William F. Gordon

After World War II, golf course construction boomed in the United States, giving rise not just to world-traveling architects like Robert Trent Jones, Sr. and Pete Dye, but several prolific regional architects. While Geoffrey Cornish brought dozens of new golf courses to New England in the 1950s and 60s, William Gordon had a similar lasting effect on the Mid-Atlantic, and Pennsylvania in particular.

An accomplished mile runner when he was young, Gordon would serve in World War I as an athletics instructor. After the war, he worked in seed sales, then as a seed company’s construction superintendent, helping to build Golden Age golf courses designed by Willie Park, Jr., Devereux Emmet and Donald Ross. This would ultimately set him up to be one of the mid-century’s most accomplished regional architects.

In 1923, Gordon went to work for the golf course design firm established by Howard Toomey and William Flynn, who built several first-rate courses centered in the Philadelphia area, including Huntingdon Valley Country Club, Manufacturers Golf & Country Club and the Wissahickon Course at Philadelphia Cricket Club. Gordon worked with Toomey and Flynn until 1941.

Gordon spent much of the remainder decade building courses for Donald Ross and Ross’ associate J.B. McGovern. He would join both of them in co-founding the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA) in 1946.

He hung his own shingle in 1950, embarking on a quarter-century campaign in golf course design and renovation. In 1952, he took on his son David as his partner, and the father-son duo would co-design most of the golf courses that bear the family name until the time of William's death in 1974.
The Gordons’ golf courses were very much in the general style championed by Robert Trent Jones, calling for precision tee shots and approaches. Bunkers usually flanked the line of play, though William Gordon famously detested bunkers that sat behind greens, believing the specter of a slick downhill pitch back to the hole was punishment enough for such a miss. They worked on several private club courses, including Saucon Valley Country Club’s three courses, Sunnybrook Golf Club in Philadelphia and Stanwich Club in Greenwich, Conn. Notable public commissions include the Monocacy Course at municipally-owned Bethlehem (Penn.) Golf Club and the semi-private Deerfield Golf & Tennis Club in Newark, Del.

Although tastes in golf course design have shifted back to a more classic paradigm in recent years, the Gordons’ courses can be relied upon for solid, honest-to-goodness tests of golf that many golfers enjoy playing repeatedly. And in cases where their work has been changed (like at White Manor Country Club, revised by Bobby Weed in 2003), their course routings have often been left intact.