 grew up in Davidson County, North Carolina, just thirty miles south of Winston-Salem, where he spent his college years playing golf at Old Town Club, the home course for Wake Forest. After graduating in 1968 he started his career in golf architecture working on course construction for 

“In the mid-Seventies, Coore helped build Waterwood National GC in Texas (a Roy Dye design) and then worked as an assistant to its course superintendent Gary Grandstaff.” Wrote Geoffrey Cornish and Ron Whitten in 

. “When Grandstaff joined Dye on a Mexican project, Coore took over as superintendent, and over the next several years rebuilt and modified most holes at Waterwood [now closed]. In the early 1980s Bill Coore spent two years designing and building his first solo layout. The result, Rockport (Texas) CC, so impressed popular PGA Tour golfer (and avid course design historian) Ben Crenshaw that Crenshaw asked Coore to join him in a golf design partnership.”

Prior to the 1986 establishment of the firm of Coore and Crenshaw Inc., Coore’s most prominent solo design lies to the north of Bordeaux at Golf du Médoc. Opened in 1989, the Châteaux course was Coore’s third solo design and his first and only European project.

 grew up in Austin and was first introduced to golf by his father, Charlie, at Austin Country Club where – as a six-year-old – he rode in a cart alongside his dad. He became fascinated by golf course architecture at age sixteen after seeing The Country Club in Brookline. He played golf at Austin High School and the University of Texas where he went on to win three NCAA collegiate championships before turning professional in 1973.

After a number of years refining his technique under the tutelage of Harvey Penick, “Gentle Ben” soon became one of the world’s best putters. His smooth stoke served him well, claiming his first of two Green Jackets on the slippery greens of Augusta National in 1984. Crenshaw managed to avoid taking a three-putt during the 1995 Masters tournament, which he won by one stroke from Davis Love III.

Crenshaw’s nineteen PGA Tour wins over three decades helped him to gain a deep appreciation of golf’s nuances. The Tour also took him on a journey around the world’s best golf courses where he analysed design and construction techniques. In 1982, he put his skills into practice as player consultant at TPC Las Colinas working with Byron Nelson and architect Jay Morrish. Ben Crenshaw was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002, presented by President George H.W. Bush.

 Inc. was established in 1986, “based upon the shared philosophy that traditional, strategic golf is the most rewarding”. But it would take another five years before the partnership made a significant architectural impact when the Plantation course at Kapalua burst onto the scene in 1991.

"Their early years were spent handling a few remodeling jobs and planning several designs on select sites that, for a variety of reasons, stopped during one stage of construction or another," wrote Geoffrey Cornish and Ron Whitten in 

. “Undaunted, Coore and Crenshaw persisted in doing it the old-fashioned way, keeping a team of personally trained graders and shapers on call, designing in the field with very few formal drawings, and emulating the early American "bump-and-roll" designs of 

. At the close of the decade of the eighties, Coore and Crenshaw's work had attracted both admiration and debate."

Since then, the design partnership has built a small but impressive portfolio of highly ranked courses, including: Sand Hills (1995), Friar’s Head (2002), Old Sandwich (2004), Colorado (2006), Streamsong Red (2013) and Cabot Cliffs (2016). Their shared love of classical architecture and their inspirational creations has created demand on their services both in terms of new designs and restorations. Recent projects at Sand Valley and Ozarks National continue to prove the old-fashioned “Golden Age” of golf architecture is still alive and well.

by Keith Cutten, the author sums up the Coore and Crenshaw partnership thus: “Through their approach, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, along with architect 

, are credited with founding the current ‘minimalist’ movement in golf course architecture. Before their partnership, Bill Coore completed eight projects and Ben Crenshaw completed one solo work. However, their best efforts have emerged when projects are completed together."

by Bobby Jones and Ben Crenshaw published in 1998.


A Feel For the Game: To Brookline and Back

 by Ben Crenshaw and Melanie Hauser published in 2001.

 by Ben Crenshaw and Carl Jackson published in 2013.

World Golf Hall of Fame – Class of 2002: As part of the Coore & Crenshaw golf course architecture team, Crenshaw has helped design a slew of highly ranked courses. Tom Doak: “Working alongside Bill at Streamsong was one of my most fun experiences in design.”

Coore & Crenshaw

Coore and Crenshaw Inc. was established in 1986, but five years passed before the partnership made a real architectural impact when the Plantation course at Kapalua burst onto the scene in 1991.

Willie Park Jr. was born in 1864 in Musselburgh, the second of four sons belonging to (Old) Willie Park, the four-time Open Champion. Young Willie would win the Open twice himself, becoming one of five Musselburgh golfers to do so. In fact, of the first twenty-nine Opens played, eleven were won by men from the Honest Toun.

When he turned sixteen, Willie served under his uncle Mungo Park (the 1874 Open Champion) at Tyneside Golf Club in Northumberland, acting as assistant greenkeeper and club professional. His father, Willie Park Senior, was asked to design a course at Innerleithen in the Borders in 1886 but was unable to do so, allowing his son Willie Junior to step in and do the work on his behalf. He took over as greenkeeper from Mungo when he moved to Alnmouth in 1892 but he returned to his father and the family business in Musselburgh soon after.

From now on, his career followed three different paths simultaneously.

