Golfers dream of playing the legendary courses of the game: St. Andrews, Augusta National, Pinehurst, Pebble Beach. And anyone who has played the royal and ancient sport is an armchair architect at heart. From alterations for their home course to visions of their very own backyard dream course, most golfers would love to test their hands at course design. What makes certain courses timeless? Unlike the venues of other popular recreational sports like tennis and racquetball, whose playing fields are bound by strict measurements that do not vary, each golf course is unique. Offering an endless topographical variety, from short to long, flat or hilly, wet or dry, every course represents a compelling blend of risks versus rewards, with decisions and challenges to test every golfer’s game and mental toughness. Combining Geoff Shackelford’s informative narrative with detailed illustrations by architect Gil Hanse, Grounds for Golf explains the fundamentals of golf course design in an understandable and entertaining style. Modern photographs, anecdotal sidebars, and witty quotations augment a course design primer that will enhance readers’ enjoyment of golf's lore while introducing the fundamentals of course design. By explaining the golf course from the ground up, Grounds for Golf will not only help readers in their understanding of the game, but will help their games themselves.

Grounds for Golf: The History and Fundamentals of Golf Course Design

Sports & Outdoors

Shackelford, Geoff

Golf

Thomas Dunne Books

A galvanizing new book from one of America's leading golf writers, The Future of Golf in America reveals how the tradition-rich sport has been kidnapped by equipment manufacturers and knowingly deregulated by its governing bodies. The author of eight previous books including The Golden Age of Golf Design and Grounds for Golf, Geoff Shackelford charges that the slumping golf industry responds to unregulated technology by lengthening and narrowing courses at great expense, even as golfers flee the sport because golf takes too long, is too difficult and too expensive. Offering new commentary and analysis, along with essays from the Los Angeles Times, Links, Golf Magazine, Golf World and Golfdom, Shackelford chronicles several astonishing mistakes made by the once respected United States Golf Association. He observes that the momentum gained from Tiger Woods’ positive effect on golf’s popularity is being squandered by an ill-advised emphasis on manufacturer interests and celebrity worship. Shackelford urges the USGA to re-shoulder its responsibilities to the game while suggesting how the PGA Tour can restore excitement to it’s championships. He offers solutions to rejuvenate golf by emphasizing course design elements, common sense ideals and tradition-based values can make golf fun, affordable and exciting again.

The Future Of Golf In America: How Golf Lost Its Way In The 21st Century And How To Get It Back

iUniverse, Inc.

The Future of Golf reveals how the sport has been kidnapped by equipment manufacturers and knowingly deregulated by its governing bodies. A mix of commentary, analysis, and essays, the book chronicles the misguided strategies made by the once-respected United States Golf Association, showing how the momentum from Tiger Woods’s popularity is being squandered by manipulative manufacturers and celebrity worship. Author George Shackelford urges the USGA to re-shoulder its responsibilities to the game while suggesting how the PGA Tour can restore excitement to its championships. He offers solutions for making golf fun, affordable and exciting again by emphasizing course design elements, common sense ideals, and tradition-based values.

The Future of Golf: How Golf Lost Its Way and How to Get It Back

Sasquatch Books

In Golf Architecture for Normal People, golf architecture expert Geoff Shackelford elucidates the world' s most interactive art form in ways that all golfers can enjoy. For those smitten by this centuries-old sport, Shackelford takes readers on a fun walking tour through what is often considered a rarefied field and achieves the following along the way: --Helps golfers of all skill levels become keener observers while getting more joy out of playing any course --Introduces simple and easy-to-remember ways to judge a design's merits --Cuts through entrenched architectural snootiness to drive home the importance of a few timeless design tenets --Demystifies the complex, interdependent and often perplexing array of factors that make a course fun to play --Provides readers new tools to achieve a more sophisticated understanding what they love (or hate) about a design --Suggests diplomatic ways to disarm design elitists and settle 19th-hole debates -Advises how to merge technology and common sense to decode deceptive design elements --Shares lists of must-see courses and resources to further your connoisseurship.

Golf Architecture for Normal People: Sharpening Your Course Design Eye to Make Golf (Slightly) Less Maddening

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Tatra Press

Not many people know it, but George C. Thomas Jr. was one of the most significant figures in the history of golf course architecture. Geoff Shackelford's biography of Thomas, "The Captain, is the first in-depth look at the life and architectural philosophy of this interesting and talented man. Following World War I, Thomas began dabbling in course design on the East Coast. In 1920, he moved to California. There, he designed several of the most important and visually pleasing golf courses in the country--including Riviera Country Club, Los Angeles Country Club, and Bel-Air Country Club.

The Captain: George C. Thomas Jr. and His Golf Architecture

Sleeping Bear Press

The Art of Golf Design, by Michael Miller and Geoff Shackelford, is a stunning book. Miller is both a golf professional and landscape artist. Shackelford is both a golf historian and writer. Not surprisingly, both love the classic golf holes of the 1920s and ’30s. And that’s what this book is about. Many of Miller’s images take the reader back in time, often to when a classic hole at Pine Valley, Cypress Point or Pinehurst No.2 was in its earliest form. Shackelford, as historian, provides his insight on the architectural thinking that went into the creation of these classic holes.

The Art of Golf Design

Miller, Michael G.

John Wiley&Sons, Inc.

The years between 1910 and 1937 will always be known as the “golden age of golf design.” The reason is because many of the greatest course architects in the history of the game were all at work during this era, and a number of America’s most famous layouts were created. Geoff Shackelford’s The Golden Age of Golf Designis an insightful analysis of those revered courses and the talented men that designed them. The list of architects working during the Golden Age is a “Who’s Who” of golf — including Ross, MacKenzie, Tillinghast, Crump, Raynor and Wilson. Incredibly, the layouts they built back then — often with only bare hands and horses to do the work — annually make up the majority of today’s Top 100 Courses in America.

The Golden Age of Golf Design

The Good Doctor Returns: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

United States

Sleeping Bear Pr

Throughout the world, few golf courses are as revered as California’s Cypress Point Club — not just for its breath-taking beauty but for its architectural significance. Located on the Monterey Peninsula along the white sands and steep cliffs that border the Pacific Ocean, the beauty of Cypress Point is the equal of its more famous neighbor Pebble Beach. Unlike Pebble, however, the history of Cypress Point has been relatively unknown. That is, until now. 
Alister MacKenzie’s Cypress Point Club, by Geoff Shackelford, is a biography of both the creation and the creator of this legendary and elusive layout. Typical of Shackelford’s work, the book is richly detailed and painstakingly assembled. Remarkable vintage photographs and insightful text not only take you back to the 1920s, they take you through the mental and physical process that went into developing each and every hole — including the spectacular 16th, arguably the most famous hole in the world.

Alister MacKenzie's Cypress Point Club

wiley

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