Customer Reviews

Golf by Design: How to Lower Your Score by Reading the Features of a Course

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Golf By Design is a breath of fresh air compared to many other golf books that are being sold today. What better way could you learn about how to play a course than from one of the world's greatest designers?

From the different types of climates, grasses, bunkers and terrain, Jones gives excellent examples of what goes through a designer's mind while creating a course. By using some of the world's most beautiful and challenging holes, he suggests the diffeent strategies that can be applied while playing to allow golfers of all levels to lower their scores.

Whether you are a scratch golfer or a hacker, Golf By Design will definitely help you in this most challenging of games.

I found this book playing a beautiful local Robt. Trent Jones, Jr. course that's in this book, The Orchards. He shows you the clues the designer has placed their to steer you to a respectable round.

From the tee box to the fairway routing and bunker construction, to the style of course, i.e. links, prairie, desert, etc., this master architect using examples of his existing designs shows the risks and rewards of different strategies.

I found that not only did this help me to play Robt. Trent Jones, Jr. courses, but other good architects layouts as well.

Well worth the investment!

This is a well-written and interesting look at the strategic/penal aspects of the golf course. Robert Trent Jones has certainly designed some of the world's best courses, and is qualified on the subject. This book is a very comprehensive discussion of what goes through a designer's mind when creating the golf course. However, it is probably most useful for the avid golfer who wishes to better understand the design of the courses that she/he plays for course management purposes. Playing golf holes with an understanding of what the designer had in mind should make anyone a better player. When studied carefully, this book can perhaps help a golfer more than most of the instructional books available today.

If you are more interested in design books which are not really meant for playing purposes, I recommend "The Anatomy of a Golf Course," by Tom Doak, as well as "Masters of the Links," edited by Geoff Shackelford.

I play many different public courses and often times have trouble reading new courses, resulting in several shots wasted until I become familiar with the course.

I found Golf by Design to be really helpful in giving me the insight to read a course right off the bat and often saving me the wasted shots. It has also helped me appreciate the design and layout of the course that much more.

I would also recommend it to beginners as a great introduction into 'course management'

I'm a new golfer. Mr. Jones' book has already helped me enjoy the game so much more by playing so much smarter.

The discourse he provides about strategic, penal, and heroic golf hole styles provides an excellent mental framework for choosing a tactic for playing a hole. It helps organize the details Mr. Jones covers about tees, fairways, hazards, greens, optical illusions, and the architect's other "weapons" to foil your attack on the hole.

For me, the test of a good author is making concepts that truly are not obvious seem very simple after you've read the book. When I hit the golf course after reading Mr. Jones' book, I must have said "Of course! Just like he said!" eighteen times. It was a real pleasure to come away from a book with an entirely new perspective on something I already enjoyed.

I feel like I've already dropped three to five strokes per round by simply not getting "fooled" into traps laid by his father at my home course (Hampton Cove, Huntsville, AL).

I recommend this book for the avid golfer. It will change the way you look at shot selection. It will lower your score, even if you already have a good swing, by helping you play smarter than you thought possible. You might say it gives you an "unfair" advantage.

Robert Trent Jones Jr. is a master Golf Course Architect - as anyone who has played one of his designs can attest first hand. This book gives strong insight into his thinking - and the thinking of course designers around the planet - on the subject of constructing every part of a golf course such that the golf course offers both enjoyment and challenge to all who experience the great game. But more than that - Robert Trent Jones Jr. offers his thoughts on recognising and reading the features of a course and the intention of its designer/architect - and how features give players clues on how the designer/architect intended a particular hole should be played. This information alone will lower your golf handicap.

Including details on everything from the peculiarities of different types of grasses and how best to play from each, thru the different types of sand and their characteristics; and even discussing the advantages of carrying 3 wedges rather than two - this book is another Robert Trent Jones Jr. masterpiece. It should be required reading and a part of the library of every golfer who has ever loved the worlds greatest game, or anyone who is its student.

This book is an important element in my research on the RTJ, Sr. family impact on the topic of golf course architecture.

If you want to save at least five strokes a round, then read this book. I re-read this book before the beginning of every golf season. The author exposes tricks and traps golf course architects implement to get you thinking, and subsequently, change your shot, bringing hazards and other dangers into play. He describes how, just by inspecting a scorecard before beginning your round, you can gain insight into how to play each hole. Beginning from alignment of the tee box to the placement of bunkers and shade trees around greens, RTJ Jr. explains how course architects include the use of natural, and un-natural features in the design of golf courses. BTW, all tee boxes do not point you in the direction you should hit the ball. I have about a dozen books on golf, but I recommend only this one.

This book would have made a good magazine article. It got to a point where I had to struggle between just puting it away and finishing it. While ther are some good ideas here, other than to convince us what a great architect he is by citing his own work over and over, on the whole I found this to be much too exhausting to warrant the time.
DK

RTJ II's Golf By Design provides a number of insights into the mind of the designer and how they view the elements that go into the design of a golf hole. I found the book to be more descriptive of how designers think and less prescriptive about what the player should do in terms of dealing with the various design elements (Butch Harmon's Playing Lessons is a much more strategic approach to playing individual holes). Many of the leading architects of this day and age have written similar books (Trent Jones Sr., Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Fazio ....) - consider this book RTJ II's contribution to this genre .....