His playing career blossomed to the extent that he would win the Open twice in three years (1887 at Prestwick and 1889 at Musselburgh) and his golf course design business also flourished, with Willie Jr. laying out new 9-hole courses or revising and lengthening others.

Back in Musselburgh, Willie transformed his father’s club and ball making business into a thriving small factory, employing forty people in the workshop and twenty in retail branches in Edinburgh, Manchester and London.

He invented a number of new clubs, such as a lofter, a mashie cleek and a bulger. He also patented a diamond design for the cover of a gutta percha ball in 1894 and “The Royal” ball that he sold had a unique cover of small hexagonal facets.

Within the British Isles, Willie Park Jr. is probably best known for laying out the original course at Sunningdale and for his involvement with the groundbreaking project at Huntercombe, even though the failure of a proposed real estate element with this development was something of a financial disaster for him.

There’s no doubt that Willie Park Jr. was a main figure in the spread of golf to the rest of the world. He travelled overseas occasionally on assignments in Austria, Belgium, France and Ireland but it’s North America where he really made his mark, having moved there after the Great War.

Willie Park Junior – The man who took Golf to the World

, the author writes about Willie Park Jr. working on the other side of the Atlantic: “With a base in Montreal, and offices in New York and Toronto, he threw himself into course construction on a big scale... involved with major suppliers and contractors in building courses.”

The author notes 60 courses across sixteen US states and five Canadian provinces that are attributed to Willie Park Jr. though the list may be incomplete and a few of the original layouts have not survived. When added to more than 100 courses that he designed closer to home in the early part of his career, it’s a phenomenal body of work.

 by Keith Cutten the author states: “In 1901, when both Sunningdale (Old) and Huntercombe opened to rave reviews, Willie Park Jr significantly elevated the standard for inland golf course architecture in Britain. With these works, located west of London, Park had broken new ground. At Sunningdale, Park became one of the first to select a site densely covered with brush because of the material underneath.

Indeed, Park understood that sand was a common thread of all great courses; and it was this element, as a feature, that he exploited when exploring golfing possibilities in the area which would be famously known as the ‘heathlands of England. At Huntercombe, a course laid out over an ancient, turf-established common, Park again broke the mould by crafting large greens, supported by by rolling fairway contours, plus boldly constructed hazards.

Contrasting the previous benchmark for inland British courses, everything appeared to be natural. These two projects secured Park’s success, enabling him to become one of the first full-time golf course architects.”

Geoff Cornish and Ron Whitten sum up his contribution to golf design in

 called him the ‘doyen’ of course architects and credited him with setting the standards adhered to by the countless designers who followed. Willie Park Jr. was surely one of the virtuoso golf architects.”

It’s said that Willie Park Jr. worked himself to death. In 1924, he suffered some sort of a nervous breakdown and his brother Mungo closed down his business operations in North America and took Willie back to Musselburgh. Sadly, he died the following year in an Edinburgh hospital, aged sixty-one.


 (1896) by Willie Park Jr. is reckoned to be the first book about golf written by a professional player. Apart from a number of chapters covering how to play the game, chapter ten (Laying Out and Keeping Golf-Links) is one of the earliest written descriptions about golf course architecture.

Willie Park Junior – The Man who took Golf to the World

World Golf Hall of Fame – Class of 2013: Willie Park Jr. was one of golf’s first true Renaissance men – two-time Open champion, golf equipment maker, golf writer and one of the world’s best golf course architects… “A man who can putt is a match for anyone.”

Willie Park Jr.

​Willie Park Jr. was born in Musselburgh, the second of four sons of (Old) Willie Park, four-time Open Champion. Young Willie won the Open twice himself, becoming one of five Musselburgh men to do so.

New York

Maidstone is routed across the Gardiner Peninsula, which is one of the finest parcels of golfing ground in the world. The Maidstone Club dates back to 1891 and we think William Tucker originally designed a basic nine-hole course. But Maidstone really came of age in the Roaring Twenties when new sandy land became available and the course was extended to 18 holes.

Willie Park Junior was the architect responsible for refashioning Maidstone and it’s a masterpiece, which is probably Park’s finest architectural ensemble. The holes to the southern end of the peninsula are ringed around by dunes, which protect the course from the Atlantic Ocean beyond. It’s a magical and almost theatrical setting.

The ground at Maidstone is often firm and fast, which can turn the 6,400-yard layout into a relatively short course. But the greens are small and tough to find and they too are firm and fast. Only the best players will wrestle par from Maidstone’s tight grip.

If you are fortunate enough to receive an invite to play Maidstone, we advise you accept. You will enjoy the game on a beautifully conditioned course which we are sure would please Willie Park Jnr if he was alive today, especially following the 2012 Coore & Crenshaw restoration, which has returned the course to its former glory. It's sheer delight.

Darius Oliver, in this edited extract from the book 

, writes: “Willie Park passed away shortly after Maidstone opened, and sadly he never saw the finished product. His brother John was responsible for building the course and little has changed since he had it ready for play in 1924.

While Park gets great credit for his design, the club deserves equal praise for the firm and bouncy manner in which fairways and greens are maintained. This traditional old layout is terrific fun to play and will particularly delight passionate enthusiast of Golden Age design.”

Maidstone

The Creek

North America

The course at The Maidstone Club was routed by Willie Park Junior across the Gardiner Peninsula, which is one of the finest parcels of golfing ground in the world.