Buckeye, Arizona USA — October 28th, 2019 Describing it as “an amazing site,” golf course architect Forrest Richardson confirms his new 12-hole, all par-3, design will move forward in the desert southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. The course, dubbed ‘On the Rocks’ as a working title, will be built as part of a luxury recreational vehicle park approved in Buckeye, Arizona. The developer, RV Park and Campground Investors LLC, has planned the park with 800 spaces to serve the growing economy of high-end motorhome and travel trailer owners who migrate south to Arizona each winter, taking advantage of the state’s [...]

(Lake Tahoe, California) October 5th, 2020 Forrest Richardson, ASGCA was selected by California State Parks earlier this year to develop a conceptual plan to reconfigure and make improvements to the 60-year old, 18-hole golf course that is part of the popular Lake Valley State Recreation Area. This important design phase is now completed with next steps in the hands of the State Parks. Lake Tahoe Golf Course was originally built in 1961 to a design by William F. Bell, ASGCA. The original 9-holes was then expanded and eventually the land was acquired in 1985 by the State of California [...]

Golf Course Architects Forrest Richardson and Jeffrey Danner have launched LandBalanceTM, a land planning and design division to service their growing list of golf clientele. LandBalance will specialize in golf-related land planning work for course owners including reconfiguration, downsizing and related land use decisions. “We’ve always been heavily involved in land planning involving golf properties,” says Forrest Richardson. “The LandBalance brand allows us to separate these services where it benefits our clients and the planning process.” Richardson’s early work with Gosnell Builders became a defining point in his career, ushering in opportunities to work with developers on land decisions that [...]

Article by Forrest Richardson is reprinted with permission from The Golfer’s Journal (2020) about Golf Course Architect Desmond Muirhead, one of Forrest Richardson’s mentors At fifteen years of age I learned a great lesson. Don’t write about golf architecture unless you’ve personally visited the course and studied it in detail. My misstep occurred in June 1974. The writing was about Bay Valley Resort’s (Michigan) 15th hole, a par-3 with a 100-yard long curve shaped tee. “You really made a blunder there,” came the biting words of Desmond Muirhead. “You missed the whole point of the concept. It’s not about [...]

July 29th, 2019 (Los Angeles, California) After eight months of work, the nine-hole Roosevelt Course operated by the City of Los Angeles has re-opened for public play. The City of Los Angeles Golf Division, operators of 12 courses in central Los Angeles, undertook extensive irrigation work along with feature and landscape restoration. “Many people have learned to play golf at Roosevelt,” notes Forrest Richardson. “Bringing the course back into shape as it once was became a labor of love for those of us involved.” Richardson, who grew up in nearby Burbank, California, worked with Heritage Links on the assignment [...]

by Forrest Richardson, ASGCA Sometimes when meeting with course owners and committees it comes out that, in my previous life, I was a well-respected designer of corporate brands and a copywriter of all things marketing and advertising. From the early 1980s, for twenty years, I manipulated the printed page, anguishing over the spacing between letters (this is called kerning), the cropping of photographs and the exact color that would be best for a brochure about cell phone accessories. I was an art director who could form sentences and write. Better put, I was a creative director. About midway through my [...]

Golf Inc. Magazine (Summer 2019, Excerpted) Richardson has a prediction about what's on the horizon for golf. “The course of the future,” he wrote in an e-mail, “may look like what we think of golf today, but it will be far more entertaining and connected.” It’s a future that Richardson welcomes. From one perspective, his career has followed a predictable architectural arc: He carved out backyard courses as a boy, studied the masters in Scotland and served an apprenticeship with an established designer. But since he set out on his own in 1988, he’s challenged the conventional wisdom, evangelizing for [...]

Golf Inc. Magazine has announced their list of the “Most Innovative People In Golf,” a list of nine professionals covering the world of golf from management to agronomy. Among the prestigious list is golf course architect Forrest Richardson. Richardson was selected for his forward thinking on such aspects of the game as the promotion of short courses and alternative course formats.