Is Tom Fazio good for the game? Golf's leading designer is beloved by many, yet his courses have lifted expectations—and costs—to troubling levels

Golf Digest, May, 2005 by Ron Whitten

HE'S THE 800-POUND GORILLA OF GOLF COURSE ARCHITECTURE, a man who seemingly gets any project he wants, any place he wants, with any budget he wants.

Clients love Tom Fazio because he creates more headlines than headaches. Golfers love him because he doesn't beat them up. And rival architects love him--well, they appreciate him--because his splashy impact has helped raise everybody's fees.

Fazio, 60, is clearly the dominant designer on America's 100 Greatest Courses, with seven additions to the 2005 list and 14 courses overall, by far the most among all architects. Fazio is also the consulting architect for Pine Valley, Augusta National, Oakmont, Winged Foot, Merion and Riviera, among others.

There's no denying the man's personal likability, his down-to-earth nature and his devotion to his family, his staff, his clients and his favorite charity, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. But popularity and critical acclaim don't necessarily result in a lasting legacy. Will his architecture be the enduring standard for golf design well into the future?

You should hope not, if you're one who believes that golf should still be a test of thought and skill rather than just a walk on the beach where you never get sand in your shoes.

The fact is, Tom Fazio's architecture is extremely expensive to create, and darned expensive to maintain. (Design for easy maintenance? Fazio once told me he thought manufacturers should develop equipment that could more easily mow the steep, showy slopes and banks that he and others were producing.) Golfers ultimately pay for the perfection of a Tom Fazio design in six-digit membership fees to private courses and three-digit green fees to public ones. That has certainly contributed to the inflation of golf that started in the mid-1990s and has remained on the rise even as the U.S. economy has sputtered.

Why pick on Tom Fazio, when most golf architects these days are equally guilty of driving up costs? Because Fazio is the main attraction and leads by the sheer force of his examples. He can be forgiven for being seduced by the $37 million budget of Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, where he had to spend money just to create a golf environment. But Shadow Creek seems to have made it easy for him to insist on subsequent enormous budgets, say, $30 million, to smooth out the shortcomings of the remarkably natural site of Dallas National. Worse still, Fazio's "Shadow Creek look" has led to countless expensive imitations by others, the prime example being the $35 million Trump International in Florida done by his brother, Jim Fazio.

Most of the money being spent on Fazio designs these days is for creature comforts--installing continuous cartpaths, for example, and hiding them behind mounds and vegetation so as not to spoil the image of a pristine, though manufactured, landscape. But golf can be just as much fun, and certainly far more challenging, when played in more Spartan conditions, with a pullcart on dry, patchy fairways where one might have to improvise some shots. Tom Fazio used to design such courses, like Wild Dunes, his first 100 Greatest layout. It's a shame we don't recognize that course on the 100 Greatest anymore, and a shame that it's no longer his standard.

Fazio counters that he's simply giving the people what they want. "My clients don't want to wait 30 years for a golf course," he says. "They want instant maturity. And we have the technology to give it to them--equipment that can move huge trees, for instance--so why shouldn't we use it?" Part of the blame, he adds, belongs to Golf Digest and its course rankings: "Everybody wants to win, so it's a major financial impact. You sod instead of seed. You put in bigger trees. You build in more 'wow' factors like water features. You spend more on promotion."

Based on an unscientific poll of Fazio course owners, Golf Digest panelists and others in the golf industry, it appears that Fazio's work offers an artistic appeal that's more emotional than substantive. Veteran character actor and panelist Bruce McGill sums up Fazio's work with a single word: "Pizazz!" Golf architect Clyde Johnston calls it "sizzle." Panelist Craig Jorgensen of Kansas City offers, "His courses look hard and play easy," and course designer Mike DeVries suggests, "All golfers 'feel good' playing his courses."

"He might not build the hardest, most challenging, best risk-reward holes or get the absolute most out of the property," says panelist Terry Inslee, a member of Fazio-designed Black Diamond Ranch in Florida, "but his courses are always visually appealing and usually very memorable."

More than 25 years ago, Fazio vowed he'd build only one course at a time, recalls Ron Read, a regional director with the U.S. Golf Association. Somewhere along the way, Fazio stopped being a course architect and became a corporate brand. These days, Fazio rarely takes chances. He churns courses out, repeating what has been successful on previous designs. "Fazio is a factory firm," says panelist Gib Papazian, golf writer. "There is nothing seminal [or] original about his architecture."