The Spirit of St. Andrews - Hardcover

MacKenzie, Alister

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886947007 ISBN 13: 9781886947009

Publisher: Wiley, 1995

Synopsis

There’s no question that Dr. Alister MacKenzie was one of the best golf course architects in the history of the game. Augusta National, Royal Melbourne, Cypress Point—among many other famous layouts—are proof of that fact.

In the mid-1990s, MacKenzie’s lost golf manuscript, written a year before his death in 1933, was found and finally published as The Spirit of St. Andrews.

Even all these years later, MacKenzie’s thoughts on such topics as the golf swing, rules, great courses and holes, and golfers are interesting and intuitive.

About this title

Review:

In 1933 Alister MacKenzie put on paper his considerable golfing knowledge. One of the game's most revered course designers--he conceived Augusta National, site of the Masters, and served the hallowed links of St. Andrews for years as consulting architect--MacKenzie synthesized his thoughts on golf's history, its equipment, its personalities, and his musings on what makes a great course and what makes a great hole, into a manuscript that lay hidden for more than 60 years. Finally available, it stands as one of the most courtly and cultivated treatises ever written on the royal and ancient game. His concepts of the psychology of design are as apt today as when he penned them, and his anecdotal spinnings on his own golfing trials should inspire anyone who's thought of picking up a club.

From the Publisher:

"If golf has had a true renaissance man, surely it was Alister MacKenzie....MacKenzie's prose sparkles as much today as it did 60 years ago."
--GOLF Magazine

"The Spirit of St. Andrews may have been written sixty years ago, but much of its content is timeless. MacKenzie never minces words, and his views on golf, golfers, and courses remind us that he was not only a brilliant architect but one of the most provocative characters the game has produced."
--George Peper, Editor-in-Chief, GOLF Magazine

"Alister MacKenzie believed that the chief object of a golf architect should be 'to imitate beauties of nature so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from Nature herself.' He showed us the way in this regard....I am lucky to have the book in my library."
--Michael Murphy, author of Golf in the Kingdom and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons

"In golf-as-religion circles, [the publication of The Spirit of St. Andrews] might be likened to the discovery of another Dead Sea scroll....It's a large dose of common sense about what makes a golf course interesting and fun."
--Wall Street Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1886947007
• ISBN 13: 9781886947009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288