Modern Architects Series: Kristine Kerr on Traveling the World, Working with Gary Player, and Ant Omelets
Kristine Kerr would be at the top of my list of people I'd like to take on a golf trip. It’s not because she’s traversed the globe designing golf courses and gradually improving her game over the years. It’s simply the core parts of her personality that drew me in when I interviewed her over Zoom late one night (Kristine was on New Zealand Standard Time). She’s equal parts wise and humble, candid and mysterious. You know you could rely on her to help plan an itinerary and book the right courses, but also that she’d make the best of any situation and try everything at least once, even an ant omelette.
Below is a transcript of my conversation with Kristine, edited more for clarity than for brevity. Opportunities for women golf course architects to express themselves and for us to learn from them are few and far between, plus everything she shared is objectively fascinating, so novel-length it remains!
How did you enter the golf world and what attracted you to golf course design?
My father was a scratch golfer and worked in construction and development, and we moved from New Zealand to Australia. He was involved in the development of Palm Meadows Country. That was my first introduction but I was only about ten years old, so I’m not sure how much of an effect it had. As a kid I thought it was a bit slow, but I've enjoyed it more as I’ve grown older.
I didn’t study golf course design specifically. I studied landscape architecture and urban and regional planning, so after I graduated in the early ‘90’s, my parents were living in Singapore and golf development was booming there, so I was hired by small Australian landscape firm that was building three brand new courses. I worked on two courses in Malaysia and one in Vietnam. I then went to work for some specialist golf course architects—Nelson Wright (now Nelson Haworth).
So I learned by apprenticing, which was what people did back then. Because golf was booming, I probably worked on three or four new courses a year, so I had the opportunity to get involved in every aspect of it from early on.
Some of the people I learned the most from early on are Neil Haworth, Rodney Wright, Robin Nelson, and Brett Mogg, and they all had different strengths. For example, Neil was very strategic and looked at the overall picture, while Rodney was very detailed and taught me specialist greens design. I also learned by traveling and reading golf course architecture books and magazines. I like the classic, golden age courses constructed at the beginning of the last century, and I picked up some of that design style with Guy Hockley.
Once I started designing, I played more regularly, both the good quality courses in Singapore as well as any new ones I helped design.
Did you have other passions that might have blossomed into careers if you hadn’t pursued golf course architecture?
I always loved design but I also like science and geography. Growing up in Queensland, there was a lot of farmland and the Japanese were investing real estate and resort development there because of the beautiful climate. So that’s what I thought I would go into with my regional planning degree. But I found golf course architecture and loved the strategic aspect of the design, creating something from scratch and planning it out. I think that’s sort of a parallel to golf—you know where you want to end up, and you have to create a jigsaw. It’s still creative and you’re working with the land. Really my passion is working with the land.
I adore color and textiles and had the opportunity to work with some interior textile importers in Singapore and decided to stick with golf.
What is it about your personality that makes you fit to be a golfer and golf course architect?
I think growing up in the family I did and being around farming and construction made me adaptable and gave me the courage to be adventurous. I was used to being outside and around men. I like design and beautiful clothes and things but I’m comfortable working outside, sometimes in mud and inclement weather.
My friendliness has helped, too. I’ve always made a lot of friends in the golf world. I’m still in touch with a lot of the people I met thirty years ago when I first started.
Because there is often so much traveling involved, I think you also have to be somewhat intrepid and adventurous. New golf courses are often built in developing countries, or at least that’s what my experience has been, and because I like to travel, enjoy variety, and meeting people and being independent—I don’t mind being away from home. And I’ve been lucky because the courses I’ve worked on have been built in beautiful parts of the world, so you’re making somewhere lovely even more beautiful in a way. I’ve tried being more settled but I feel a bit stifled doing that. One downside, though, is that you’ll make friends all around the world, then you can’t see them very often.
Do you make it a point to get to know the places where you work?
I usually end up living there. I’ve lived in Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia, and London. From our base in London, we worked on projects in Italy and the Czech Republic. China was fascinating and the history is just staggering.
Are you dying to work anywhere in particular?
I’m open to anything. I’ve never been to Africa, only Egypt. Africa and South America both have gorgeous, unique landscapes, so hopefully one day.
Are you an adventurous eater?
Very adventurous. Some things I’d rather not try, but one of my favorites was in China—an ant omelet. The ants were quite large and strangely tasty.
Does your family visit you when you’re living in different places?
