Arnold Palmer Golf Course Design Company Going Out of Business

For more than 50 years the Arnold Palmer Golf Course Design Company has designed and built 300 golf courses in 27 countries and 37 states for clients who were proud to display the Palmer name, but the company has shut down due to lack of business.

THE VILLAGES, Florida – The Arnold Golf Course Design Company, owned by the Palmer family, is going out of business according to published report in Golf Course Architecture, the definitive source of information for the golf course architecture industry.

One of the firm’s two lead architects, Thad Layton, has already opened his own new practice. The other, Brandon Johnson, is expected to do so shortly.

Since the death of Arnold Palmer in 2016, the company continued as an attempt to create a new type of business in the golf architecture market, which has traditionally been defined by the physical presence of the principal. In similar sectors, most notably buildings architecture, it is commonplace for brands to survive their founders, but there has, to date, been no significant example of a golf design firm doing so.

TPCBOSTON
TPC Boston was designed by Arnold Palmer Design Company in 2002 and the par 71, 7120-yard layout was redesigned in 2007 by Gil Hanse and Brad Faxon, and its most familiar to golf fans as it hosted the Deutche Bank Championship/ Dell Technologies Championship over Labor Day weekend from 2003 – 2018.

Arnold Palmer client courses were informed of the decision. Layton says that he and Johnson will continue to offer support to former Palmer clients, and that he is determined not to leave any such clients hanging and lacking architectural backup.

“Working for Mr Palmer was great,” Layton told Golf Course Architecture. “He allowed us a lot of artistic license and, since his death, Brandon and I have tried to continue evolving the Palmer name. But, like most golf architects, I have always wanted to have my own shop, so I am very excited about what the future holds.”

Layton, who relocated from Florida, where Arnold Palmer Golf Course Design Company was based, to Colorado four years ago, says that Thad Layton Design will reflect what he has learned during his twenty-plus years in the Palmer family. “I’m looking forward, hopefully, to getting the opportunity to build new golf courses, and getting out there, boots on the ground,” he says. “Over the years, I have become convinced that the design and build model is the way that the best courses are built and, in the past five years, I have slowly but surely gained proficiency on running equipment, and I’m looking forward to doing more of that.”

Layton adds that the current strength of the golf design industry makes now a good time to start his own firm. “Up to about three years ago, you would have been pretty crazy to leave a good operation with plenty of work to hang up your own shingle,” he says. “But, since the Covid pandemic, the growth in golf participation numbers has started to feed through to more activity in golf architecture, so I think now the right time to go solo.”

http://arnoldpalmerdesign.com/

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Bill Sangster, a life-long golf aficionado and former Sergeant in Marines, moved to Cape Cod in 1974 where he raised his family while working as educator with the Sandwich School System for 23 years. With his Falmouth home adjacent to Paul Harney’s Golf Course, Bill spent many days learning and playing the game of golf. He was a member of White Cliffs Country Club and Sandwich Hollows Country on Cape Cod. In 2018 he continued his love for the game of golf by moving to “The Villages” in Florida. He now will admit to anyone who asks that he is addicted to the game of golf! Bill can be reached at sangsterbill33@gmail.com.

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