The one-legged Scottish banker

Golf Digest, June, 2001 by Ron Whitten

The man who designed Southern Hills was not a golf architect by trade, but by happenstance. Perry Maxwell was born in Kentucky in 1879 to Scottish parents, studied classical literature at the University of Kentucky but quit school when stricken with tuberculosis at age 19. He married his childhood sweetheart, then moved to the territory of Oklahoma to aid in his recovery. There he started as a bank cashier in the small town of Ardmore, worked his way up to vice president, joined the Masons and bought into a fledgling oil company.

At 30, after reading a magazine article about golf, he and his wife took up the game. A few years later, he staked out a nine-hole course on their farm--the first grass-greens course in Oklahoma--formed a club and named it Dornick Hills. In 1919, his wife died, and Perry buried her on a hill overlooking the course. After a few months, he resigned from the bank, cashed in some oil holdings, and spent a year touring great courses in the southeastern United States and in Scotland.

When he returned to Ardmore, he added another nine to Dornick Hills, then was soon hired to build city courses for Tulsa and Oklahoma City. By 1925, despite no training or college degree, Maxwell was a full-time golf course architect. He never drew plans, just walked sites and staked out features. His eldest daughter, Dora, prepared sketches of his greens. His brothers-in-law constructed the courses. His son Press began working for him as a teenager.

Maxwell's trademark was greens with bold, dramatic contours--greens like those at Southern Hills, which he designed at the depth of the Great Depression, when most other course architects were out of business.

The story goes that during construction, Maxwell hobbled around Southern Hills on a peg leg, wobbling like Charlie Chaplin. It happened, but not there. Maxwell's right leg wasn't amputated until 1945, years after an X-ray caused a radiation burn that never healed. Maxwell kept on designing courses, but his son handled most of the field work.

Perry Maxwell died at 73 in late 1952 at his home in Tulsa. He was laid to rest next to his first wife in the family plot in Ardmore, overlooking his first golf course.