He's the Open Doctor who makes clubhouse calls, the golf architect who specializes in restoring a championship course's health for the Open.

Most golf architects search for a piece of land first, but Fownes designed his course on paper before looking for the land.

It was partially redesigned and rebuilt by noted golf architect Bobby Weed as part of a $4 million renovation project in 2001.

"We don't necessarily need to build these heroic monuments to the golf architects," Mr. Simmons said.

In 2006, Irvine enlisted the help of Martin Ebert, a golf architect.

As a widely selected species chosen by golf architects in the 1960s, it soon became apparent that the Poplar's very invasive roots destroyed land drainage systems.

And the answer was a golf architect.

In 1961, the couple visited and talked to noted golf architect Bill Diddle, who lived nearby.

"This course," the golf architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. was saying, "has always been a work in progress."

Both courses were modernized in recent years by Rees Jones, the golf architect who is known as the Open doctor.