Robert Trent Jones Sr: the sun never sets

Who he was

Robert Trent Jones was born on 20 June 1906 in Ince-in-Makerfield, England, to Welsh parents. At five or six he emigrated with them to the United States, arriving in East Rochester, New York. He caddied at The Country Club of Rochester and took a job as golf professional at Sodus Bay Heights, near Sodus Point.

He met Donald Ross as a youth and, once he took up the game, recorded the best score of any amateur at the 1927 Canadian Open.

How he came to design

At Cornell University he followed a customised course of study that let him pursue his interest in golf architecture, and he designed nine holes of the university course. He then went into business with the Canadian architect Stanley Thompson, designing courses in Canada, before setting up on his own in the United States in the 1930s.

Shortly after the Second World War came his first major commission, Peachtree Golf Club in Atlanta, in collaboration with Bobby Jones, who later asked him to redesign the 11th and 16th holes at Augusta National. To avoid confusion with Bobby, he soon began to go by his middle name, Trent.

His design ideas

His most quoted line is simple: “Follow the land,” he said famously, “don’t change the land.” He considered architecture an art form, not a science. Real Club de Golf Sotogrande summarises his philosophy as courses perfectly integrated in their natural setting, a great challenge for the best players yet affordable and fun for everyone.

The scale of the work was part of his legend. He designed or redesigned more than 500 courses in 45 US states and 35 countries, and took pride in saying that “the sun never sets on a Robert Trent Jones golf course.”

In 1990 he was commissioned to design 18 courses in Alabama, the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, the largest single golf design contract in history. Both his sons, Robert Jr. and Rees, became golf course architects.

On ULTIMATE Golf

Real Club de Golf Sotogrande was inaugurated in 1964 and was his first course in Europe. In his 1988 book he chose it as one of his five favourites among the more than 500 he designed. In 1994 King Juan Carlos I granted the club the title Royal.

Nearby, Real Club Valderrama was built under his architectural guidance; it hosted the 32nd Ryder Cup in 1997, where Europe won with Seve Ballesteros as captain.

Further along the coast, Real Club de Golf Las Brisas gives its design date as 1968, with a reconstruction by Kyle Phillips in 2015 and landscaping by the Englishman Gerald Huggan, who filled the course with trees and plants from every continent.

Los Naranjos was designed as a second course just north of Las Brisas, with wide fairways and strategically placed bunkers and water. Higuerón Marbella Golf Resort runs through olive groves, with raised greens guarded by bunkers and several lakes.

In Florida, Flamingo Island at Lely Resort is a par 72 of 7,095 yards that opened to the public in 1989; its signature hole is the par-3 fifth, 200 yards over water.

He died on 14 June 2000, aged 93. His final course, Southern Highlands, was completed in 1999.

Our advice: play two of his Spanish courses back to back, Sotogrande and Las Brisas, and the family hand shows in the way each sits so quietly in its landscape.