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Donald Ross (1872-1948) was one of the most
significant golf course designers in the history
of the sport. He was born at Dornoch in Scotland,
but spent most of his adult life in the United
States.

Ross served an appreticeship with Old Tom Morris
in St Andrews before investing his life savings in
a trip to the U.S. in 1899 at the suggestion of a
Harvard professor named Robert Wilson, who found
him his first job in the America at Oakley Country
Club in Watertown, Massachusetts. In 1900 he was
appointed as the golf professional at the
Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, where he began
his course design career and eventually designed
four courses. He had a moderately successful
playing career, winning three North and South
Opens and two Massachusetts Opens, and finishing
fifth in the 1903 U.S. Open (golf)|U.S. Open and
eighth in the 1910 The Open Championship|British
Open. He later gave up playing and teaching to
concentrate on course design, running a
substantial practice with several assistants and
summer offices in New England.

Ross's most famous designs are Pinehurst No. 2,
Seminole Country Club|Seminole, Oak Hill Country
Club|Oak Hill and Oakland Hills Country
Club|Oakland Hills. He was involved in designing
or redesigning around 600 courses. In some cases
he didn't even visit the site, but on the courses
where he was most closely involved he displayed
great attention to detail. Often he created
challenging courses with very little earth moving;
according to Jack Nicklaus, "His stamp as an
architect was naturalness." His most widely known
trademark is the crowned or "turtleback" green,
most famously seen on Pinehurst No. 2, though golf
architecture writer Ron Whitten argued in Golf
Digest in 2005 that the effect had become
exaggerated compared to Ross's intention because
greenkeeping practices at Pinehurst had raised the
centre of the greens.

Ross often created holes which invited run-up
shots but had severe trouble at the back of the
green, typically in the form of fallaway slopes.
In the 1930s he revolutionized greenskeeping
practices in the Southern United States when he
oversaw the transition of the putting surfaces at
Pinehurst No. 2 from oiled sand to Bermuda grass.

Ross was a founding member and first president of
the American Society of Golf Course Architects,
which was formed at Pinehurst in 1947. He was
admitted to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1977, a
rare honour rarely awarded for anything other than
playing success. His brother Alec Ross|Alec won
the U.S. Open in 1907.

==External links==
*http://www.donaldrosssociety.org/ Donald Ross
Society