Lorne Rubenstein

Man Behind the Revamping of Hoylake
July 19, 2006

All eyes won't be on only Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and their colleagues as the Open Championship is on this week at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England. The course, which everybody calls Hoylake, will also be a feature attraction.

This means that observers will also be wondering who revamped the course. Players, well some of them, or maybe more, will be curious about the three new greens that Donald Steel built. They're far more undulating than the rest of Hoylake's greens. This being the case, the focus for some people might also turn to Steel. He was the one, after all, who suggested the 16th as the members play it be the 18th for the Open, and that their 17th and 18th should be the first and second.

Photo © courtesy of Tom Ward Donald Steel

Anybody who cares to read up on Steel will find a man about as steeped in the game as possible. Just now he's the president of the English Golf Union, and has pretty well retired from design work. His former associates Martin Ebert and Tom Mackenzie have taken over and started their own firm, (which you can learn more about), in fact, was invited along with Steel to assess Hoylake and propose changes. Steel's company also worked on Royal St. George's, Royal Troon, and Turnberry, each of which is in the Open rota.

The changes to Hoylake, Steel has written, "would allow the links to safeguard its reputation as a mighty championship challenge as well as acting as an enjoyable test for the members. The best courses are well capable of combining this dual role."

Steel has occupied more than a couple of roles in his fascinating career. The 68-year-old was born in Uxbridge, some 20 miles west of London. His father William, a Scot, was an orthopedic surgeon who became medical director of a hospital in the city, while his mother Catherine was a nurse.

Steel took to many sports, including cricket, rugby and golf. He first played at the Denham Golf Club, where he learned the game at the feet of the club professional John Sheridan, and where remains a member. He's also been an R&A member since 1962.

Photo © David Cannon/Getty Images Donald Steel was the man responsible for many of the changes to the course at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club.

Steel once spoke at a club function honoring Sheridan. He recalled hitting some balls for him the first time when he was just starting the game.

"I was invited to hit a few balls, to which John remarked, it's incredible," Steel, who continues to enjoy giving speeches and never charges for them, said. "I hit a few more and he said, it's amazing. Now I had heard about child prodigies although I had never looked upon myself as one. But as I hit two or three more balls, John remarked, I cannot understand it.' Then it was I made my first mistake. I asked him just what it was he couldn't understand. ?I cannot understand,' he said, ?how such fat legs can fit into such short trousers.'"

Is it any surprise that while Steel has always respected people of great accomplishment, he hasn't taken them too seriously?

But he's always taken his studies and work seriously. Steel attended Cambridge University and played for its golf team, graduating in agriculture. Steel liked golf the best when it was the most rugged, and when he had to think out a variety of shots. I've had the pleasure of playing with him at the West Sussex course in Pulborough, England, where he's a member, and at the Redtail Golf Course in St. Thomas, Ontario, which he designed, and of being a guest at his lovely mews home in Chichester, England, which looks out onto a meadow. It's certainly enjoyable to sit down with him over a dram of whisky and talk golf.

Steel loved to read about golf, and the great British writer Leonard Crawley took him under his wing. Crawley wrote for the Sunday Telegraph in England, and Steel took over from him. Around the same time, in 1962, Steel started to study course architecture, learning from the well-regarded English firm of Ken Cotton, Frank Pennink and Charles Lawrie. He went to work for the firm and later started his own company.

Photo © Courtesy Carnegie Club Skibo Castle was one of Steel's design's.

He could also play, with a fluid, fast, handsy action. Steel had flair for the game, and liked to hit whatever shot he saw in his mind's eye. Having seen the best, and written about them“the first two championships he covered were the 1961 Open at Royal Birkdale, which Arnold Palmer won, and the 1962 Open at Royal Troon, where Palmer successfully defended his title“he knew what it took to play top-flight competitive golf.

Not that he could do that at will, mind you. But Steel did qualify for the 1970 Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews, and he represented England in the Home International matches against Scotland, Ireland and Wales; this is a major amateur event in the U.K. Steel also won three President's Putter tournaments; this is the event held every January at the Rye Golf Club in Rye, England, where graduates of Oxford and Cambridge play against one another no matter the weather.

Of that 1970 Open at the Old Course, Steel tells a delightful story.

"I teed off on the 16th and, as I approached my ball on the left, was confronted by Arnold Palmer charging down the third. When he saw me, he said, ?Hello Donald, what are you doing here?' ?Well,' I replied, ?I am sullying the championship you came to save.' ?Wonderful,' he said, and off he went."

The Telegraph's editors encouraged Steel to play in tournaments, as they did with Crawley, also an excellent golfer and an intriguing fellow. Crawley liked to wear a 10-gallon hat, and, when invited to be the captain of the Royal Worlington and Newmarket Golf Club near Cambridge, declined. He said he was sure he'd have a row with somebody at the club, so it wouldn't be a good idea to be club captain.

Steel surrounded himself with golf and golf people. He wrote a column for the English magazine Country Life under the title A Golf Commentary. And, in 1974, he wrote a two-part article for Golf Monthly in the U.K., entitled "What Makes a Good Golf Course?" It's a classic that anybody who intends to become an architect should read. Every member of every greens committee should also read it.

Photo: © The Abaco Club The Abaco Club, on the island of Abaco, Bahamas is another of Steel's creations.

"A good golf course, no more than good music or good drink, does not necessarily appeal the first time it is played," Steel wrote. "The Old Course at St. Andrews, the most extolled, and criticized course in the world, offers the best proof of one that requires knowing, and long ago gave rise to the story of the caddie remarking with doubting scorn to the university professor for whom he was carrying. "It needs a heid to play gowf at St. Andrews." He added, "Golf is a continuous process of decision-making, a strategic exercise that must explore the options on every shot on every hole."

It needs a heid to play golf at Steel courses such as the Carnegie Links at Skibo Castle in Dornoch, Scotland, the Abaco Club on Winding Bay in The Bahamas, and Primland in Virginia. He's written in his excellent book Classic Golf Links that he particularly enjoys a feeling of spaciousness.

"There is a joyous sense of space and freedom about seaside links, a feeling of escape that makes you glad to be alive," he wrote.

Steel will be interested in the goings-on at Hoylake, and is sure to hear criticism as well as approval. He'll be able to handle whatever comes up. Here's a man who is no far of so many new courses that are what he calls "attractive playgrounds," meant to be fair because life, supposedly, should be fair.

That's not Steel's belief. He'd like to see some wind at Hoylake to stiffen the course“it's a links, and it will need wind. But whatever happens, he'll enjoy the championship. A suggestion: Read anything you can find that he's written, play a course of his if you get the chance, and, best of all, introduce yourself to him if you ever come across him. He's a gentleman of the game, and he's always up for a healthy debate about the game“where it's been, where it is, and where it's headed.