My parents were living in Asia part of the time I was working there and coincidentally my sister and brother-in-law often end up working in the same parts of the world that I am, so we often catch up in random places. My mom does usually come and visit. Luckily I have a small family so we’re able to stay close. With my parents, we generally play golf together. With others, it‘s a great thing to do on holiday—breaks up the sightseeing.
You studied landscape architecture and urban planning at Queensland University of Technology. Did you have women professors or encounter other women students? Did you experience gender discrimination during your education or at the golf courses you studied?
We did have a lot of women lecturers and teachers and our design department was quite small, maybe 100 students, and almost fifty/fifty females to males in the design department. But that was in Australia and a big deal wasn’t really made about gender at university, so I think when that’s your perception you don’t expect things to be different anywhere else.
I haven’t experienced it working in other countries either. Clients may have treated me a little differently from male colleagues, and possibly more respectfully because I’m female. To some degree they seem interested and impressed that you’re a woman holding your own in a construction and international environment. I’ve been lucky to work with great companies like Gary Player and Nelson Haworth and with good clients.
Because New Zealand and Australia are somewhat young societies without a hugely traditional gender bias, I haven't felt discriminated against. Because a degree for landscape architecture and design wasn’t offered in Singapore when I started, there was a demand for architects so I was welcomed into the profession.
I do often get asked, now that I have my own company, about some of the projects I don’t get and if I think I don’t get them because I’m a woman, but I don’t know. Nobody ever comes out and says that. But when people know you’re skilled and experienced and knowledgeable, that’s why you’re hired.
Any favorite architects?
Probably Harry Colt and A.W. Tillinghast because they’re a little quirky and sort of strategic. MacKenzie’s a bit mainstream in terms of being everybody’s favorite, but he’s of course iconic so…
Were you taught much about women course architects by your university program or the people you apprenticed with? Were women like Marion Hollins, May Dunn, Molly Gourlay, and Alice Dye talked about in your program?
I knew of Marion Hollins through Pete Dye but no, generally not. There isn’t a lot of literature on them. But I didn’t exactly study that—I found my way into the industry with a different path.
What is your design philosophy? I know Gary Player really influenced you with his approach of “letting the best all-around player win.”
It’s really just creating an even playing surface for players of all levels, which a lot of designers rattle off the tongue pretty easily. Yes, creating challenge, creating strategy that’s going to be fun for everybody. I don’t really want to design courses that are too much of a challenge for higher handicappers unless that is the client brief, which it usually isn’t.
I like approaching each site with a fresh perspective because they vary so much. [One course I designed], Pegasus, was initially meant to be a resident and members course, so I wanted to design it with a lot of challenges for different ability levels, considering they’re going to be playing it multiple times a week. A destination course, on the other hand, you of course want to make interesting, but you know people aren’t going to be playing it repeatedly.
Kristine working on Nanjing Zhongshan with Gary Player in 2004
Do you prefer renovation or designing courses from scratch? What is your approach to both?
From scratch because you get to design the whole picture, the whole jigsaw, and that's what I learned first when I started out. Initially, I found renovations difficult because you feel like you’ve got to muck things up first before you make them better. A lot of my renovation work has been in New Zealand, and courses often don't have a big budget and you can’t do some of the renovations to the extent you prefer.
You’ve said Pegasus was the first project you really had full control over. What were you free to do with that project that you hadn’t been able to do as an apprentice of someone like Gary Player?
Not much actually. The main difference is that you feel a little more weight as it’s going to have your name on it. When you work as a team, the responsibility is more equally shared. The site of Pegasus was very flat so I said to my mom, “Everyone’s going to know how I think because I have to create everything.”
In terms of freedom, there is maybe a project manager involved and you often run into some limitations. For example, there were some features like lakeside bunkers that I wanted to create more of at Pegasus, but some were ultimately eliminated due to cost. You potentially have to compromise to make the project work for a client’s budget or design ideas.
Have you ever been really disappointed by a compromise or have you always been able to stomach them?
The18th at Pegasus was somewhat disappointing, and I say that as maybe I’ll get to rectify it one day. It’s a long par-5, the longest in Canterbury (New Zealand)—about 555 meters from the tips. The drive was over a central bunker, which provided a great lie if you layed up in front, or a great roll if you flew it. Beyond are bunkers on the left that look reachable, but are only in play for very few. The bunker was removed as it was assessed as causing balls to fly right into the neighboring farmer’s trees. Members were pleased as they said they could all be in the bunker!
The approach shot played to a slightly elevated green with a bunker front right, as well as a lake behind the green, and a clubhouse was going to be built on the other side of the lake.
