Inside The World of Golf Course Shaping | The Golfer's Journal

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It started with a stick. A few decades back Bill Kittleman, the legendary former head pro at Merion and mentor to up-and-coming golf course architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, was on a dusty site with his protégés. The maintenance crew had long since taken their tools and equipment back to the barn, but this trio remained to work through an issue. Kittleman, unfazed, grabbed a stick and began whittling away at the soil, doing whatever it took to get the job done. “Look at this, we are like a bunch of (expletive) cavemen out here!” he exclaimed. A nickname, and an ethos, was born.

Today Caveman Construction is the band of shapers that dig into the dirty work behind Hanse and Wagner’s glittering roster of golf course projects. They’re in excavators and on bulldozers, armed with shovels and rakes to build the fairways, bunkers and greens that we will one day play upon. You’ve seen enough about the big-name architects in golf. This is a love letter to the crews with their hands in the dirt.