The company was hit by a very heavy blow in late 2012 when founding partner Robin Nelson passed away after a long battle with ALS. Partners Neil Haworth and Brett Mogg decided to carry on with the business and to best preserve Robin’s legacy they have kept the Nelson & Haworth name intact.

, Senior Partner in the Nelson & Haworth design firm, died after a long illness with motor neurone disease aged 61 in 2012. He’s survived by his wife Aniko and daughters Briana and Taylour.

As a young man, he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and joined the design firm of Robert Muir Graves in 1973, where he remained for three years before teaming up with 

 at Golfplan to supervise construction on golf course projects in Asia like the Tanah Merah Country Club Garden course in Singapore.

In 1982, he joined Belt Collins and Associates, a large landscape design company based in Hawaii, setting up a golf course division that became Nelson & Wright in 1987, working alongside design partner Rodney Wright until he left to form his own independent company (Wright Golf Design) in 1996.

Robin helped transform the golfing landscape of Hawaii, becoming its most prolific golf course designer with many well-respected resort layouts such as Mauna Lani and lots of other lesser-known gems to his name.

 attended McGill University for a couple of years then studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph outside Toronto, where he graduated in 1986. He worked for a short time with Graham Cooke before leaving for Singapore in 1990 to set up the Asian office of what was then the firm of Nelson & Wright, part of the Belt Collins group of companies.

At the start of the new millennium, Neil, Robin and Brett acquired the Belt Collins interest in the design firm that then became Nelson & Haworth. For many years Neil looked after operations in Asia, and at one time it was reckoned nearly 10% of all the courses in China were Nelson & Haworth designs.

Neil has been a full member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects since 1999. After residing in Shanghai since 2002, he returned to Canada in 2013, leaving David Young to look after local golfing interests from his base in Hong Kong.

 started out in his design career as a landscape architect, working mainly in resort master planning and design for Belt-Collins in Sydney. He joined up with Robin Nelson and Neil Haworth as a golf course architect in 1992, based in Singapore, becoming a director in the company five years later.

Brett has designed courses all over Asia, from China to Pakistan, and he specializes in modern layouts like Suzhou Sun Island, in China as well as renovations and remodelling, such as the revered Royal Selangor Golf Club in Kuala Lumpur.

Brett became a full member of the Australian Society of Golf Course Architects in 1999. After more than twenty years living in Singapore, he returned to his home city of Brisbane in 2013.

The vast majority of the company’s American output is located in Hawaii but there are a few exceptions to that general rule, including the Creek course at Moose Run in Anchorage, Alaska; Casa Linda Oaks Golf Course in Jacksonville, Florida; and Ravenwood Golf Club in Rochester, New York.

In southeast Asia, the firm has produced around twenty layouts in half a dozen countries but it’s probably best known for the work conducted in Malaysia, where it designed both the courses at Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club in the early 1990s then renovated the Old and New layouts at Royal Selangor Golf Club in the new millennium.

Further afield, there have been new build projects completed at Gunsan Country Club in South Korea (which features a par 7 hole at the 3rd) and the Defense Raya Golf Resort in the Punjab region of Pakistan. In Mumbai, India, the Bombay Presidency course was renovated in 2009, as was the Rouville course at La Vallée du Richelieu in Montreal, Canada three years later.

Around fifty Chinese commissions have been carried out in China, the most high profile of which is the 18-hole layout at Sheshen International Golf Club, host venue to the WGC-HSBC Champions tournament ever since 2005, except for one edition when the event moved to Mission Hills Shenzhen in 2012.

“What transforms a great design vision into a great golf course is our commitment to bring our experience to the site as often as possible. Critical to the process is communication between owner, architect and construction supervisors." Nelson & Haworth

Nelson & Haworth

At the start of the new millennium, Robin Nelson, Neil Haworth and Brett Mogg acquired the Belt Collins interest in the design firm that then became Nelson & Haworth.

Bali

Indonesia Open

Indonesia

Bali Golf & Country Club closed in 2012 for a major renovation, twenty years after it first opened for play. New owners, Narendra Interpacific, wanted to develop hotel and accommodation on the property so the original course architects, Nelson & Haworth, were brought back in to completely renovate the layout.

To make room for the new hotel and villas the clubhouse was moved further inland and holes one to ten were repositioned. The 17th was changed from a par four to a par three and the 18th hole was also reconstructed.

Sand was mined on site to rebuild tees, greens and fairways, cutting down the cost of shipping this material in from elsewhere. All the lakes were relined and interconnected and new deep wells were drilled to maximise the usage of water on the course.

The final touches were then applied, as described by Neil Haworth: “Waste areas and bunker complexes were made more dramatic, green surface contours were softened to make putting fairer and trees were removed to open up views of the South China Sea and Mount Agung.”

The outward half is routed through hills with lush tropical vegetation flanking the fairways. Stone walls have also been incorporated into the design to terrace the fairways and tee boxes, affording golfers the sensation of traversing the type of rice field landscape that’s so typical of the Bali countryside.

The back nine is laid out on more level terrain, holes weaving around coconut trees and lakes. The 17th, one of the signature holes on the course, is a dangerous par three to encounter so late in the round as stray tee shots to its island green will be severely punished, potentially ruining a good score.

Bali National

New Kuta

Asia

Bali Golf & Country Club closed in 2012 for a major renovation, twenty years after it first opened for play. New owners, Narendra Interpacific, reopened the golfing facility in 2014 as the rebranded Bali National Golf Club.