We were ahead of the clubhouse engineering and they ended up not having as much fill as they needed to raise the clubhouse up to its original design level. Even though we’d already shaped the green, we had to lower it, which meant the bunker on the right wasn’t elevated and visible. It was supposed to be a gorgeous vista, but now the horizon line has been lowered and where you’re going isn’t as visually defined. The 18th hole should be a fabulous finishing hole, and hopefully golfers simply enjoy playing what is there. It's a compromise fitting in with other disciplines, and this was an example of why programming is so important.
It’s not necessarily rare, but I’m very good at visualizing and drawing what I want to see, so I’m very happy if I can just give my plans to somebody for them to build. I don’t like to change my plans much on the ground and I find that if there’s a change or compromise, there’s a domino effect on other elements, so I try to avoid it.
I’ve also been lucky with materials on site. I haven’t come across terribly poor material, which is often a reason you have to change your design—if there’s rock underground, for example.
Course architects don’t always have control over how the clubhouse looks. Is it frustrating when you can’t give input there or are you happy to just focus on the course?
A bit of both. Sometimes clubhouse architecture comes along a little later in a project, but you like to have input in terms of how the building flows. There are things specific to clubhouses that are different from other sporting facilities. A lot comes down to the budget of the club.
In your opinion, what is the most enjoyable part of the process of golf course design and the most dreadful?
My favorite bits are being on site, then the actual drawing and figuring out how it’s all going to fit on the site. I’m also quite geeky about drainage because that’s often where there’s a bit of a challenge and a need for strategizing, depending on the nature of the site—whether it’s steep or flat. I also love the initial shaping of the dirt because once that’s done, I can see what it’s going to be when it’s finished.
I don’t know that I have a least favorite part. Perhaps the time it takes to communicate if you’re working with other people, engineers and such, if they don’t fully understand the golf course design process. It can be difficult to explain certain things in a specialist drawing to someone who has never worked on a golf project before.
Do you shape or do you have shapers that you direct?
I’ll have a go on diggers, dozers, and Sand Pros, but I then hop off pretty quickly. I work with great guys that make it look so easy. They work with a dozer or a digger and it’s like they’re carving through butter, creating these beautiful shapes. Then I do it and get the blades stuck in the ground. My practical involvement is usually limited to assisting with finishing the green surface with the rake.
Does it feel like hosting someone at your home when people play one of your courses? I imagine it would.
Yes, it’s a great feeling. Frank Lloyd Wright said that a young architect should always do their first design miles away from where they live so they don’t have to drive past their mistakes every day. However, with Pegasus, I feel that it’s a great course that fulfilled the client brief. It’s a very thinking person’s course—obviously you can play it without thinking—but if you follow the strategy and the yardage book and you learn about the slopes and contours, you can really enjoy it more. I’ve heard many times over the years that players of all tee sets enjoy playing it, which means a lot. You feel like a part of you is there, as do the construction team. You know you have owners and people who work on the course every day, so you hand it over when you’re finished, and it belongs to them and the members as well.
Are you happy not to have to drive by any of your courses every day?
I think I’m proud of all my work actually. I’ve been lucky to have been taught well and work with good people, good shapers, and good construction companies. Things have largely gone smoothly. And I’ve pretty much always been able to have achieved one thing that’s important to most architects, which is great finishings and tie-ins—just having the whole course harmonious in design, everything looking like it belongs and is all part of the same picture. You do leave a course with the club, the superintendent, and the members and hope that long-term they understand the vision and philosophy.
Do you have any rituals that you do before working on a course? For example, do you have a particular notebook, wear certain boots, etc.?
I have a little pack of things that I organize before I’m off. It’s all about being prepared, so I have a topo plan with me and a notebook and I do always wear the same boots until I wreck them. And a hat. It is pretty much the same each time. I have a different notebook for each project I’m working on.
I definitely need to walk the course by myself. When you walk with other people they share their thoughts, and in a renovation its helpful of course to know what problems need solving. I often get quite quiet and people ask what I’m thinking and I’m like, “Can you just be quiet while I think about it?” You zone out picturing what would look and play great, and you don’t necessarily have an immediate answer or immediately see what the issues will be. I like to be able to mull everything over and come up with a couple of ideas before I share anything. It’s not that I fear being wrong, it’s just that once you’ve planted a seed in someone’s head that they might think sounds perfect and you don’t want to have to change their mind, so I just like to be very thorough and then clearly present my ideas and what’s going to work best.
Do you keep your notebooks in an archive or are they scattered?
