1906–2000 · United Kingdom / United States · The Father of Modern Architecture
Robert Trent Jones Sr. was born in 1906 in Ince, England, and emigrated to the United States as a child. He built roughly 500 courses across 45 countries — more than any architect before or since. If Donald Ross gave America its local golf identity, RTJ gave it ambition. His courses were big, bold, and designed to test the best players in the world under championship pressure.
Jones studied at Cornell, where he crafted his own curriculum in landscape architecture, agronomy, and engineering when no formal golf architecture program existed. He collaborated briefly with Stanley Thompson in Canada before striking out on his own. By the 1950s, he was the most in-demand architect on earth. He remodeled courses for U.S. Opens and worked with Robert Moses to bring public golf to New York. His sons, Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Rees Jones, both became prominent architects in their own right — the only family dynasty in the profession.
He was awarded the ASGCA's Donald Ross Award in 1988, inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2013, and left a portfolio so vast that you've probably played an RTJ course without even knowing it. He died in 2000 at age 93, having shaped more dirt than anyone in the history of the game.
Jones's calling card was the "heroic" school of architecture: a hard par is a good par. He believed golf should reward bold, aggressive play but punish the timid or poorly executed. His trademark was the long runway tee — elongated teeing grounds that let superintendents shift the tee markers forward or back by 50 yards or more, transforming a hole's character overnight. A par 3 could play 160 yards on Tuesday and 230 on Sunday. It was a simple, brilliant way to make courses adaptable for both member play and championship conditions.
Water was his favorite hazard, and he used it dramatically. Forced carries over ponds and lakes became his signature — the approach shot you had to hit, the tee shot you couldn't bail out on. He also popularized the "risk-reward" par 5 where going for the green in two meant clearing water or bunkers. His greens were large, boldly contoured, and fast — designed to receive long-iron approaches in the era before graphite shafts and 460cc drivers.
Critics called his work formulaic — long par 4s, island fairways, water left — but Jones was building for tournament golf, for television, for the professional game as it was exploding. He didn't design courses to be charming. He designed them to identify the best player. And for 40 years, that's exactly what they did.
Rank #6 · Pebble Beach, CA · Coastal
Rank #18 · Southampton, Bermuda · Coastal
Rank #48 · Ponte Vedra, FL · Coastal
Spyglass Hill (1966) is Jones's masterpiece — carved through Monterey Peninsula dunes for the first five holes, then climbing into the Del Monte Forest for an inland test that Nicklaus called the hardest opening stretch in tournament golf. It's been part of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am rotation since 1967. Mauna Kea (1964) on the Big Island of Hawaii invented the modern resort course, with ocean views from every hole and lava-rock hazards that redefined tropical golf. Hazeltine National (1962) hosted two U.S. Opens and a Ryder Cup, though it's been heavily remodeled by Rees Jones. Congressional Country Club's Blue Course remodel (1957) gave it the teeth to host U.S. Opens and PGA Championships. Firestone South (remodel, 1959) became a PGA Tour fixture, and his work at Oakland Hills and Baltusrol (Lower) prepped those courses for major championships that entered golf legend.