high-profile projects at Old Head in Kinsale, fashioning an 18-hole layout on a spectacular headland with many of the holes routed around the edge of the cliff tops. He spent five years living there while the course was developed.

During the early years of the new millennium, Ron was retained by a number of firms as a special consultant and where he was attached to the design practice of his son-in-law Gene Bates. In more recent times, Ron oversaw the rebuilding of the Apes Hill course in Barbados when Roddy Carr, Joe’s son, got him involved in the project (soon after he’d renovated the layout at Barbados Country Club).

One of Ron’s more interesting one-off projects in recent times was the co-design of a one-hole course at a luxury 4-bedroomed chalet called San Lorenzo Mountain Lodge in the Italian region of South Tyrol.

Located at an altitude of 1,200 metres above sea level and overlooking three heavily wooded valleys, this spectacular “Hole in Heaven” course features nine potential pin positions, three of which are always in play from six different tee boxes.

The on-site accommodation comprises an old 16th century hunting lodge which has been transformed into a fabulous 4-bedroomed mountain retreat and ablutions are taken care of by an external whirlpool, a spa, Finnish sauna, Turkish bath and emotional shower.

“To visit the Italian Dolomites should be on everyone’s ‘bucket list,’ said Kirby, “and for a golf designer this was a wonderful opportunity to create a golf experience for players to enjoy while viewing the mountain panorama. I’m happy and proud to have San Lorenzo Golf as part of my design history.”

In 2003, Kirby was elected a “Fellow” of the American Society of Golf Course Architects for his dedicated service to his profession and his outstanding contributions to the game of golf.

Extracts

From an Irish Examiner interview in December 2012:

Ron on the skill of routing a course:

“The excitement comes in the mystery. If it’s an 18-hole project, where are you going to put them? And the fun part there is, you can’t use the first routing, meaning the way the holes circulate over the property. I love doing that. I love finding a place where I can say the course should start here and then go back this way.”

Ron on bunker strategy:

“Dick Wilson lit up my eyes about how you can use imagination. You don’t have to have a bunker left, a bunker right. He’d put two on the right and at different levels. I can do that? Of course, it makes for better strategy, makes a third dimension.”

Ron on over provision of golf courses:

“When I started there were probably 40 golf courses a year being built in America. It went from 40 to 50 to 60 and got to average about 150 golf courses a year in the 70s and by the 90s it got to 200 and went almost to 400 one year. Now you’ve got maybe four projects, it’s so bad. Four projects to share in America.

We all just overbuilt. It seemed like a good thing so everybody was going to do it and we built too many golf courses here and the reason was everybody thought they could have these property development courses. You see them now and it doesn’t work. There’s only so many players. The worse thing we did.”

Ron on the playability of golf courses:

“We made the golf courses too damn tough. You can’t play through all those nests of bunkers. Gary [Player] was the best of the bunch because he knows where to strategically place bunkers and that one bunker can be good enough.

Jack even agrees now that we made the golf courses too tough. I heard his last talk: ‘We’ve got to soften up and make them more friendly to play. What’s wrong with an easy golf course?’ Everybody’s getting older and the younger guys can’t afford to play because of the cost of maintaining all those bunkers.”

Ron on his association with Jack Nicklaus:

“I learned course routing from Trent Jones and strategy from Jack Nicklaus. Nicklaus is the finishing school of strategy. He is so intense when he gets on the course he is designing that he has been mad at me plenty of times but he's a good buddy still.”

From a Golf Course Architecture magazine edition 71 profile in January 2023:

It wasn’t just learning about turf in those days [referring to his time at the University of Massachusetts] – the young Kirby learned another skill that he has used throughout his life; drawing. To this day he continues to sketch his design ideas to get them across to shapers and construction crews.

“My grandfather was an artist, and I used to paint with him. When I was a kid, in the winters, you could get watercolour lessons at the Museum of Fine Art, so I did that. My brother and I could go and get into trouble in Boston, but I learned I could draw. I sketch what’s there, and I can then draw the green in. It’s easy for me.”

From the book We Spent Half Our Lives on the Wrong Side of the Road, Ron tells of an amusing long-distance telephone conversation he had with Imelda Marcos, wife of the Philippines President, in 1978:

Mrs Marcos: The President turns sixty in September this year.

Ron: Very nice.

Mrs Marcos: We want to build him a golf course in his home town of Laong.

Ron: Very nice.

Mrs Marcos: Can you build eighteen holes by September?

Ron: No, it’s June now.

Mrs Marcos: Can you build nine holes by September?

Ron: No, it’s not possible.

Mrs Marcos: Can you build one hole by September?

Ron: Yes

Mrs Marcos: Great! We will get nine contractors to each build one hole. When can you start?

He met his wife Sally, in 1949; they were married three years later and travelled the world together until her death in January 2020.

Ron continued working into his 90th year until illness overtook him suddenly and he passed away peacefully in August 2023 with family by his side in Copenhagen, where he'd been working on a project.

Bibliography:

We Spent Half Our Lives on the Wrong Side of the Road  (2020)