I would love to be organized. Notebooks and drawings a bit scattered but they are all in one place: my house. They’re a bit messy and scribbly, but being a designer, I’ve always loved paper, drawing, and writing, and I still do all my design by hand and have it put into CAD (which is the shortened acronym for Computer Assisted Golf Course Design) by specialists. I can get the contour lines smoother when I do it by hand.
CAD barely existed when I was at university and working in Singapore. There were already CAD specialists when I started. I was employed for my design expertise rather than to work in CAD, and I still haven’t learned. I just love drawing and enjoy that more than sitting in front of a computer.
It’d be great to make a coffee table book or something out of your drawings one day.
I have a friend, Paul Daley, at Full Swing Publishing who does books like that so I just might!
How do you approach making your courses environmentally friendly?
I’ve been a sustainability associate for Golf Environment Organization (GEO), verifying courses, which introduced me to more ideas along those lines. One of the main things I do is use native vegetation or species that will grow in the local climate—it’s often more beautiful and creates variety and unique character. It’s become a bit of a trend for courses to have a smaller footprint than championship courses of the 1980’s and -90’s, rather than continually making them longer for technological advancements in equipment, and wider in an effort to increase the safety in adjacent areas. If something is long, wider safety barriers are needed. Focusing more on the technical playability of the course can reduce the need for that extra space, and therefore use less land and water.
Was there already a movement toward being environmentally conscious when you started or did you have to adjust?
It wasn’t really a thing when and where I started in Asia. We didn’t think much about water because it wasn’t exactly scarce there. And since it was Asia, you just had a bunch of beautiful flora you could incorporate into the design that was suited to the climate and location. My colleagues working in Australia at the time may have had to consider sustainability and water usage more in areas subject to drought. The movement more so took off in the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s.
Kristine collaborating with Lianwei Zhang on Caesars Golf Macau in 2016
The name of your firm, Kura Design, is a reference to the Maori word for beauty in relation to land. What was the motivation behind that decision?
It’s a symbolic word, and also relates to school and learning. I’d consulted a cultural advisor and I take stewardship of the land very seriously—it’s one of the fundamental reasons why I do what I do. You want to create something beautiful that does the land proud, but doing so also means looking after local resources and using them well.
Pegasus, the course I did in Christchurch, is built on a significant site in terms of early habitation, with the uncovering of the “southern-most kumara growing patch” in New Zealand. The adjacent Pegasus town site was sacred in Maori history and prior to construction a karakia, or blessing ceremony, was undertaken. Archaeologists were on site full-time, and findings were respected and in those areas integrated into the design of the course.
New Zealand is a pretty young country. The Maori arrived here some 700 hundred years ago, though. A people called the Moriori resided here prior. Europeans have been here nearly 200 years. If a site is historic, we work with local iwi and cultural advisors, and of course respect any regulations regarding land use, excavation, earthworks, water usage, etc.
Do you remember what artifacts were found at the Pegasus site?
One was not so much an artifact but the burial site of a female ancestor, who was wrapped in a feather cloak, regarded by people in the society, so we left that section of land untouched and protected it. There was a ceremony held for her and the local iwi know she’s there. A Pa site, which is a historic fortified settlement that was the scene of some fighting. We were going to carve the land down—it was the start of a fairway playing across a gully—but instead covered it over with more soil and planted native flaxes and vegetation on top to retain it. There were also areas—middens—where Maori would gather to eat seafood, recognizable by shells.
You were the first woman member of the Society of Australian Golf Course Architects. Did you feel welcomed? Are there other women in it now?
It was all quite seamless really, and it’s a little bit cheeky of me to say “the first woman” because I’d applied, but because I’m a New Zealander, I wasn’t actually supposed to be allowed in. Back then, the rule was that you either had to be Australian, working in Australia, or working for a member of the society, and I was doing none of those things. But the secretary at the time wasn’t aware and encouraged me to join and I’d known most of the members for twenty years by that point, so I applied. But they all knew I’d been working in golf so they were all welcoming in the end.
There are now two women—myself and Lyne Morrison. We actually both started working in golf for the same company—Nelson & Wright in Singapore—at different times. We’ve both done a lot of work, worked with good people, and we know what we were doing, and they’re a friendly bunch so we all get on well.
Are you two close or do you just happen to be two people of the same gender in a group?
We’re just two women in a large group, but we often room together when we’re traveling to golf society meetings, which are usually in Australia, and then the guys room together. But we live in different countries, and as golf architects, we’re pretty independent people so we just get on with our jobs.
How does it feel to have women’s professional tournaments being played at courses you designed or worked on? I know Laura Davies was complimentary about Pegasus when she played it for the New Zealand Women’s Open.
