No man did more to shape the early years of golf in America than Charles Blair Macdonald. He helped found the U.S. Golf Association, then won the inaugural U.S. Amateur in 1895.
As a golf course architect, his contributions have been more lasting. Macdonald built Chicago Golf Club, widely acknowledged as the first 18-hole course in America, then applied his knowledge and love of Scottish courses like the Old Course at St. Andrews to design the National Golf Links of America, the first great layout in the United States.
While building National, Macdonald worked with engineer Seth Raynor, and the pair went on to design numerous Golden Age classics, including Yale, Mid Ocean and the now-defunct Lido Golf Club, which was considered the equal of National and is now golf's version of Atlantis, enjoying a near-mythical status as the best course that no longer exists.
Raynor then went off to build courses on his own, employing the same template holes that he learned by working with Macdonald.
A century after their original collaboration at National, Macdonald and Raynor are enjoying a renaissance in the golf world. Their tribute course at Bandon Dunes, Old Macdonald, is now open, and the Greenbrier's restored Old White is now a PGA Tour host.
We join the party with an exclusive slideshow of the best Macdonald-Raynor courses in the world.
