Bobby Weed

With more than 40 years of experience and involvement with more than 50 new golf course builds and renovations, Bobby Weed has carved out one of the more quietly successful careers in modern golf course design. Born in South Carolina, Weed was educated at Presbyterian College in South Carolina as well as Lake City (Fla.) Community College, an institution with a history of supplying talent to the turf and architecture sectors of the golf industry.

Like many of his contemporaries, Weed claims Pete Dye as a major influence on his career. In 1981, Weed assisted Dye in the design and construction of Long Cove Club on Hilton Head Island, S.C., and would collaborate on several more courses with Dye over the years, including Dye’s Valley at TPC Sawgrass.

In 1983, Weed established his own practice, Bobby Weed Golf Design, and he served as the PGA Tour’s in-house architect starting in 1987. Regular PGA Tour venues TPC River Highlands and TPC Summerlin are Weed's creations. He has 17 total original designs to his credit, including acclaimed courses like The Olde Farm in Bristol, Va., and the Slammer And Squire course at World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Fla. His StoneRidge Golf Club in suburban Minneapolis is one of the area’s top public courses. He also designed Michael Jordan’s GROVE XXIII, which opened in early 2020.

Weed has also renovated and restored dozens of other courses, including significant reconfigurations of courses like White Manor Country Club in Pennsylvania and Cobblestone Creek Country Club in Lawrenceville, N.J., where Weed rerouted the layout to accommodate the sale of 14 acres of original course land. He has restored several original Donald Ross designs as well, including Linville Golf Club in North Carolina and Palma Ceia Golf & Country Club in Tampa, Fla.

Weed has lent his expertise to several accessible public courses as well. Palatka Golf Club in north-central Florida is a sporty layout that hosts the annual Florida Azalea amateur tournament, and the East and West courses at Jacaranda Golf Club are among South Florida’s best daily-fee options.
Dye’s influence can be seen throughout Weed’s portfolio, as well as a respect for classic American design. At the Golf Course at Glen Mills, a highly-rated public facility outside Philadelphia, several undulating, oval-shaped greens reward the player who takes care to create advantageous angles for approach shots. The variety of bunker sizes, from large areas to tiny pot bunkers, also reminds of Dye’s distinctive work, while the shaping of the greens echoes Golden Age architects like Ross and A.W. Tillinghast.

In 2015, Weed renovated Medalist Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla., on whose original design which Pete Dye and Greg Norman collaborated in 1995. In the tradition of Dye's pioneering design/build philosophy, Weed spent months living on the site and handcrafting the new features of the golf course himself.

In addition to his golf course design work, Weed and his wife Leslie founded the HEAL Foundation, which has raised more than $2 million for various services to benefit families with children who have autism.