Seven years designing adventure golf courses, permanent and portable, from the first sketch through to opening day. Garden architecture, hole layouts, interior theming, and the big graphics that make a site feel like somewhere, rather than just somewhere with holes in it.
No two were ever the same, which was the fun of it. Permanent installations ran from 9 to 18 holes, each built around its site: Play2Day, Wisbech's locomotive-themed 18 holes; a history-of-the-borough course for Lambeth Council in Brixton; a nautical course for Maidenhead Aquatics in St Albans; Worcester Bowl's blacklight indoor course with graffiti-style murals and selfie points; Dobbies Garden Centre, Huntingdon's tropical island theme; the Roman-themed course and stone gargoyles at Dobbies, Peterborough; an accessible, community-focused layout for Markeaton Park with Derby City Council; a converted warehouse fit-out for Urban Putters, Lincoln; a slick indoor course for Topgolf Dubai; a pirate-themed build for Aztec Adventure Golf, Huntingdon; and a coastal course through the pines at Pembrey Country Park, Wales.
The process stayed much the same each time: concept sketches, CAD hole layouts and technical drawings, material and planting specs, then out on site with the build team. Everything else changed with the brief, which is why I never got bored of it.
Play2Day, Wisbech. The client wanted eighteen holes themed around a locomotive, which is not a brief you argue with. It ended up as a full-size Fenland Express engine you putt around, a station platform with a canopy and a bench, a carriage to play through, and a working signal that changes colour.
Every hole still had to play properly, which is the tricky bit with themed work. It's easy to build something that looks the part and forget people have to actually putt around it.
The layout drawing sets the route and, just as importantly, the pathway between holes. On a course this size the circulation matters as much as the holes do. Get it wrong and you have a queue at hole 3 and nobody anywhere else.
Each feature hole was then drawn up so the client could see it before committing to anything. Holes 3 and 6 share a station platform with a Wisbech Central running-in board, a clock and a pigeon. Holes 7 and 8 wrap around the locomotive. Hole 11 is a level crossing, with the barriers doing the work.
Then the same holes again, drawn for whoever has to build them. Hole 4 runs a ramp between two planters, with the kerb blocks scheduled by angle: eight straights, one short, six sixties, two nineties and two one-twenties. That list is the difference between a drawing and something a build team can actually order materials from.
Putt 'n Play, Active Lambeth. Lambeth Council commissioned a fifteen-hole course for the Ferndale Community Centre in the heart of Brixton, themed around the history of the borough. The idea was that you'd learn something about where you were standing while you played, so each hole takes on a local landmark.
Electric Avenue, the Empire Windrush, the Brixton windmill, a traffic light and a pedestrian crossing, all of it drawn from the streets immediately outside. Designing for an urban site is a different problem to designing for a garden centre. The space is tight, awkwardly shaped, and overlooked, so the course had to work with the geometry it was given rather than fight it.
Each hole got drawn twice. Once as a sketch so the client could picture it, and once dimensioned so somebody could build it. The pairs below run in that order, left to right.
The rainbow crossing sits under a Brockwell Park sign with a working traffic light. Hole 5 is the Empire Windrush, its stern set into a stud wall with the flags of the Windrush countries on the reverse. Hole 6 is a skate ramp tagged Stockwell and Lambeth. Hole 8 tunnels through Lollard's Tower, hole 9 is The Oval with oversized wickets on a mound, and hole 13 is Lamb's Harbour, complete with bollards, a life ring and a lamb.
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Maidenhead Aquatics, St Albans. A nautical course for an aquatics retailer, which meant the theming had an expert audience. These are people who keep fish for a living and would notice if the coral was wrong.
Fifteen holes on a long, narrow site, 45 metres by under 10. That shape drives everything. There is nowhere to wander, so the route has to read clearly from the first tee and every hole has to earn its width.
The mural runs the full length of the boundary fence, drawn as one continuous scene and then split into panels for print. A turtle, a diver, a shark, a sunken galleon and a yellow submarine, with the client's branding worked into the artwork at intervals rather than stuck on at the end.
Every hole started as a perspective sketch, so the client could see what they were buying before anything got dimensioned. Hole 5 beaches a rowing boat across the water, with the ball tracking underneath it to the green.
From there each hole was drawn to scale with kerb layouts, levels and build notes. Hole 4 has a cascading water feature draining through a grille with 20mm gaps between the bars, which is the sort of thing that has to be specified exactly or it gets built wrong and nobody notices until there is water where it shouldn't be.
Alongside the permanent builds I designed portable, pop-up courses. Same principles, but everything had to be light enough to load into a van and still play properly once it got there. The RAF Museum course used aircraft and radar-dish silhouettes as holes, and the Horniman went farmyard and nature for a family crowd.
Everything else. Seven years produces a lot of drawings that never make it into a case study. What follows is a small selection of the designs and sketches I like most, from courses and pitches including Hidden Valley Resort in Wicklow, Bowood House in Wiltshire, Angus Alchemy at St Andrews and Carnoustie, RAF Cosford, the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, and a pinball hole for a roller disco in Dublin.
