Алистер Маккензи: Архитектор полей для гольфа с шотландскими корнями

Scottish golf course architect
the golf course architect

Alister MacKenzie (30 August 1870 – 6 January 1934) was a golf course architect whose course designs span four continents. Originally trained as a surgeon, MacKenzie served as a civilian physician with the British Army during the Boer War where he first became aware of the principles of camouflage. During the First World War, MacKenzie made his own significant contributions to military camouflage, which he saw as closely related to golf course design. MacKenzie is amongst the most famous golf architects in history. He is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame and designed more than 50 golf courses, including three that remain in Golf Digest's 2022 Top 10 golf courses in the world: Augusta National Golf Club and Cypress Point Club in the US, and Royal Melbourne Golf Club (West Course) in Australia.

MacKenzie was born on 30 August 1870 in Normanton, near Leeds in Yorkshire, England, to parents of Scottish extraction. His mother, Mary Jane Smith MacKenzie, had family roots in Glasgow. His father, William Scobie MacKenzie, a medical doctor, had been born and raised in the Scottish Highlands near Lochinver. Although christened after his paternal grandfather Alexander, he was called "Alister" (Gaelic for Alexander) from birth. As a youth, MacKenzie and his family spent summers near Lochinver, on what had been traditional Clan MacKenzie lands from 1670 to 1745. MacKenzie's strong identification with his Scottish roots featured prominently in many aspects of his later life. MacKenzie attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, before going up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he initially trained as a medical doctor, graduating from Cambridge University in 1891 with a B. A. (Natural Science Tripos Part 1), with honours, third class, before the next year undertaking and passing a second MB (Bachelor of Medicine. Latin: Medicinae Baccalaureus) in Anatomy. After a period working in Leeds, he returned to Cambridge in 1895 where he undertook the third MB examination (Part 1) before passing the London Licentiate examinations for Royal College of Surgeons the same year. Finally, in 1897 he graduated from Cambridge with MB BacS (Bachelor of Surgery) and MA degrees.

MacKenzie had been a member of several golf clubs near Leeds, dating back as far as the late 1890s. These included Ilkley between 1890 and 1900 and Leeds Golf Club from 1900 to 1910. Following the First World War, MacKenzie left medicine and began to work instead as a golf course designer in the United Kingdom, in association with Harry Colt and Charles Alison in 1919, with whom he formed the London firm of Colt, MacKenzie & Alison. Four years later, MacKenzie went his own way. MacKenzie thought he had learned a lot about golf course planning from having designed camouflage. There are references to the latter in his first book on course design, called Golf Architecture (MacKenzie 1920), such as when he writes that "there is an extraordinary resemblance between what is now known as the camouflage of military earthworks and golf course construction", or later, when he states that there "are many other attributes in common between the successful golf architect and the camoufleur. Both, if not actually artists, must have an artistic temperament, and have had an education in science." In the same book, he also writes that "the chief object of every golf course architect worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature [and presumably also the hazards] so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself." His book was later included in Herbert Warren Wind's Classics of Golf Library. MacKenzie worked in an era before large scale earth moving became a major factor in golf course construction, and his designs are notable for their sensitivity to the nature of the original site.

As a player, MacKenzie was self described as a "good putter, but a mediocre ball striker" for most of his life. It was not until after his move to California, when he was already in his 60s, that MacKenzie had what he described as his "golfing epiphany". This was an improvement in his ball striking which enabled him to often score in the high 70s to low 80s for 18 holes. He described this in one of his books as "in the 70s after 60". MacKenzie was one of the first prominent golf course designers who had not been a leading player.

In the late 1920s, he moved to the United States, where he carried out some of his most notable work, although he continued to design courses outside that country as well. Today, he is remembered as the designer of some of the world's finest courses, among them Century Country Club (Purchase, New York), as MacKenzie was partners with Colt & Alison at the time the two built Century, from mid 1923 he was working with other partners when he designed Augusta National Golf Club (Augusta, Georgia), Cypress Point Club (Monterey Peninsula, California), Royal Melbourne Golf Club (Melbourne, Australia), Pasatiempo Golf Club (Santa Cruz, California), Crystal Downs Country Club (Frankfort, Michigan), Lahinch Golf Course (Lahinch, Ireland), and Meadow Club (Fairfax, California) [see extended list of his courses below]. MacKenzie died in Santa Cruz, California, in January 1934, two months before the inaugural Masters Tournament (then known as the Augusta National Invitational Tournament). Discovered after his death was an unpublished manuscript on golf and golf course design, which was posthumously published as The Spirit of St. Andrews (MacKenzie 1995).