“A.W. Tillinghast, known in his day as “Tillie the Terror”, was as outstanding golf architect, and also one of the most colorful characters in the history of golf,” wrote Geoff Cornish and Ron Whitten in 

. “The only child of a wealthy Philadelphia couple, Tillinghast was a spoiled, pampered youth. He ran with a local gang of boys – called The Kelly Street Gang – who seemed bent on engaging in the most scandalous behaviour that could be attempted in the late 1890s.

At the age of 20, Tillinghast abruptly left the band of ruffians, joined a more refined social circle and married a lovely young woman named Lillian. He then worked hard to develop an aristocratic image. He took on the trappings of a connoisseur and raconteur, collected beautiful pieces of furniture, china and art, and wrote self-published novels full of maudlin prose. He lived the life of a sportsman, dabbling in cricket, billiards, polo and bridge.”

Albert’s father took him to St Andrews in 1896 and introduced him to 

. His passion for the game developed rapidly following a number of lessons from the old master and four-time Open Champion. Tillinghast wrote later: “I got to know the old man very well indeed in succeeding years, and I spent many happy hours with him in his little sitting-room over his shop. It was there that I handled the Champion’s Belt won by his son, as Old Tom got it out reverently and his eyes filled with tears as he told me many things about his boy.”

Between 1905 and 1915, Tillinghast competed in the US Amateur Championship alongside golfing notables including Chandler Egan and 

. “In 1906, at the behest of Charles Worthington (who had made a fortune with his pump company),” continue Cornish and Whitten, “Tillinghast somewhat audaciously laid out a golf course on the Worthington family’s farm at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania.” Tillinghast’s inaugural design (once known as Poxono Country Club) is still accessible for public play (for a very modest green fee) at The Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort, which is set on an island in the middle of the Delaware River.

 continue: “It was about the first honest work Tillie had ever done in his life, and he found that he not only enjoyed it, but also that he was good at it. He formed a design and construction firm that immediately became a success, and Tillinghast was a millionaire from his own efforts by the mid-1920s.

He honed his aristocratic image even further during his years as a golf designer. From his home in Harrington Park, N.J., Tillie routinely rode a chauffeured limousine to his office in midtown Manhattan. Not one to slave over working drawings and detailed plans, Tillie preferred to tromp through the thick brush of a course site – always dressed in the garb of a Wall Street banker – and lay out the course with his perceptive eye and uncanny intuition. During course construction he would routinely appear in a three-piece-suit, plant a shooting stick in the shade, settle his bulk on it, sip from a flask and shout directions all day long to laborers.”

During an illustrious career, Tillinghast was involved with more than 250 golf course designs in the USA. Fifty major championships have been staged on twenty-four of his different designs, including Winged Foot and Baltusrol.

The Great Depression brought an abrupt end to Tillinghast’s aristocratic lifestyle and ill-fated investments almost bankrupted him. He worked for the PGA of America for a few years advising clubs on course updates, but the economic climate proved too challenging. He moved to Beverly Hills and opened an antique shop. “His own family’s furniture and art collections formed most of the stock.” Commented Cornish and Whitten. “When this venture failed, so did his health. He moved in with a daughter in Toledo, Ohio, where he died shortly after, nearly forgotten by the golfing world.”

Tillinghast was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2015, and according to their facts, “Tillinghast’s Brook Hollow Golf Course in Dallas, TX, built in 1921, was the first course to have complete fairway irrigation.” Tillie is quoted as follows: “A round of golf should present 18 inspirations. Every hole must have individuality.”

 by Geoff Cornish and Ron Whitten states Tillinghast; “also coined the word “birdie” to describe a hole shot in one less stroke than par.”


“A green has features like a human face. Of course, many are no more impressive than the vacant, cow-like expression of some people, but then again there are some with rugged profiles which loom head and shoulders above the common herd.”

Tom Weiskopf, talking about the course at San Francisco, said: “the course is unquestionably in my Top 10 golfing experiences in the world. I am still amazed why I cannot come up with anything close in design to what exists aesthetically and strategically on this marvellous piece of property. I still marvel at the brilliance of Tillinghast.”

 by Keith Cutten: “As a prolific writer on the subject of golf and course architecture, Tillinghast, ultimately, was considered more than just a golf course designer. Tilly’s first-known major writing effort was his February 1901 article for 

magazine, titled ‘St Andrews’. Between 1901 and 1940, Tilly published numerous articles in 

The American Golfer, Country Life and Golf Illustrated. 

