Home> Dr. Alister MacKenzie

Alister MacKenzie (Dr Alexander McKenzie), was a Scottish family doctor and surgeon who abandoned medicine to work full-time on designing and redesigning dozens of golf courses all over the world. Some of the most famous are Cypress Point in California and with Bobby Jones, the Augusta National in Georgia, home of the US Masters, and Royal Melbourne in Australia.

Alister MacKenzie was a purist in golf course design and he would use all the natural benefits of the site he was working on. He strongly believed in retaining a natural appearance to a golf links, creating and shaping holes through the sand dunes and creating greens with subtle contours and movement rolling with the natural fall of the land.

Alister MacKenzie, in October 1927, began redesigning Lahinch Golf Course and transferred all the holes across the road to the sand side. A feature was elevated undulating greens, which required strategic placement of drives. Work at a cost of £2,000 was completed in the following summer when play was resumed.

In 1935, the committee, mainly at the instigation of John Burke, a member and a noted Amateur golfer and Walker Cup player, redeveloped the course. Because of the difficulties experienced by club players at that stage, many of the three tier greens were altered. New greens were built at the first and second and a new short third tee built to Burke's design.

As a result of these alterations, many of the McKenzie characteristics were lost. In 1999, golf course architect Mr Martin Hawtree was engaged to remodel the Old Course with a view to restoring the characteristics designed by MacKenzie. The fifth and final phase of this restoration has now been completed, and Lahinch Golf Club is very proud of its restored MacKenzie Course.