A first-time Lido Prize winner designs a hole Alister MacKenzie would love

Of all golf course architects, Alister MacKenzie, who died in 1934, is the most entertaining to study.

The courses he left behind, from Cypress Point to Crystal Downs to Royal Melbourne and beyond, are consistently creative, engrossing and visually explosive. He pioneered a flamboyant style of bunkers and green shapes, the boldness of which still exists on the extreme even 90 years later.

He was also a prolific writer and essayist, full of wit, anecdotes and strong opinions. Ever the good read, he outlined his views on golf design as thoroughly (if somewhat wanderingly) as any other architect of his era. MacKenzie shared enough physical and narrative material that one can make a deep examination of his design philosophy without ever playing one of his courses.

This is the case with Robert Hoye of Dover, Mass., the 2025 winner of the Ray Haddock Lido Prize, the amateur design award the Alister MacKenzie Society gives annually to the drawing that best embodies the spirit and tenets of the architect.

“I’ve never played a MacKenzie course,” Hoye says, noting that he’s only walked Augusta National at the Masters. “There aren’t any of his courses up here in New England.”

Hoye had entered the Lido Prize competition eight times previously, but this is first win. Each year, he believes, as he more deeply read and studied MacKenzie, his entries became more refined. His training as a building architect (retired), has helped him get his increasingly cohesive MacKenzian ideas of golf holes on paper.

“My training was to draw by hand,” he says, “which was the way MacKenzie designed his holes.”

Contestants this year were asked to submit drawings of a par-4 hole. Hoye’s hole, measuring 315 to 370 yards, is defined by a split fairway and wide green protected in the center by a large, ornately shaped bunker.

Though centerline bunkers are not a predominant feature on MacKenzie courses, multiple playing angles into the green are. Josh Pettit, a Bay-area golf course designer and creator and editor of the comprehensive book The MacKenzie Reader who judged the competition, believed the old architect would approve of the contour shaping and the options of the enormous fairway.

Let’s take a closer look at the winning hole.

The first thing to notice is that Hoye placed the hole in an environment that doesn’t have a real life analog to the places MacKenzie actually worked. The hole runs along a mythical low coast along Cape Cob, with tall wooded drumlins bordering the left and behind the green and an estuary and salt marshes running the length of the right side, both common elements in coastal New England. This sets up a risk/reward tee shot over the marsh to a kind of island fairway on the right for strong player. This is the attack position.

Golfers not willing to attempt this tee shot have a closer fairway to play to left of the central bunker complex. MacKenzie usually offered shorter hitters room to play, granting them a clear opportunity to reach the green in three shots rather than two if they played conservatively. Here they can then lay up short left of the green with their second shot, or cross over to the right fairway if the third-shot angle is better from there.

Longer players may also choose the left-hand fairway depending on where the hole is located, pushing the drive closer to the green.

The size and shape of the green, with cascading tiers flowing from high-right to low-left, is very MacKenzie-like (he built greens like this at many courses including the original Augusta National design and Crystal Downs). It also provides dynamic hole placement.

If the flag is on the upper right side, the best angle of approach is from the left to utilize the full depth of the green—even a short or mishit approach would still find the putting surface. Alternately, aggressive players might still choose to drive to the right fairway since it will get them closer, leaving a short, controllable wedge to the tight pin.

When the hole is cut on the left, the driving option is more intriguing. Long players may opt to hit it as far up the left fairway as they can, although Hoye placed a small pot bunker left of the green to give them pause on downwind days. This hole location also gives shorter players a chance to run long second shots onto the green when the conditions are firm.

A left pin also gives players who drive up the right side more green to work with, though the downward slope of the putting surface demands they have full control of their spin.

The strategic permutations of the hole are like a matrix, making players think and make choices depending on course conditions, wind, hole location, standing in their match and confidence in their abilities. It the type of hole MacKenzie attempted to build whenever he had the right piece of land, though never quite like this.

In winning the Ray Haddock Lido Prize, Hoye has been awarded $3,000 from The Alister MacKenzie Society, and his name is now listed among other prominent winners like practicing designers Riley Johns, Thad Layton, Clyde Johnson and David Hoekstra, along with the likes four-time winner Bo Links. He has also been invited to the Society’s annual meeting, this year held at the MacKenzie-design Jockey Club in Brazil.