In June 1933, Tillinghast was named Editor of 

; while from 1935 to 1937 he frequently had articles published in 

 magazine: “A.W. Tillinghast is remembered as a worthy contributor to the Golden Age. However, there can be little doubt that, had he been designing in any other era, his reputation and recognition would have been far higher. With classic courses popping up seemingly every year, to this day unsurpassed in their ability to test the best, the quality of his design has been somewhat lost in the crowd.

Taken in isolation, however, his work stands up against any architect in terms of quality, quantity, innovation, maintenance and just about any yardstick you want to use. However, his contribution runs deeper. Like no designer before him, Tillinghast grasped that through thoughtful design, you could build a single golf hole that challenged the elite player while remaining playable for the hacker.

While it is true that some of his most famed courses veered towards the former, the innate options and versatility of his approach led to courses that were the direct prototypes of for the so-called ‘strategic’ school of golf course design, a philosophy that has pretty much dominated the game ever since.”

Tillie (or should it be Tilly?) published a number of books, including a humorous title in 1915, 

Cobble Valley Golf Yarns and Other Sketches

. He also produced three volumes of collected articles and the first volume, 

, chronicles more than one hundred essays on golf course architecture.

A.W. Tillinghast: Creator Of Golf Courses

World Golf Hall of Fame – Class of 2015: “An original member of the PGA of America, Tillinghast laid out his first course in Shawnee-on-Delaware in 1909 at age 36. His Brook Hollow Golf Course in Dallas, TX, built in 1921, is the first course to have complete fairway irrigation.”

A. W. Tillinghast

A.W. Tillinghast’s father took him to St Andrews in 1896 and introduced him to Old Tom Morris. His golfing passion developed rapidly following lessons from the old master and four-time Open Champion.

Gil Hanse attended secondary school at Hunter Tannersville High school in Tannersville, New York before gaining his undergraduate degree from the University of Denver. Hanse then earned a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University in 1989.

During his studies at Cornell, Hanse was the recipient of the William Frederick Dreer Award – the same horticultural award that 

 received five years earlier – which allowed him to spend a year overseas with 

's practice, studying the history of golf course architecture.

He spent a short time working with Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design (Hanse was Doak's first employee) before founding Hanse Golf Course Design in 1993. His long term design partner Jim Wagner joined the firm two years later. Along with Tom Doak, 

, Gil Hanse is regarded as one of the most influential “minimalist” golf course architects of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

According to his personal portrait on the ASGCA website, Hanse’s company is “based on the principles of creating a small firm that takes a personal interest in the design and construction of each project. The company's courses are simple and elegant in appearance, yet sophisticated in strategy and interest.”

Hanse quickly established himself as a top restoration specialist, with a portfolio of work during the 1990s that included reworking 

A big break for Hanse came at the end of the 1990s, when he was appointed to design a new 18-hole layout for Crail Golfing Society in Fife, Scotland. There’s no doubt that this commission raised his stature significantly as the Home of Golf hasn’t had too many American architects design courses on its hallowed links turf down the years.

Restoration work for Hanse continued into the new millennium at golf clubs in several other American states, such as Egan’s Waverly in Oregon, Ross’s Oakland Hills in Michigan, 

’s Southern Hills in Oklahoma and Ross’s Aronimink in Pennsylvania.

The architect also conducted a well-regarded renovation of the course at TPC Boston in 2005 which was liked by playing professionals and armchair golfers watching what was then called the Deutsche Bank Championship on television.

More recent high profile renovation work has come the way of Hanse. In Florida, he upgraded the three courses – Blue Monster, Golden Palm and Red Tiger – for Donald Trump at Doral and at Pinehurst in North Carolina he reworked the No. 4 course (co-host along with No.2 for the 2019 US Amateur Championship) to remove more than twenty five pot bunkers and replace them with sprawling, sandy native areas that tie-in seamlessly with their surroundings.

Of course, Hanse is no stranger to working on projects in the public glare, having been chosen to fashion the golf course for the 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil. He’s also added a third course, the Black, to the highly regarded Streamsong Resort in Florida and he’s now lined up to design the next 18-hole layout that will grace Mike Keiser’s Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon.

Outside America, Hanse has been involved in a number of interesting golf developments. He began an ongoing restoration plan for Tokyo Golf Club in 2008 before teaming up with Mark Parsinen in Scotland the following year to create the Castle Stuart course near Inverness and he’s since laid out the new course at Trump International Golf Club Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2017.

