Alister MacKenzie

Alister MacKenzie (30 August 1870 – 6 January 1934) was an English 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 served as a surgeon with the Somerset Regiment in South Africa during the Second Boer War.

During his wartime service, MacKenzie became interested in camouflage, which was effectively used by the Boers. As a result, during the First World War, when he once again served in the army, he worked not as a surgeon but as a camoufleur. In a lecture he gave on the subject,^[when?] he said that "the brilliant successes of the Boers (during his service in South Africa) were due to great extent to their making the best use of natural cover and the construction of artificial cover indistinguishable from nature."

MacKenzie had been a member of several golf clubs near Leeds, dating as far back as the late 1890s. These included Ilkley between 1890 and 1900 and Leeds Golf Club from 1900 to 1910. In 1907, he was one of the founding members of Alwoodley Golf Club, where he was both honorary secretary (1907–1909) and club captain (1912–1913), and he remained on its green committee until 1930. As the course was MacKenzie's original design when Alwoodley was laid out, it was his first opportunity to put many of his design theories to practical test. However, the committee at the time thought that some of his ideas were too expansive, so it called in Harry Colt for a second opinion. Colt was one of the leading golf course architects of the time and was also the secretary of Sunningdale Golf Club.

Colt visited on two occasions only: first on 31 July 1907, when he met MacKenzie for the first time, and later on 6 October 1909. On the first occasion, four months after the course opened for play, having stayed at MacKenzie's house overnight, he realized that MacKenzie's ideas were very much an extension of his own, and he gave great support for MacKenzie's ideas at the meeting with the committee. He did, however, mention the bunkering as MacKenzie's ideas had taken into account the new technology of the day, which was the Haskell wound ball (which bounced and rolled) and was now being used instead of the old gutta-percha golf ball. Some of MacKenzie's modern ideas under discussion included undulating greens, long and narrow greens angled from the center of the fairway, fairly large and free-form bunker shapes, and substantial additional contouring. All of these remained part of his "signature style" throughout his career.