Jonny,
It's a ticklish issue. I like to think that Donald Steel or Martin Hawtree could have designed and built Kingsbarns or Loch Lomond. But the roots of the situation lie in the First World War. At the end of it the UK was exhausted, an enormous number of its men were killed, the country was bankrupt. There had been an explosion of new (and mostly very good) golf courses built from the 1890s until the outbreak of war. There were enough courses (some of which had to be restored) to satisfy the needs of the professional classes who played golf. In Scotland the game was played by a wide spread of social and economic classes, but in England it was largely the doctors, lawyers and the like. That class did not expand between 1918 and 1939 and it was quite happy with the status quo. There was little need for new courses. Professional golfers (until Henry Cotton) were not emancipated - unlike their American contemporaries who had been liberated by Walter Hagen. Our Ryder Cup players spent most of their working week mending clubs, occasionally teaching, probably acting as greenkeeper or even barman and were not given time off to play in tournaments except very occasionally. Almost none of them would have known what developments had taken place in the USA in course design and maintenance and would have had no influence over the tunnel-visioned committees who ran most of the clubs.
Of course there were exceptions, but there were not many. Alison tended to work overseas, Hotchkin worked in South Africa (Woodhall Spa was an exceptional course which came of age in the 30s, but it was largely unknown outside a small circle of golfers), Mackenzie had emigrated to the States, and British architects did work occasionally in Italy, but there was almost no course building in France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Denmark etc during this period. (An exception was Halmstad - designed by a Swede who had worked with Colt at Wentworth).
After the Second World War, the situation was not dissimilar to that pertaining in 1918. Again it was a period of trying to re-establish golf. The best players could now play rather more and, with air travel, it was possible to widen horizons and experiences somewhat. None the less Peter Alliss, one of the most successful of our players of the 50s and 60s, still worked as a club pro (Parkstone and Moor Allerton) while he was playing his best golf. Braid, Colt, Mackenzie, Fowler, Simpson were all dead or retired. Henry Cotton had not yet started in the design business and few British club golfers had any clue who had designed their course and had little eye for design - witness the many disfigurings of famous courses by well-meaning but ignorant committees of the time.
The Hawtree family, Guy Campbell, Charles Lawrie, Frank Pennink, Hamilton Stutt were the main designers in Britain, (and to an extent overseas) but I doubt that more than a handful of club golfers could have told you who they were. Courses such as those at Woburn or Vilamoura show that these men could design beautifully, but British golf was dying on its feet until Arnold Palmer resurrected it. That coincided with the TV age and suddenly the UK realised what the Americans had that we hadn't - Trent Jones courses.
That was also the beginning of the Iberian golf boom and RTJ was in there fast along with other Americans. Those Brits who landed Iberian design contracts had to give their paymasters America-style courses. Donald Steel has several very successful designs to his name in Iberia and so, too, Dave Thomas. Thomas perhaps is a good example of how a Brit has learned to design in the American style. After all, his contract for the Belfry was for a flagship course to be the home of British golf, spearheaded by four Ryder Cups. You can say what you like about its design, but he gave De Vere Hotels and the PGA a course which brought great public awareness of it. Not surprisingly, Thomas also landed other De Vere projects such as Slaley Hall and Mottram Hall. But Thomas (2nd, once, in the Open), Steel (fine amateur player and wonderful writer, but no Nicklaus-beater) and Hawtree (no significant record as a player) have no pull with the golfing nouveau riche. That is why they get Nicklaus, Palmer, Weiskopf and co to put their names to projects in Europe, as well as all members of the Jones family and more than one Nicklaus offspring. These are the ones that will catch the golfers’ eye. As yet none of our big names (Jacklin, Faldo, Lyle, Woosnam, Monty) has made a big impact on the British public with design (though I am pleased that others on this site think that Faldo’s team have some interesting designs to their credit, and Monty certainly made some new friends out of Carton House.)
Despite the impact on the public of courses such as St Melion, Hanbury Manor, the K-Club and the Oxfordshire someone had the wisdom to get Kyle Phillips (who in the UK had ever heard of him?) for Kingsbarns and I think it has begun to open eyes here into just what is possible. With Tom Doak landing such a high-profile course as Pacific Dunes (high profile in the sense that many in the UK have heard of it where they certainly haven‘t heard of Sand Hills) perhaps it will not be long before he lands a contract to build a course near London, should they get the Olympic bid!!! But Steel is now retiring, Martin Hawtree is approaching 60, Dave Thomas is past 70, and there doesn’t seem to be new generation of British architects taking up where they are leaving off – at least not in their own name.
That’s not the case in Ireland where Des Smyth and Christie O’Connor Jnr seem to have landed a good number of decent projects. France seems to have developed some of its own, same in Holland, even Italy. I don’t know how good these people are or how good their work is, but at least their employers retain a patriotic sense.