Lido Contest
Think you could design a great golf hole? You can win thousands of dollars if your entry is chosen in the 2023 Lido Contest
Royal Melbourne
For aspiring golf course architects and other design fans looking to exercise their creative gene, hope springs eternal. Coincidentally, spring is the season for the annual Ray Haddock Lido Prize design competition sponsored by the California-based Alister MacKenzie Society.
Nearly every year since 1998, the society has beckoned architecture aficionados to design a golf hole in a manner that reflects the style of Alister MacKenzie. The winner of the contest, selected by guest judges like Nick Faldo, Arnold Palmer, Ben Crenshaw, Mike DeVries, Kyle Phillips, Jim Urbina and Todd Eckenrode, receives a cash prize of $3,000, plus an additional $2,000 for travel costs if they can attend the Society gathering and award ceremony, this year at Cork Golf Club in Ireland. Submissions must be submitted by May 1.
Cork Golf Club
The hole to be designed this year is a par 4 between 360 and 460 yards. There are no additional requirements or restrictions other than it be drawn by hand. Generally, the more detail the better (including overview, elevations, green details, etc.), and primary consideration is given to how well the entry represents the thought process and tenets that guided MacKenzie’s own design ideas during his architecture career that spanned from 1905 until his passing in 1934.
The contest was created to commemorate the original design competition sponsored by Country Life Magazine in 1914. MacKenzie, not well-known at the time, won the contest after submitting forking-path par 4 that provided different routes to the green for players of different skills, including daring carries that allowed for the best chance at making a three or four. Architect C.B. Macdonald was so impressed with MacKenzie’s design, he built a version of it for the 18th hole at the now extinct Lido course he was constructing on Long Island. Tom Doak has resurrected an exact reproduction of the 18th at The Lido at Sand Valley, opening this summer.
Bo Links' 2022 winning design.
Returning contestants will have renewed hope of winning the MacKenzie Society’s contest this year: four-time winner Bo Links, coming off back-to-back victories in 2021 and 2022, will not be competing in 2023.
For full details and rules for the 24th Ray Haddock “Lido Prize” competition, visit mackenziesociety.org.
