2 minute read
DON HERSHMAN
DONALD ROSS
World Famous Golf Course Designer
Golf Never Failed Him
by Kathy Worth
Donald J. Ross was an accomplished golfer, a world-famous golf course designer whom golf legend Jack Nicklaus states “…had a great impact on golf course architecture. He seems to be the standard by which we are all measured today”. He was also an employer of thousands, a grower of roses, and the owner of Pinehurst’s favorite watering hole – but he does not have a street named after him here in Florida, contrary to what most people think. I’ll get to that later.
Born in Dornoch, Scotland, in 1872, Ross’s first job was as a greenskeeper at the Royal Dornoch Golf Club, the course he played while growing up. At one point, he also worked as a carpentry apprentice, mastering that as he had golf. Given his golfing ability, a group of locals sent Ross to train with Old Tom Morris, the greenskeeper and professional at The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St. Andrews, as they believed he could hone his carpentry skills crafting golf clubs instead of furniture. (Note to non-golfing readers: St. Andrews is considered the “Home of Golf”.) Old Tom did teach him how he constructed club heads, shafts, and grips, but Donald also observed and absorbed how the greens should be maintained and course elements should be best designed. Robert White, who later went to America and became the pro and greenskeeper at Myopia Hunt Club in Hamilton, Massachusetts, where he met a gent by the name of Leonard Tufts. I’ll come back to Mr. White and Mr. Tufts in a moment. After a year of apprenticeship under Old Tom Morris, Ross returned home to Dornoch, becoming the first golf professional and greenskeeper at Royal Dornoch, where he wasted no time improving the links. While there, he met Robert Wilson, a Harvard physics professor who spent his summers in Dornoch playing the world-class course. He encouraged Ross to go to the States, which he did, arriving with less than $10 in his pocket and no clue of where to find employment. (Some stories say he had $2,
Palm Beach Country Club Golf Course designed by Donald Ross
others, $7; in any case, he was darn near broke.) However, with Dr. Wilson’s help, he soon secured the golf pro position at Oakley Country Club in Watertown, Massachusetts. Oakley is where Ross first truly leaped into golf course design, deciding on his very first day to plan and execute a largescale renovation of the course. At Oakley, he would meet James Tufts, the aforementioned Leonard Tufts’ son, and first learned of Pinehurst, North Carolina. Pinehurst just so happens to have been founded by James Walker Tufts, Leonard’s father and James’ grandfather. James soon invited Donald to his home in Medford, Massachusetts, to interview for the pro position at Pinehurst. The agreement reached that day, an oral one at that, turned out to be extremely lucrative and successful for Ross, the Tufts, and the American golf community.
Pinehurst and Ross would become nearly synonymous. He designed the first four courses at the resort, with the illustrious #2 course completed in 1907 being his signature creation. He referred to
Jack Nicklaus:
