Donald Ross

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For other persons named Donald Ross, see Donald Ross (disambiguation).

Donald Ross (1872–1948) was one of the most significant golf course designers in the history of the sport. He was born at Dornoch in Scotland, but spent most of his adult life in the United States.

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 at the suggestion of a Harvard professor named Robert Wilson, who found him his first job in the 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 had a moderately successful playing career, winning three North and South Opens and two Massachusetts Opens, and finishing fifth in the 1903 U.S. Open and eighth in the 1910 British Open. He later gave up playing and teaching to concentrate on course design, running a substantial practice with several assistants and summer offices in New England.

Ross's most famous designs are Pinehurst No. 2, Seminole, Oak Hill and Oakland Hills. He was involved in designing or redesigning around 600 courses. Some of his early work was in Virginia and includes Jefferson Lakeside Country Club. In some cases he didn't even visit the site, but on the courses where he was most closely involved 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." 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 greenkeeping 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. In the 1930s he revolutionized greenskeeping 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 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 rare honour rarely awarded for anything other than playing success. His brother Alec won the U.S. Open in 1907.

Ross is most closely compared to the other two leading architects of the early 20th century, Alister Mackenzie and A.W. Tillinghast. Many argue that Ross's work does not consistently carry the same standard of quality as Mackenzie and Tillinghast's works. Evidence supporting this arugment includes the fact that a much higher percentage of Ross's courses have been altered, redesigned, or destroyed than Mackenzie and Tillinghast's. However, Ross is unmatched in the quantity of work he completed.