october-2009

056
His courses, replete with scenes like these, are
through-the-looking glass adventures routed across
extreme landscapes full of strange-looking golf hurdles
that often seem to flout architectural convention.
Just as Impressionist painters once revolted against
the principles of classicism, Strantz’s designs are fullthroated
renunciations of the sort of standardized,
face-forward courses that have come to dominate
mainstream design. The look and style of his courses
have no contemporary parallels, and for enthusiasts,
they’re among golf ’s greatest rollercoaster rides.
Unfortunately, there are only nine places in America
where you can see his work. Strantz died of cancer
in 2005 at the age of 50. His courses now live on like
museum pieces, and his architecture continues to both
inspire and baffle players and designers alike.
Golf Digest’s Ron Whitten once described Strantz as
“part [Alister] MacKenzie, part Stephen King.” Strantz
even looked the part of the mad artist, wearing his hair
long with a Fu Manchu mustache and riding horseback
around the properties he designed. His background in
drafting—he worked as a graphic artist during a hiatus
from golf course architecture in the late 1980s and early
1990s before returning to open his own firm, Maverick
Golf Course Design, in 1994—no doubt influenced his
creative temperament. You have to be a visionary, or
crazy, to build putting surfaces with one level set 6 feet
below another, or greens nearly 90 yards from side to
side and only 20 yards deep.
Strantz began his college career in a studio art
program before transferring into a turf grass management
program that later led to a job with leading
designer Tom Fazio’s firm. The art never left him, and
his drawings of individual golf holes are not just visual
blueprints of how to build them, but also frame-worthy
expressions in their own right. (You can see examples
of his drawings at www.mikestrantzdesign.com/
sketches.html.)
Forrest Fezler, a close friend who worked with
Strantz from 1994 until his death, says Strantz’s creative
zeal made him push back against popular trends.
“Mike always told me that if you look at a golf hole and
think you want to do something like put a bunker here
or do [a certain] type of a look, you’ve got to do exactly
the opposite. Because that’s what everyone else is probably
going to do,” Fezler says. “He always had to be
unique, and had the tremendous gift of being an artist.”
Tobacco Road, Strantz’s most fully realized vision,
GO MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2009
3rd hole at Tot Hill Farm