Steve Smyers
Profile
An accomplished player and well-traveled architect, Steve Smyers is a capable golf course designer who tends to only take on a few projects at a time. Smyers’ experience around the world, studying the great links of Britain and the Sandbelt gems of Australia, has given him a strong appreciation for strategic design and the basis to build golf courses that challenge a range of players.
Standing on the first tee at Wolf Run in Indiana gives a sense that Smyers understands strategic golf, his staggered left hand bunkers providing the only genuine driving hazard, but also the optimum angle into a tight green guarded by sand on the right. The rest of Wolf Run is very good, although tough, as is Old Memorial in Florida, which he built for the owners of the Outback Steakhouse restaurants.
While we are less enamoured with Cypress Lakes in Australia, this was early in Smyers’s career and built on a difficult site. One suspects were he to build it today the layout would be much better. By all reports the redesign of the South Course at Olympia Fields has been well received.
For an independent appraisal of Steve Smyers’s portfolio or for general design advice please contact Global Golf Group.
