I started to do a little poll (not done yet) and this thread almost fits perfectly. I wanted to find out what average golfers knew about golf architects. The only stipulation was that for their vote to count, they had to play at least 5 rounds of golf a year. I didn’t ask people I knew (did some of the poll at the NJ Turf Grass Conf) or any of the 50 guys that are regulars on GCA
The question was – Who is your favorite living architect?
Got 19 responses so far – 6 votes for Tom Fazio (though two golfers said they never played one of his courses
), 4 responses of don’t know or couldn’t say, 3 Jack Nicklaus, 3 of Pete Dye, 1 of Art Hills, 1 of Rees Jones, 1 Eric Bergstol.
After getting an answer, I threw out a couple names like Crenshaw (no one knew he was an architect) and Hanse (someone had heard of Gil, probably from the tournament broadcast). Guess if you want to be famous, better to go into music