Ron Prichard

Last updated
Ron Prichard
Nationality American
OccupationGolf course architect

Ron Prichard (born 1945 or 1946 [1] ) is an American golf course designer and restorer. His original designs include the TPC at Southwind, Memphis, Tennessee, now home of the FedEx St. Jude Classic. However, he is perhaps better known for masterminding the restoration of courses originally created by the Scottish-American designer Donald Ross (1872 – 1948), among them Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Township, Pennsylvania.

United States Federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Most of the country is located contiguously in North America between Canada and Mexico.

Golf course Series of holes designed for the game of golf

A golf course is the grounds where the game of golf is played. It comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, a fairway, the rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick ("pin") and hole ("cup"). A standard round of golf consists of 18 holes. Most courses contain 18 holes; some share fairways or greens, and a subset has nine holes, played twice per round. Par-3 courses consist of nine or 18 holes all of which have a par of three strokes.

Memphis, Tennessee City in Tennessee, United States

Memphis is a city located along the Mississippi River in southwestern Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. The 2017 city population was 652,236, making Memphis the largest city on the Mississippi River, the second most populous city in Tennessee, as well as the 26th largest city in the United States. Greater Memphis is the 42nd largest metropolitan area in the United States, with a population of 1,348,260 in 2017. The city is the anchor of West Tennessee and the greater Mid-South region, which includes portions of neighboring Arkansas and Mississippi. Memphis is the seat of Shelby County, the most populous county in Tennessee. As one of the most historic and cultural cities of the southern United States, the city features a wide variety of landscapes and distinct neighborhoods.

Contents

Career

Prichard decided on his career path while in college. "I'd ask myself back then what I wanted to be doing when I was 50," he recalled to one interviewer. "And the answer was a golf architect. I thought it would be nice to be known around the neighborhood." [1] He started his business in the 1960s, and by May 2003 he had designed "nearly 20" courses and restored more than 30 others. [1]

Original designs

Among his original projects, he was the lead architect for the Tournament Players Club golf course which opened in 1988 at Southwind, Memphis, with golfers Hubert Green and Fuzzy Zoeller as co-consultants. [2] This course has been the home of the FedEx St. Jude Classic (formerly called the Memphis Open) since 1989. [3]

Tournament Players Club Chain of private and public golf courses

Tournament Players Club (TPC) is a chain of public and private golf courses operated by the PGA Tour. Most of the courses either are or have been hosts for PGA Tour events, with the remainder having frequently hosted events on the Korn Ferry Tour or PGA Tour Champions.

Hubert Myatt Green was an American professional golfer who won 29 professional golf tournaments, including two major championships: the 1977 U.S. Open and the 1985 PGA Championship. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2007.

Fuzzy Zoeller American professional golfer

Frank Urban "Fuzzy" Zoeller Jr. is an American professional golfer who has won ten PGA Tour events including two major championships. He is one of three golfers to have won the Masters Tournament in his first appearance in the event. He also won the 1984 U.S. Open, which earned him the 1985 Bob Jones Award.

Restorations

Because of his reputation as a restorer of the works of classic golf course designers such as Donald Ross, Prichard – then a resident of Montgomeryville – was appointed in the 1990s to restore Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Township, Pennsylvania. This was originally designed by Ross but underwent numerous modifications in the 1980s under Robert Trent Jones, an influential architect but one whose approach to golf course design was later felt to be incompatible with Ross's. [4] The restorations achieved a higher profile when the course was selected to host the Senior PGA Championship for 2003. Prichard's changes, only commenced after a year of planning during which he inspected the course and old photographs, included restoring Ross's original bunkering and expanding the fairways. Aronimink's rise on Golf Digest's list of the 100 greatest American courses rose from 98th position in 2001 to 52nd the following year was credited to Prichard's restoration work. [1]

Donald Ross (golfer) Professional golfer, golf course architect

Donald James Ross was a golf course designer. He was born in Dornoch, Scotland, but became a citizen of and spent most of his adult life in the United States. Ross started his career by being an apprentice to Old Tom Morris at St Andrews in Scotland around 1899. With the help of an American agronomy student, fellow Scotsman Robert White from St. Andrews, Ross decided to move to America. Ross invested all his life savings to move to the United States and walked off the boat with only $2. In America, he got his first job at Oakley Country Club in Watertown, Massachusetts. He quickly rose to the position of golf professional at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, where he began his course designing career.

Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania Census-designated place in Pennsylvania, United States

Montgomeryville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 12,624 at the 2010 census. Montgomeryville is about 30 miles from the center of Philadelphia. According to a 2010 Forbes magazine/Yahoo.com survey, Montgomeryville ranks 5th in America's top 10 affordable suburbs. It is part of the North Penn Valley region that is centered on the borough of Lansdale.

Aronimink Golf Club is a private country club located in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, a suburb west of Philadelphia. Its championship golf course is consistently rated among the top golf courses in the United States. Aronimink is currently ranked 78th in Golf Digest's "Greatest Courses," 44th in "Toughest Courses" and 55th in Golfweek's "Classic Courses." In 2010, Aronimink was ranked #4 among the toughest courses on the PGA Tour by Links magazine.

A similar challenge – recovering a Ross design from beneath numerous later modifications – was posed by Jeffersonville Golf Club in Pennsylvania, requiring Prichard to make use of historical sources including 1930s aerial photographs. [5] The restoration project he headed at The Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, Minnesota, another Ross original, was praised by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2007 as "a huge success, as the course now moves into the 21st century". [6] One restoration project outside the United States was at Elmhurst Golf & Country Club at Winnipeg, Canada, which the club hoped would help to make it a venue for the Canadian Open. [7]

Pennsylvania U.S. state in the United States

Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the Northeastern, Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.

The Minikahda Club is a golf club and course located in southwest Minneapolis, Minnesota, just west of Lake Calhoun. The course hosted the U.S. Open in 1916, the U.S. Amateur in 1927, and the Walker Cup in 1957.

Minnesota U.S. state in the United States

Minnesota is a state in the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and northern regions of the United States. Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. state on May 11, 1858, created from the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory. The state has many lakes, and is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes". Its official motto is L'Étoile du Nord.

Ron Whitten, writing in GolfWorld in 2007, was critical of the attempts of many planners to return Donald Ross's courses to original designs, calling such restoration "the narrow-minded substitute for imagination". However, he listed Prichard as among "[t]he best architects who specialize in Ross recoveries", understanding the need for course design to change with the times. [8]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Drew Markol (May 29, 2003). "Restoring greatness". phillyBurbs.com. Archived from the original on December 9, 2006. Retrieved March 1, 2008.
  2. ↑ "Playing for a Living: Where executives who run golf businesses head in the middle of winter" (AccessMyLibrary reprint). Chief Executive. December 1, 2001. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
  3. ↑ Bruce Young (June 6, 2007). "Good field for US Open lead up". iseekgolf.com. Archived from the original on June 18, 2009. Retrieved March 1, 2008.
  4. ↑ Joe Logan (November 19, 2001). "Pa. Course looks to recover Donald Ross' touch" (AccessMyLibrary reprint). The Philadelphia Inquirer . Retrieved 2008-03-01.
  5. ↑ Joe Logan (May 29, 2001). "Pa. course rediscovers its roots to Ross" (AccessMyLibrary reprint). The Philadelphia Inquirer . Retrieved 2008-03-01.
  6. ↑ "Golf Course Review - The Minikahda Club". Seattle Post-Intelligencer . January 30, 2007. Retrieved 2008-03-01.[ dead link ]
  7. ↑ Lorne Rubenstein (March 4, 2006). "Winnipeg deserves chance to hold Open". The Globe and Mail . Toronto. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
  8. ↑ Ron Whitten (September 14, 2007). "Rethinking Ross". GolfWorld. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
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