I always appreciate good feedback. Laura Davies is amazing so that was an honor. I haven’t designed a course that has held a men’s tournament, but one of the last courses I worked on with Gary Player was in China, and it hosted the National China Games as well as the Youth Olympics. So it’s nice to be regarded highly enough to design the sites of important tournaments.
What can women gain from or contribute to designing courses?
Being an architect who’s designed tournament courses but also a woman who plays with their mom and other elderly women, I very much understand the difference between playing from the tips and the forward tees. My mom hits the ball a long way, but not everybody does. I had a cousin who was eighty-two and still playing—she was a member at one of the courses I recently renovated. She said, “Kris, I play along the ground so please leave the first 120 meters or so clear for me.”
To a lot of the men designers of the past, the ladies’ tee, as they called it, was simply moved ahead of the back tees. They didn’t think about where the hazards were in relation. It’s important that a hazard be in play so you can either take on the challenge and feel a sense of reward if you succeed, or stay safe but maybe not score as well. That’s the point of the game.
You’ve worked on forty different courses all over the world—in Singapore, China, Malaysia, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, New Zealand. How has the experience of traveling the world to design golf courses influenced you as a person?
You learn so much. I’m super glad I went to Saudi Arabia, for example. Like many things, reality is different from things we see in the media. They’re very kind, generous people, and a lot of the people I met were thrilled to have us constructing the kinds of quality courses they had only experienced elsewhere on holiday. I only lived there a year and a half, but people were super friendly and I made what I believe will be lifelong friends. They were also very respectful of women really, but obviously the people I worked with were well educated and had traveled quite a lot. I found it a safe, fun place to be, and they’ve really embraced golf so it’s a fascinating time to be there.
I worked on a project that was part of Vision 2030, aiming to reduce the reliance of the Saudi economy on oil and transition toward other revenue means including tourism, example, and therefore golf. There are something like seven courses there now, and they have some of the largest desalination plants in the world. Seashore paspalum, which is a salt tolerant grass, is used widely, largely on coastal courses. They are working closely with the GEO to incorporate sustainability. And young people are embracing these programs and they're providing a lot of opportunities for young Saudis that aren’t available to young people in other parts of the world. It’ll be a somewhat different place in ten years’ time.
What is the project you’re most proud of?
I think because Pegasus was the first one I did on my own, it feels almost like a first born baby. It’s sort of special. But one of my favorite projects ever was working with Nelson & Haworth at Shan-Shui in Sabah, Malaysia. It was carving through palm plantations, so we weren’t cutting into native bush, and wound through such spectacular scenery and undulating countryside, and a river with a resident crocodile.
I know you’ve played some amazing courses like Kauri Cliffs, Bearwood Lakes, Shinnecock, and Baltusrol. Are there any courses you’re still dying to play?
Many! I’ve visited Pine Valley but haven’t played it. That would be one of my top five bucket list courses. Next I’d like to play in Iceland, Hawaii, and the California coast, especially on the Monterey Peninsula.
What is an experience you would love to eventually incorporate into your career?
I think it’d be great to work on a course where a much bigger tournament is going to be played, maybe something in the U.S., just because there is such a big market there, such scope, and such a big following. Americans, somewhat similar to Australians, are just so enthusiastic about sport. And that’s what’s fun about golf: in addition to being a field of architecture, it’s a sport, so there are many industries related to it.
What advice would you give to women, both younger and older, who want to pursue golf course design?
It’s a relatively small profession so you’re going to have to be passion driven and perhaps opportunity driven. There are certain skills you need to have beyond a love of golf, such as the ability to draw or to somehow communicate what you want to see. Alternatively, you might be the one to come up with a concept and someone else does the technical stuff for you. And in terms of economy, there has to be opportunity there, which can be cyclical. When I started in the ‘90’s, there were a number of larger firms, but since then they’ve become a lot smaller and more numerous. Timing is also important. And my, not willingness, but desire to travel is also something that worked to my advantage. But like any career, you just need to find your niche and the right people to work with.
Final funny or weird stories from your career? If so, please share!
Hmm, the ones that immediately come to mind involve drinking…
Here’s one: the Pegasus site had previously been farmland and still was when we were doing the planning. Two guys from the company and I arrived on site and there was this fat, wooly sheep stuck halfway through a barbed wire fence—it didn’t know whether to go backwards or forwards. I ended up holding the wires apart while the guys pulled it out. So that was my welcome to golf course design in New Zealand.
Photos used with permission from Kristine Kerr