Eddie Hackett (1910–1996)
was an Irish golf course architect.
Eddie Hackett was born in
Dublin, Ireland
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
in 1910. As a boy he suffered from
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
, the effects of which left him without the strength or stamina to play active sports. He began playing golf with his father, and as a teenager got a job at his home club
Royal Dublin Golf Club. By the 1930s, he had worked his way up as a golf professional, making clubs and competing in tournaments. In 1939, he became the head golf professional at
Portmarnock Golf Club.
Design philosophy
Unlike the better-known of Hackett's contemporary golf course architects like
Pete Dye and
Robert Trent Jones, who commonly move tons of soil to create their courses, Hackett worked like the architects of a bygone era, laying out a course on the land as he found it.
As Hackett said himself, "I find that nature is the best architect . . . I try to dress up what the Good Lord provides".
While his designs show his appreciation of the classic Scottish links where he refined his game, his own designs rarely include the forced carries or the blind shots sometimes found on older links such as
Carnoustie
Carnoustie (; ) is a town and former police burgh in the subdivisions of Scotland, council area of Angus, Scotland. It is at the mouth of the Barry Burn on the North Sea coast. In the UK census 2011, 2011 census, Carnoustie had a population of ...
or
Royal Troon.
The majority of Hackett's courses are true
links courses, defined by having been built on rolling, sandy ground adjacent to the sea, with native fescue grasses and few if any trees. This "linksland" (a word comes from the Old English 'hlinc' = rising ground) is ill-suited for farming or commercial use, and it was on linksland that the game of golf was developed over 500 years. Hackett also designed or revised a handful of parkland courses (inland, built on soil and frequently wooded).
Courses
Below is a partial list of courses which Eddie Hackett designed or modified.
:(
* Modified existing design)
Further reading
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hackett, Eddie
1910 births
1996 deaths
Golf course architects
Architects from County Dublin
20th-century Irish architects