Previous postings in my series about some of the world’s best golf course architects who have designed some of Thailand’s golf courses featured fierce tournament rivals, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Peter Thomson. Today’s post and the next is about two other golfers who often competed head to head in majors and who subsequently built up successful golf course design businesses: Nick Faldo and Greg Norman.

Turning 50 just last month, Nick Faldo is, unquestionably the greatest British golfer of the modern era, winning 39 titles worldwide including three British Open Championship titles, and a hat-trick of US Masters crowns. Appointed European Ryder Cup captain for 2008, Nick Faldo still holds the record as Europe’s leading point’s winner in the biennial contest against the USA.

Faldo established his own golf course design company, Faldo Design, in the early 1990s, right at the time when he was the world’s number one golfer. He has now worked on projects in more than a dozen different countries in five continents and there are award-winning Nick Faldo designed courses in such contrasting places as the United States, China, Germany, Canada, Vietnam, Thailand, England and Australia, and projects underway in Russia, The Dominican Republic, Ireland and Portugal. Despite the impressive and very internationally oriented expansion, ‘Faldo Design’ continues to place the emphasis firmly on ‘quality’ as opposed to ‘quantity’.

What sets Nick Faldo apart from the other great players of his generation was his innate ability to craft even the most challenging of golf shots and his instinctive appreciation for the varying demands of any given course. Faldo Design’s impressive portfolio reflects the adaptability and passion by which Faldo made his name on the golf course. He works closely with his team of architects on each individual project to create a finished product that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is uniquely demanding. Above all else, Faldo Design aims to offer golfers of all abilities an experience that will challenge, inspire and delight.

Tomorrow I will continue this post and review the Faldo golf courses in Thailand as well as reveal a big surprise about all of them.

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