Tim Lobb, Founder and Principal Golf Course Architect at Lobb and Partners, is celebrating twenty-five years in the golf design business, although he didn’t at first know he had reached the milestone!
“We are bidding for a job in Asia, and the client asked for a CV of my life and work,” he says. “In drawing up that resumé, I realised that it was exactly twenty-five years ago that I came into the industry, working for Ted Parslow in Malaysia. So I stopped to think about it, and on reflection, you cannot help but reflect on the way the business has changed since then.”
Environmental issues, Tim reckons, are the single biggest change since the 1990s. “We have improved our environmental sensitivity – and our understanding of sustainability generally – massively since I first came into the industry,” he says. “Additionally, I think architects are much more accountable for their designs these days. Back in the 1990s, some of the design work was really not very site-specific and was very cookie-cutter. Frankly, a lot of it was extremely over-the-top. I think there is much more understanding among architects now of the day-to-day issues of maintenance and management. Even designing greens has changed a lot. They have got bigger and faster, and there is more thought going into contours.”
But there is one thing, according to Tim, that is exactly the same now as it was in the middle-nineties. “I still hand-draw everything!” he laughs.
Lobb and Partners have offices in Woking, Surrey, UK and Whistler, British Columbia, Canada www.lobbandpartners.com