Bob Cupp: From Nicklaus Apprentice to Liberty National

Robert Erhard Cupp never set out to be a golf course architect. He earned a fine arts degree at the University of Alaska, picked up a turfgrass associate from Miami Dade College, and only later turned a draftsman's hand toward routing plans. By the time he died in 2016, the Lewistown, Pennsylvania native had put his name on more than 100 courses worldwide, including the host venue of the 2017 Presidents Cup.

Stymie tracks 35 Bob Cupp designs still open across 14 states, with the earliest dating to 1974 and the most recent finishing in 2004. The geographic reach is broad. He worked the Carolinas heavily, returned to Georgia again and again, and dropped routings into the Arizona desert, Oregon farmland, and Nevada's resort corridor.

The Nicklaus Years

Cupp's apprenticeship is what shaped the rest of his career. He joined Jack Nicklaus's design firm in the mid-1970s and stayed as senior designer through 1982, contributing to courses during the period when Nicklaus was building his reputation as a designer rather than just the player who beat Arnold Palmer. The mentorship gave Cupp a feel for routing rolling, naturalistic ground and an eye for putting surfaces that pushed back without tricking the player.

When he opened his own shop in Atlanta in the early 1980s, he carried those lessons forward. He also carried a willingness to collaborate. Few architects of his era partnered as often or as productively as Cupp did with touring pros and fellow designers.

The Collaborations That Defined Him

Cupp built his most famous courses with co-designers. Ghost Creek at Pumpkin Ridge, the public half of the North Plains, Oregon complex, came together with John Fought in 1992. It quickly landed on national best-public lists and has stayed there. Liberty National, the Jersey City property carved out of a former landfill across from the Statue of Liberty, was a Cupp and Tom Kite project that opened in 2006 and went on to host multiple PGA Tour events.

The Mississippi project with Jerry Pate produced Old Waverly, which hosted the 1999 U.S. Women's Open. Greg Norman joined him at Savannah Quarters. The list of partners reads like a tour player Rolodex, and the work held up because Cupp was the architect of record in every case, not the celebrity name.

The Solo Work

Some of Cupp's strongest courses on Stymie carry only his name. Ansley Golf Club's Settindown course in Woodstock, Georgia, stretches to 7,313 yards from the tips and carries a slope of 155, the highest among his designs in our database. It is a stern test on rolling north Georgia terrain and was once known as Settindown Creek, a Champions Tour venue.

The Robert Cupp Course at Palmetto Hall on Hilton Head Island is a 7,079-yard solo design with a 144 slope, built in 1993 when Cupp was experimenting with sharper geometric bunkering. Plantation Course at Reynolds Plantation on Lake Oconee was the original Reynolds layout, opening in 1988 and helping to launch what would become one of the Southeast's largest golf communities.

Further afield, Langdon Farms outside Portland and Council Fire in Chattanooga show his ability to route across both agricultural flatland and bluff country. Emerald Bay in Destin demonstrates how he handled tight Florida coastal corridors.

The Architect of the Year

In 1992, Golf World Magazine named Cupp its inaugural Golf Architect of the Year. The recognition came at the right moment, just as Ghost Creek opened to acclaim and his solo brand was solidifying. Two decades later, his peers elected him president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects for the 2012-13 term, an industry vote of confidence in a designer who had also become one of the field's most thoughtful voices.

The Writer

Cupp was unusual among architects in that he wrote. His 2007 novel "The Edict" reimagined the origins of golf in 15th-century Scotland, and his 2012 nonfiction book with Ron Whitten, "Golf's Grand Design," traced the evolution of American course architecture. The books were not vanity projects. They came from a designer who thought about the craft historically and wanted to put that thinking on paper.

He died on August 19, 2016, at age 76. The courses are his record. From Hilton Head to Hilo, from Atlanta city limits to the New Jersey waterfront, the Cupp catalogue keeps growing rounds played and tournaments hosted, which is the only metric that matters in the long run.

View all courses by Bob Cupp on Stymie