John, good luck.
May be this can help:
We have lots of people come into the office to meey with Doug or myself, we enjoy the enthusiasm and interest they show. Again, we have lots! We hire in frequently, but it comes down to two things. 1. Can they help us (sorry its a friggin' business whether we like to admit it or not) 2. will they fit in. Let me explain because this is important.
Fit in means:
1. are the comitted to learning
2. they realize they have a lot to learn
3. they are willing to take the mundane with the exciting
(i'm 13 years in and I will draft or even make flippin' coffee if thats what going to help us get our work done well)
4 they have technical knowledge, and it doesn't have to be golf, does it make us collectively smarter.
We rely on "OUR" (meaning the collective members of the office) skills, not our own. We have a principal, and when push comes to shove, he built the office, its his call. But generally golf design is a team effort. We all have particular skills and we use each other to be better.
A good office encourages you to learn and "try" what you need to learn. A bad office has you do only your strength, because you will not grow.
Are there opportunities, tons, you just may have to "put in your time" to get where you want to go. Every architect admires somebody with committment. Committment is not e-mailing or sending resumes; its meeting an architect on a site to listen for an afternoon with no prospect for a job. Suprise suprise two years later he/she hires you or recommends you to someone else. I will always remember the one or two people in particular that stuck out from the rest. One we hires FIVE years after he first showed up. Another posts on this iste regularly and you all have a lot of respect for him (we have not had an opening). The last one we recommended to an architect in another city to help him because we liked him so much. All these guys found other places to learn, if we are lucky we get to hire them. If they are lucky somebody recognizes a great guy and grabs them up quick.
If you committed, and I mean willing to do what ever it takes, you will end up as a golf architect.
I used to meet Doug to talk, worked on week-ends during school, waited two years, but phoned regularly, till the position I wanted was mine.
Take Tom Doak, he went to university, he worked on construction sites for Dye, he worked a lot of years doing a combination of renovation and new projects to get where he is. There's 20 years leading up to his success. If you ask him, there may be some really lean times in those 20 years, nobody hands you anything.
It doesn't change later either, I just interviewed twice and spent a whole year to get selected for a renovation/restoration client that a dearly wanted to work with. For every Dye, Jones and Fazio there are a hundred DeVries, Harbottles and Kidds, who do great work, and are working hard just to keep a staedy business.
My rant is over, I finally took a breath.
Mark, you deserve a few answers:
"Following the crowd might be the safe route but there are other avenues. Do you not agree?"
Yes and thank god there was an insurance salesman with little experience who turned golf design on its ear when it needed it most.
"a number of them had never been there before?? Am I missing something or does this not surprise anyone"
I think a trip to Scotland is essential (again "I think"), but its not a requirement, there are still a lot of great courses in North America fthat need to be studied too.
"One final point, if you follow this site for any length of time you will realize that many people here (I am Not one of them) think that only a handful of modern architects can design anything worth playing. You will also hear that the far majority of the courses being built today leave much to be desired? If any of these assumptions are true, why is that? "
Ever concidered that only 5% of golf architects are held up as the examples of whats wrong and another 5% of architects are held up as whats right; and the rest they don't know but choose to paint them all in with the "what's wrong" group.
Tim's point is correct, you have limited resorces to see new work so you have to depend on a source. This one is excellent. But how many of us have played Jim Engh's (however he spells it sorry Jim) work. Who's played Steve Smyers. Bobby Weed? Bill Coore before Crenshaw? You must take the site for what it is a great source, not the definative one.