The Ace of (Canadian) Clubs

He preferred a good cigar over a smelly French cigarette, a crisp fedora over a beret, and scotch over wine, but Stanley Thompson saw through the eyes of an artist.

Thompson was a master of strategic design and routing, a creative free-thinker who often used principles of art in transforming dirt and bush into golf holes. That's one reason his best courses are captivating in ways that escape most golfers. But to rephrase the old line, golfers may know diddly about art, but we know what we like. And those fortunate enough to play them love Stanley Thompson's classic courses.

"Most people don't realize why, but they'll play a course like Jasper (Park Lodge GC in the Canadian Rockies) and think, 'This looks right. It belongs here,' " says Toronto-based architect Doug Carrick.

It's no fluke. At Thompson's Jasper Park, many bunkers are patterned after snow formations on the mountains, mounds mimic the rocky peaks behind and a number of greens are lined up with distant mountains. "It creates harmony," Carrick says. "He was one of the first architects to do that consciously."

Architects such as Carrick have learned plenty about golf design principles from Thompson, Canada's greatest golf architect. Thompson ranks alongside the likes of Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast and Alister Mackenzie, but he hasn't received the acclaim he deserves. That's mainly because the bulk of his work is in Canada, away from the eyes of the influential American golf press.

"He's right up there. He was one of the greatest," says Geoffrey S. Cornish, a co-author of The Golf Course and The Architects of Golf, the definitive tomes on golf design.

"He was always pushing the frontiers of an art form. He influenced golf course architecture as much or more than anyone else," says Cornish, a former Thompson assistant.

Like other great architects of his day, Thompson had roots in Scotland -- his parents emigrated -- and he came from a golf family. Born in Toronto in 1894, he was one of five brothers who dominated Canadian golf like no family since.

Frank won the Canadian Amateur Championship in 1921 and 1924. William won in 1923. Matt was a pro at a number of Manitoba clubs and Nicol was head professional at Hamilton G&CC for 50 years. Stanley could play, too, winning medal honors at the 1923 Canadian Amateur.

He formed Stanley Thompson & Co. Ltd. in Toronto in 1922. The young firm was busy its first year, building or redesigning about a dozen courses, mostly in Ontario. In 1924 his career got a big boost when he was contracted to design the Jasper Park course for the Canadian National Railway. It took the summer of 1924 for 50 teams of horses and 500 men to clear the site of timber and rocks.

Thompson's mischievous sense of humor crept into the course. Upon its opening, players reaching the par-3 ninth set eyes on the shapely curves of Cleopatra. CNR management, however, was not amused, and it forced Thompson to go back and soften her curvaceous contours.

The Canadian Pacific Railway hired him to design a course near Banff, farther south in the Rockies. Banff Springs Hotel GC cost more than $1 million, making it the most expensive course ever built when it was opened in 1927. He won international acclaim for Jasper and Banff, which are regarded as two of the world's definitive mountain courses.

Later that year, he turned his attention to St. George's G&CC in Toronto, one of North America's most revered parkland layouts and the site of four Canadian Opens and five du Maurier Ltd. Classics.

Fresh out of Cornell University, Robert Trent Jones hooked up with Thompson in 1932. "Stan was instrumental in bringing Robert Trent Jones along," Cornish says. "He'd never have had his fame without absorbing what Stan had to say."

In all, Thompson designed more than 125 courses, most of them in Canada, although his work also included the U.S., the Caribbean and even South America. His more notable designs also include Cape Breton Highlands Links in Nova Scotia and Capilano G&CC near Vancouver, British Columbia.

Thompson was a charter member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects when it was founded in 1947. He served as president in 1949.

He created golf courses with a vigor that matched his zest for living. He was a millionaire two or three times over. Known as the Toronto Terror, he was a burly man who enjoyed holding court with a cigar in one hand and a scotch in the other. "He loved to party, talk and tell jokes, especially about himself, which endeared him to people," Cornish recalls. "He'd tip a porter $5, which was like $50 in those days."

A few accounts say Thompson's later years were not happy ones. He supposedly drank heavily and owed about $500,000 at one point. At the age of 58, Thompson died in 1952, of a heart attack in Guelph, Ontario, apparently bankrupt.

