Harry Colt, the youngest of his 5 siblings, was born in Highgate North London in 1869, he spent his childhood summers learning the game of golf at the Worcestershire Golf Club.
Colt became an accomplished player, captaining Cambridge University’s golf team, making one appearance in The Open Championship in 1891 and reaching the Semi-Final of gthe Amateur Championship in 1906.
After being appointed secretary of Sunningdale Golf Club in 1901, he spent six years fine-tuning the course building quite a reputation.
In 1908 Nick Lane Jackson (universally known as 'Pa') recruited Colt to layout the course at his new 'Country Club' in Stoke Poges. Golf Illustrated wrote the following about the design of the Stoke Park Club.
❝There are several striking features about Stoke Poges links. Although the total length of the course is almost equal to that of any of the Championship courses, there is no hole of moe than 440 yards. There are no sandhills but there is a good deal of sand to be circumvented. Most students of golf architecture are well aqcuainted with Mr Colt's main lines of procedure, how he guards the green at every short hole, providing trouble for every golfer who does not drop the ball fair and square on the green. How he leaves open golf course on the fairway but puts in side bunkers where ill-placed shots will land, gradually narrowing the passage to the green. How he places high premium on putting, making every green undulating and difficult.❞
Over the next twenty years, Colt designed many courses across southern England including St. George’s Hill and Swinley Forest, both of which are still considered to be among the best in Britain today.
Colt teamed up with Dr Alister MacKenzie & Charles Hugh Alison in the early 1900's with MacKenzie moving on to America to build his own career a little later. In 1928 John Stanton Fleming Morrison joined the team to form Colt, Alison & Morison Ltd a group responsible for the creation of over 300 golf courses worldwide.
Colt had a clear design philosophy, his courses possess a meticulously thought-out routing with a key to creating memorable holes. Drilling down to the minute details of the golf hole, he favoured sand-faced bunkering (for visibility) and an asymmetrical arrangement of hazards.
A Colt green tended to not be wild, he preferred not to punish the golfer if they successfully avoided all the hazards leading up to the green. He believed the last thing they wanted when reaching the green was to find the putting surface to be a hazard itself.
The work of Colt and his associates is still celebrated today, not only by the millions of rounds of golf played on his courses each year, but by The Colt Association, who aim to preserve and communicate information about his designs. Frank Pont, a Dutch golf architect, summed up Colt's work by saying “If something looks strange or out of place on a Colt course, it’s been changed.”
Harry Colt’s own designs are renowned to have pioneered golfing architecture across the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia, but it is the influence he had on other designers that propelled him into legendary status.
