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| Donald Ross | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Ross in 1905 | |||
| Personal information | |||
| Full name | Donald James Ross | ||
| Born | 23 November 1872 Dornoch, Scotland | ||
| Died | 26 April 1948 (aged 75) Pinehurst, North Carolina, U.S. | ||
| Sporting nationality |  Scotland United States | ||
| Children | Lillian Ross | ||
| Career | |||
| Status | Professional | ||
| Best results in major championships | |||
| Masters Tournament | DNP | ||
| PGA Championship | DNP | ||
| U.S. Open | 5th: 1903 | ||
| The Open Championship | T8: 1910 | ||
| Achievements and awards | |||
| |||
3-4 paragraph summary
[edit]I have rearranged the information into more sections like the design one.
Although Donald Ross was a competitive golfer, he is primarily known for his work as a course designer. As time moved on his focus shifted towards designing courses rather than playing and teaching. In his time as a designer he is credited with roughly 400 course designs or redesigns between 1900-1948.[1] Ross's most famous designs are Pinehurst No. 2, Aronimink Golf Club, East Lake Golf Club, Seminole Golf Club, Oak Hill, Glen View Club, Memphis Country Club, Inverness Club, Miami Biltmore Golf Course and Oakland Hills.
Donald James Ross (November 23, 1872 – April 26, 1948) was a golf course designer. He was born in Dornoch, Scotland, but became a citizen of and spent most of his adult life in the United States. Ross started his career by being an apprentice to Old Tom Morris at St Andrews in Scotland around 1899. It was thanks to an American astronomy professor that Ross decided to move to America. Ross invested all his life savings to move to the United States and walked off the boat with only $2.[2] In America he got his first job at Oakley Country Club in Watertown, Massachusetts. He quickly rose to the position of golf professional at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, where he began his course designing career.
Work
[edit]Ross served an apprenticeship with Old Tom Morris in St Andrews before investing his life savings in a trip to the U.S. in 1899 with the encouragement and support of Harvard astronomy professor and Salem and Petersham, Massachusetts resident Robert W. Willson, who helped him obtain his first job in America at Oakley Country Club in Watertown, Massachusetts. In 1900 he was appointed as the golf professional at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, where he began his course design career and eventually designed four courses. He then began running a substantial practice with summer offices in Little Compton, Rhode Island. At its height, Donald J. Ross and Associates, as his practice was known, oversaw the work of thousands of people. However, Ross always kept up his professional golf standing. His brother Alec won the 1907 U.S. Open.
Ross's most famous designs are Pinehurst No. 2, Aronimink Golf Club, East Lake Golf Club, Seminole Golf Club, Oak Hill, Glen View Club, Memphis Country Club, Inverness Club, Miami Biltmore Golf Course and Oakland Hills. Ross is credited with 400 designs and redesigns. Some of his early work was in Virginia and includes Jefferson Lakeside Country Club and Sewell's Point Golf Course. He also designed the Municipal Golf Course at Asheville, North Carolina in 1927.[3] Ross also designed one of Westchester, New York's best courses, Whippoorwill Country Club, in Armonk, New York; however, Charles Banks was hired by Whippoorwill to redesign the course in 1928. He also designed a 9-hole course in northern New York, known as the Schroon Lake Municipal Golf Club in 1918. He designed the Hope Valley Country Club in Durham, North Carolina in 1927.[4]
In the 1930's he revolutionized greens keeping practices in the Southern United States when he oversaw the transition of the putting surfaces at Pinehurst No. 2 from oiled sand to Bermuda grass. Ross also designed the course at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina which is home to the PGA Tour's Wyndham Championship. Currently, Sedgefield Country Club is the only regular Donald Ross design on the PGA Tour. Aronimink Golf Club, located in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, played host to the AT&T National in 2010 and 2011.
Ross was a founding member and first president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, which was formed at Pinehurst in 1947. He was admitted to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1977, a high honor rarely awarded for anything other than playing success.
Ross died while completing his final design at Raleigh Country Club in North Carolina. Ross is buried in Newton Cemetery in Newton, Massachusetts.[5]
Design Elements
[edit]What allows Donald Ross's courses to stand out is the design principles and elements he used. He displayed great attention to detail. Often he created challenging courses with very little earth moving; according to Jack Nicklaus, "His stamp as an architect was naturalness." Some of his designs include the "turtleback" greens, a Ross double plateau, and The Punchbowl. [6] All of these exemplify his naturalness design philosophy which did not require intense earth moving he simply let the lay of the land dictate what each and every hole should be. Ross would go into designing a new course with the thought to “make each hole present a different problem. So arrange it that every stroke must be made with a full concentration and attention necessary to good golf. Build each hole in such a manner that it waste none of the ground at my disposal and takes advantage of every possibility I can see.”[7] His most widely known trademark is the crowned or "turtleback" green, most famously seen on Pinehurst No. 2, though golf architecture writer Ron Whitten argued in Golf Digest in 2005 that the effect had become exaggerated compared to Ross's intention because greens keeping practices at Pinehurst had raised the centre of the greens. Ross often created holes which invited run-up shots but had severe trouble at the back of the green, typically in the form of fallaway slopes.
Golfing Career
[edit]He had a successful playing career, winning three North and South Opens (1903, 1905, 1906) and two Massachusetts Opens (1905, 1911), and finishing fifth in the 1903 U.S. Open and eighth in the 1910 Open Championship. As his fame grew, he began to teach and play less and to focus on golf course design.
Results in Major Championships
[edit]Ross played in the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.
| Tournament | 1897 | 1898 | 1899 | 1900 | 1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904 | 1905 | 1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1910 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. Open | DNP | DNP | WD | DNP | 21 | 9[8] | 5 | 10 | 25 | DNP | 10 | T40 | DNP | DNP |
| The Open Championship | CUT | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | DNP | T8 |
DNP = Did not play
WD = Withdrew
CUT = missed the half-way cut
"T" indicates a tie for a place
Yellow background for top-10
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Whitten, Ron (1996). Golf Has Never Failed Me: The Lost Commentaries of Legendary Golf Architect Donald J. Ross. Sleeping Bear Press. ISBN 9781886947108.
- ^ "Donald Ross". World Golf Hall of Fame. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
- ^ Bowers, Sybil Argintar (December 2004). "Municipal Golf Course" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places - Nomination and Inventory. North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office. Retrieved 2014-08-01.
- ^ de Miranda, Cynthia; Martin, Jennifer (July 2009). "Hope Valley Historic District" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places - Nomination and Inventory. North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office. Retrieved 2014-11-01.
- ^ "The Barclays: Plainfield architect Donald Ross' journey had humble beginnings in Boston". Retrieved 2016-07-24.
- ^ "Donald Ross: A Golden Age Great". The Fried Egg. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
- ^ "Donald J. Ross | Mill Creek MetroParks". www.millcreekmetroparks.org. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
- ^ "Open Golf Champion". The Saint Paul Globe. Minnesota. October 12, 1902. Retrieved August 26, 2015.
External links
[edit]
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A History Of Donald Ross[1]
Donald Ross American Society[2]
Donald Ross Biography[3]
- ^ King, Brad. "A History of Donald Ross in America". Links Magazine. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
- ^ "Donald Ross". American Society of Golf Course Architects. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
- ^ "Donald Ross Biography". Belleair Country Club. 2000. Retrieved October 10, 2018.