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Most North American courses designed in the early 1900s were penal; you had to hit the shot dictated by the architect or be severely punished. In the '20s, Thompson and Donald Ross were instrumental in changing golf design from penal to strategic. And Cornish asserts Thompson took the leading role.

"Stan always gave you an alternate route to the green with the shortest being the most difficult," Cornish says. "Then if you went the longer way, he'd tilt the green away from the player or put bunkers in front."

Cross bunkers that spanned the entire fairway, confronting the player like an armada, were common early in the century. Cross bunkers plagued average players and novices who had difficulty hitting the ball in the air and far enough to clear them.

"The most successful course is one that will test the skill of the most advanced player, without discouraging the duffer, while adding to the enjoyment of both," Thompson wrote in his booklet, About Golf Courses: Their Construction and Up-Keep.

Cornish says Thompson began the practice of placing bunkers laterally along fairways. But he located them so that only long-hitting low handicappers might reach them from the tee. Toronto architect Tom McBroom argues Ross was the "creative genius" of strategic design, and contends Thompson's par 4s have a tendency to be mid-length and repetitive. Nevertheless, McBroom says Thompson was a "master router," epitomized by St. George's, site of this year's Canadian Senior Open, part of the Senior PGA Tour schedule. "St. George's was a superb property. And he caught it just perfect."

Thompson often tramped through a raw piece of property with a hatchet and his cane for three or four weeks before he'd commit pencil to paper. And then he'd come up with as many as 100 holes.

"He could pick out the best features of the land and create gentle variations with each hole without moving a lot of earth," Carrick says. "On his better courses, it's easy to remember every hole. He had that knack of creating a different character for every hole, but it all fit for the entire course. It was a unique ability."

Thompson brought an artist's creative flair to his designs; he loved improvising and taking risks. After clearing the fairways at Highlands Links in Nova Scotia, Thompson was left with a large number of boulders. Instead of leaving them in the bush, he rolled them onto the fairways and covered them, giving the course its distinctive bumpy look.

Thompson's par 3s are also memorable, and he had two common styles. One is the monster, such as the 223-yard eighth at St. George's. But he's known more for the beautiful one-shotter that plays from an elevated tee to a heavily guarded green, usually set on a hillside or in a valley. Perhaps the most famous is the 171-yard Devil's Cauldron (the fourth on the Rundle course at Banff Springs) which plays over a glacial lake to a sloping green on the side of Mount Rundle.

Thompson loved high tees. In fact, he tried to provide elevated tees whenever he could for the difficulty they presented in selecting the right club on par 3s, and for the psychological boost and nice views they provided. "He'd raise a tee another foot if it created a better view," Cornish says.

Thompson's greens are free flowing in shape with lots of fun within: bumps, hollows, run-offs, sidedoors, you name it. He also liked to compartmentalize his larger greens, creating distinct levels with contouring. His artistic flair was most evident, however, in his exciting and bold bunkering. At Jasper, he made bunkers in definite shapes: "one like a rose, the other a giant footprint, an artist's palette, a woman's torso," Canadian Sport Monthly reported in 1954.

The most distinctive element of his bunkering were flash-faced bunkers, which are both beautiful and intimidating. Thompson built these bunkers into mounds, which were often 10 feet high or more, and swept the sand up the slope. From the tee or fairway, players could easily see the sand but not be able to determine the size or shape of the bunker.

"As you walk closer, it reveals itself," says Carrick. "As you walk a Thompson course, the bunkers change in appearance. You get a different look from all angles. And it's had an influence on work I've done."

Unfortunately, many of Thompson's bunkers have been flattened out and their top-lines lowered, some by neglect (Highlands Links) and others by design (St. George's, Banff).

"I think his bunkers should be left alone," says McBroom, who employs some Thompson-esque bunkering at The Links at Crowbush Cove in Prince Edward Island. "That's his art. Even though they are high maintenance, you can argue you're ruining the picture he was presenting."

Montreal-based architect Graham Cooke spent great effort in restoring Thompson's original bunkering during his recent $3 million renovation of Highlands Links, which was allowed to deteriorate by its owner, the Canadian federal government. The outrage expressed over its demise reflected the pride and admiration that Canadian golfers feel for Thompson.

That his courses continue to give players great pleasure 60 and 70 years later is a testament to Stanley Thompson's great skill and artistry as one of the game's greatest golf architects.