He was a student of golf course designer Pete Dye, although perhaps his greatest influence comes from Alister MacKenzie (about whom Doak wrote a book), designer of Cypress Point, Royal Melbourne, and consultant to Bobby JonesatAugusta National. In 2007, Doak restored Alister MacKenzie's home course, Pasatiempo, a Golf Magazine Top 100 course located in Santa Cruz, California.
Doak is the author of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses which is a guide to famous and obscure golf courses around the world. The original version of the book was intended for a select group of friends and golf course architects. The sanitized version became a coffee table book which also included Doak's photography. Despite being toned down, the book includes several extremely critical reviews of golf courses and alienated several well-regarded golf course architects. For example, in his entry for Talamore Golf Club in Pinehurst, North Carolina, designed by Rees Jones, Doak wrote that the "dull layout" made him "want to spit."
Doak attended Cornell University after a semester at MIT where he studied Design and Landscape Architecture.[4][5] After graduating Cornell, he won the Dreer Award from the Department of Floriculture and Horticulture. He used the Dreer Award to travel to Great Britain and Ireland, between 1982 and 1983, to study their best golf courses. He caddied at St. Andrews during the summer of 1982.
Doak is a "minimalist" designer. Minimalism is a school of golf design that focuses on concentrating the design of a golf hole (or routing) around the natural features of the land. His most successful courses have been built on sand dunes, taking advantage of the sandy soil for drainage and also allowing for the reuse of native elements.
Doak's first course, High Pointe Golf Club near Williamsburg, Michigan, opened in 1989.[6] The course closed in 2008 and is expected to reopen in 2024.[7]
Doak credits most of his accomplishments and success to golf course designer Pete Dye. Doak worked with Dye to learn how to construct golf courses during graduate school. Doak was exposed to several different schools of design on multiple continents in a variety of conditions. Jim Urbina taught him how to run a bulldozer allowing Doak to think in three dimensions and how to use the materials around him.[8]
In 2015 he announced he would spend a significant amount of time during the ensuing few years, researching for a new edition of his book, The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses.[9]
The Life and Work of Dr. Alister MacKenzie New Pop Music, Pop Music Videos, Pop News - Clock Tower ISBN978-1-58536-018-5 (2001) by Tom Doak, James S. Scott, Raymund M. Haddock, Ray Haddock, and James Scott
Tom Doak's Little Red Book of Golf Course Architecture (2017)