He’s recently finished his first Asian course at Ballyshear in Bangkok and completed his first course in Continental Europe at Les Bordes in France. There’s also ongoing renovation work at Royal Sydney in Australia and Narin & Portnoo in Ireland amongst many other commissions that will keep Jim Wagner and the Caveman Construction company gainfully employed for the foreseeable future. There’s also ongoing renovation work at Royal Sydney in Australia and Narin & Portnoo in Ireland so there are plenty of commissions in the pipeline to keep Jim Wagner and his Caveman Construction company gainfully employed for the foreseeable future.

This edited excerpt is from a short Gil Hanse article entitled “Designing in the Field” which was published in the book 

“There appears to be no small movement afoot to embrace the ideals, principles and characteristics of the golf course architects from the Golden Age of design. We read so much about them and their approaches, and so many architects have adroitly rehearsed all of the catch phrases that can be associated with these magnificent men.

However, as we celebrate their accomplishments, we drift farther and farther from the true heart and soul of their work. We profess to hold the ideals of these architects in our hearts; however, when it comes to practicing these ideals there are only a handful of architects who truly do so.

It is my belief that to do justice to the ideals of men like Macdonald, Tillinghast, Flynn, and MacKenzie, the architect must concentrate on designing in the field. It is only then that the true nature of the golf course site will make itself evident to the designer.

Through their utilization of natural features and their presence on site, the masters created golf holes that were exciting, challenging, and certainly innovative. By being on site for an extended period of time, the architect can mould the land to accomplish whatever effect he desires.

Of course, there are practicalities which need to be addressed like budgets and plans for the golf course. I am not suggesting that designers simply be allowed to wing it in the field. However, I do believe firmly that through constant observation, any architect would be more creative with his design, adding subtle touches that would greatly enhance the interest of the golf course.

By designing in the field the architect is in control of the outcome. The results are not an interpretation of his work, but rather a literal representation of his ideas and creativity. By getting their hands back onto projects, I believe we could again see a renaissance in the beauty, character, and natural splendour of golf courses.

We would also see a dramatic increase in the subtleties and nuances that have made the brilliant designs of the Golden Age so charming, strategic, and above all, interesting to play.”

“During the Rio interview, as Amy Alcott, environmentalist Owen Larkin and I were making our case for why we deserved the project, I noticed rather glumly that the name card on the table stated my name as “Gil Hansen.” I’m quite sure no one on the panel noticed the mistake. When the interview was over, I tucked the card into my briefcase and took it home, where it resides in my office. My wife and kids had it framed and point to it when they feel I’m in jeopardy of my head getting too big.”


Gil Hanse spent a short time working with Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design before founding Hanse Golf Course Design in 1993. Along with Tom Doak, Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw, Hanse is regarded as one of the most influential “minimalist” golf course architects of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Gil Hanse

Hanse earned a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University in 1989, achieving the William Frederick Dreer Award, which allowed him to spend a year overseas with Hawtree Ltd.

New York

Walker Cup

PGA Championship

U.S. Open

U.S. Amateur

The West and East courses at Winged Foot Golf Club are the work of A.W. Tillinghast, one of America’s greatest golf course designers, and the West is Tilly’s finest creation.

In a similar vein to many of the USA’s finest courses, you’ll need an invite to play here but persevere, because it’s worth the effort. The West is one of the nation's most demanding layouts, which is routed across fairly ordinary but heavily wooded meadowland.

A few members of the New York Athletic Club founded Winged Foot in 1923 and the name originated from the athletic club’s emblem and now Winged Foot is synonymous with a everything American and it’s a true classic. Tillinghast has certainly created a serious golf course with no weak holes.

Expect to use every club in the bag, Winged Foot's West possesses a number of severe par fours, ten of which stretch out well beyond 400 yards. The closing six holes are brutal, starting with the 13th, a 210-yard par three and followed by five par fours all measuring in excess of 400 yards. The closing hole is perhaps the finest finishing hole in the USA and the 10th hole is one of the best par threes in the world.

 Tom Doak commented as follows: “There is nothing unique about the contour or the scenery; it seems like you ought to be able to build a course just like it on any good parkland site, yet no one has. It’s a clay soil counterpart to Pinehurst #2: the architecture from fifty yards in and including the greens is amazing, although the topography isn’t.”


During 2016-2017 Gil Hanse (Tom Doak's first employee) restored the West course in readiness for the club’s hosting of the 2020 US Open, which Bryson DeChambeau won comfortably, securing his maiden major title.

Winged Foot (West)

The Creek

North America

The West course at Winged Foot Golf Club is the work of A.W. Tillinghast, one of America’s greatest golf course designers, and this is Tilly’s finest creation.