Spartan Profiles: Ray Hearn
YOU DA ARCHITECT
He has been chased by boars in Alabama, attacked by rattle snakes and spiders in Costa Rica, and heaved by strong updrafts while fyling an ultralight plane over the Pacific Ocean. All these are par for the course for Ray Hearn, B.S. ’83, B.L.A. ’89, one of America’s rising golf architects. After serving 10 years a senior designer for Matthews & Associates, he founded Ray Hearn Golf Course Designs, Inc., Plymouth, in 1996. He proceeded to build a string of successes, such as the Grande Golf Club in Jackson and Hemlock in Ludington, named by Golf Digest as “Top Ten You Can Play” successively in 2002 and 2003.
Hearn has won national awards for Sea Oaks, Little Egg Harbor, NJ, where he adroitly combined elements from Augusta National and Pine Valley; for Mistwood, Romeoville, IL, a routing tour de force; and for Fox Hills Strategic Course in his hometown of Plymouth. Most recently, Yarrow in Augusta opened to rave reviews, while Macatawa Legends in Holland is sure to receive similar acclaim this fall.
"I never want anyone to look at a golf course and say ‘There's a Ray Hearn designed course,'” says Ray. “My goal is that each golf course maintain its own identity and remain true to the characteristics of the land it is built upon and the tenets important to its owner." That philosophy, combined with his sheer creativity in golf design, has landed Ray two plum national projects—a spectacular resort course in Queopos, Costa Rica, right next to a tropical rain forest, and a major 36-hole resort course in Franklin, CT, for which legendary name architects Tom Fazio and Pete Dye were also considered.
“I have the utmost respect for Fazio and Dye as designers, but every once in a while the young underdog wins,” he notes. “Thank goodness they picked me. They said they liked my design concepts and my passion.” Or, put another way that is familiar to golf fans, they let Ray know, “You da man!”
