"Coore & Crenshaw: The cornerstones of success"

They are the undisputed best in the business and I’m not sure it’s close, so it’s great to read Shaun Tolson’s profile of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw who are still going strong but also working the same way they always have: with the utmost care for the details.

It’s hard to believe this many years later but they struggled to get their design firm off the ground.

Looking back on those early years, when the duo had no pipeline of work and no completed projects upon which they could hang their proverbial hats, both men legitimately wondered if anyone was going to hire them. What they did know was that they shared the same philosophical approach to designing courses. Equally significant, they both shared the same philosophy of how they wanted their business of designing courses to operate. “We knew it had to be run like a business to survive,” Coore explains, “but at the same time, philosophically, we were trying to say that we were going to treat it like a hobby.

“When I say hobby, I mean, ‘let’s have fun doing this.’ Don’t make this such a business that we’re not involved and can’t have fun. If you have this dream to actually create a golf course, but you structure a business deal that takes that dream away, now you’re just a businessman.”

Ultimately, Coore and Crenshaw agreed from the beginning that their No. 1 goal was to design a few interesting golf courses, to be significantly involved in the work and development of those courses as they moved through the conception and construction phases, and to have some fun while doing it all. “Back then, no matter how we progressed, we knew we weren’t going to be prolific,” Crenshaw says. “Our goal was to build a few good golf courses. And that’s never changed. It doesn’t change now.”