COURSE DESIGNERS

George Cobb

Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1914, Cobb grew up in a family of golfers. After graduating in 1937 from the University of Georgia with a degree in Landscape Architecture, he served as an engineering officer in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. At Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, he enlisted the help of veteran architect Fred Findlay to construct a golf course on the base to serve as a physical rehabilitation facility. It was likely at that moment that Cobb developed his design philosophy that golf was supposed to heal and to stimulate, not to punish. In the mid-1950s, Cobb setup shop in Greenville, South Carolina, and took advantage of a booming golf development climate in the southeast to create more than 100 original designs, along with dozens of redesigns.  

Perhaps his most prominent design is his shortest course: The Par 3 at Augusta National Golf Club, which he completed in 1959, with a little help from Masters Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts. Augusta National also asked Cobb to retouch the big course in 1967 and again in 1977 with his associate, John LaFoy, who later embarked on a successful solo career that included a stint as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

Among Cobb’s other original creations were Georgia’s Green Island Country Club, Deerwood Country Club in Jacksonville, Florida, and Quail Hollow Country Club in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bobby Weed

Few golf course architects have been better prepared for the science and art of design than Robert C. Weed Jr., who as a precocious young teenager turned his father’s soybean field into a driving range, and who later churned out fields of green for the PGA TOUR as its chief designer of Tournament Players Clubs.

Weed began playing golf when he was 10 years old, and became an assistant superintendent at Amelia Island Plantation, then apprenticed under Pete and Alice Dye beginning in 1980 at Long Cove Club in Hilton Head, SC. He worked in progressively more significant roles until, in 1987, he assumed the TPC chief designer responsibilities. In that capacity, he created a variety of high-level layouts and collaborated with a number of players, including Raymond Floyd, Jack Nicklaus, Mark McCumber, Arnold Palmer, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Roger Maltbie and Fuzzy Zoeller.

Weed started his own design and construction business, Bobby Weed Golf Design, in 1995. He applies a minimalist approach to his golf courses, creating holes that fit the ground, the landscape and the surrounding environment. Regardless of the task, Weed insists on courses of classical strategic value, a philosophy he learned from Dye, while stressing sound construction and maintenance standards. His company’s motto is: “design complements maintenance and maintenance complements design.

Year after year, Linville Ridge players have continued to see course improvements aimed at better accommodating all levels of play. Bobby Weed, of Bobby Weed Golf Design is responsible for the redesign and stated that, “Linville Ridge is slated to become a destination must play golf course. The routing, breathtaking vistas, cool summer climate and course conditioning elevate the layout above the competition.” Weed has applied his minimalist approach to creating holes that fit the ground, the landscape and the surrounding environment, all while improving playability.