OUR FOUNDER
Classically trained as a golf course architect, Randolph (“Randy”) Russell’s unique skill set makes him the perfect choice to design any golf course. During his tenure as a design associate for Ron Kirby’s and Gary Player’s design firm, Randy was schooled in the mechanics as well as the artistry of golf course architecture. Now considered to be one of the finest practical artisans in the industry, Randy’s experiences designing and building Ferdinand Marcos’ personal course in the Philippines and working on the first course built on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, set this burgeoning architect solidly on his exciting career course.
His experiences at Gary Player’s and Ron Kirby‘s architecture firm are often thought of as the genesis of his career, but Randy’s life long study of great American courses actually began when he was a class A PGA professional at both Winged Foot Golf Club and Bel-Air Country Club.
British Amateur and to study, among others, the Old Course at St. Andrews, Troon, Muirfield, and Alwoodly.
Family life put Randy on a new path and for nearly twenty years, he became responsible for the management and operations of the City of Austin’s five golf courses. Through an inventive approach to management and to operations, Randy turned an annual Three Hundred Thousand Dollar negative balance sheet to a profit in less than two years time. As one of the original and most vigilant areas of environmental activism, Randy’s background in agronomy allow him to aggressively address areas of concern of local Austin environmentalists, even becoming the first to develop a turfgrass management plan and thus setting the standard to obtain golf course construction permits from the City of Austin. Working inside such an intense bureaucracy has given him the skills to successfully work with and more importantly to avoid scrutiny of both local and national environmental agencies. Still during these years, Randy’s passion for design pushed him to find the time to take on individual projects including the remodel of Swope Memorial Golf Course, a classic Tillinghast design, and the new course design of the Roy Kizer Golf Course.
Randy’s zeal for architecture could no longer be satisfied with periodic projects, so in 1998, Randy began to collaborate with various other individuals, including Tom Kite, Lee Trevino and Roy Bechtol, to create some of the most exciting and beautiful golf courses in North America. This season brought extensive collaboration with some of the best developers and land planning firms in the country and has provided Randy with the ability to understand and seamlessly connect the real estate experience with the golf experience. Skilled at working in varied conditions including the challenging, rocky terrain of Central Texas, Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains and the equally challenging flats of South Texas and Northern Louisiana, Randy’s background coupled with his unique appreciation for the game, as well as, divine and indescribable inspiration has proven to be the backbone of every RussellGolf Design, LP project.
Switching seasonally between seaboards and working for Claude Harmon and Eddie Merrins, Randy not only refined his personal mastery of the game but awakened to the mastery of the some of the game’s greatest architects like Tillinghast, Thomas, and Ross. His love for the game flourished into a deeper understanding of what a golf course should be, and in the words of former mentor Merrins, a golf course is “a place where people gather to enjoy the game in a beautiful setting…there's hardly a lovelier place anywhere.” This passion and yearning to learn from the old masters pushed him to make many a transatlantic voyage to play in the