Bob Harrison was educated at St Ignatius College in Sydney before graduating from the University of Sydney with a degree in Civil Engineering. His final year thesis was written about a golf-residential project for the Lend Lease Corporation and he spent more than a decade with that company on golf-residential work and commercial project management.

In 1988, Bob joined the newly formed Greg Norman Golf Course Design firm and for the following twenty years – until his departure in 2009 – he was the lead architect for all of the Great White Shark’s Asian and Australian golf course projects.

The first project Harrison completed was at The Grand, or Gilston Golf Club as it was originally called, in 1990. Not long after the 18-hole layout opened for play, it abruptly closed due to financial issues with the owners, so nobody saw the course until it was taken out of hibernation several years later.

Meanwhile, Bob was working in Asia: at Thana City Country Club outside Bangkok in Thailand; Shiragasi Golf Club near Kobe in Japan; and Nirwana Bali in Indonesia, which was one of the region’s most highly regarded golf facilities before it closed in 2017 for a complete renovation by Phil Mickelson’s design company.

Several Australian commissions all appeared within a very short space of time at the start of the new millennium for Harrison. Three of them debuted on either side of Brisbane – Pelican Waters to the north of the city, along with Sanctuary Cove and The Glades to the south.

Around the same time, the Moonah course at The National Golf Club on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula debuted so the architect obviously indulged in a fair bit of ball juggling in those days whilst managing a number of commissions simultaneously – and with a geographical spread of almost two thousand kilometres.

Shortly after, Bob’s design for Kerry Packer on the family ranch at Ellerston in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales was unveiled. It took a long time for this ultra-private track to make its mark in the golf magazine rankings – though it’s been listed in our Australian Top 10 since 2007 – and for it to be recognized as a genuine World Top 100 proposition.

Brookwater Golf & Country Club on the outskirts of Brisbane and The Vintage near Newcastle were next off the Harrison drawing board during a rather frenetic spell which resulted in seven courses opening for play inside four years. Things then settled down a little before Bob left to go it alone in 2009, though his design for Stonecutters Ridge in Sydney opened under the Greg Norman Golf Course Design banner three years after he parted company with his former employer.

When Greg Norman closed his Australian office a year later in 2010, Bob formed a new design partnership with Harley Kruse, who had previously worked with Brisbane-based Thomson Wolveridge & Perrett and from Greg Norman’s design office in Sydney, where he primarily looked after the company’s Asian projects.

Harley was the lead designer on courses like the Norman course at Mission Hills in China, Jade Palace in South Korea and the Dunes at Danang in Vietnam. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out and both architects agreed to go their separate ways after only a short time together.

Bob ventured overseas to Scotland in 2015, where he was asked by the Australian owner of the Ardfin estate on the island of Jura to lay out a course on a very difficult, but visually spectacular site composed largely of peat and rocks. Like Ellerston, not many golfers have managed to tee it up here but some who have think it may well be destined for global prominence.

More recent projects for the architect include remodelling almost half the holes at Newcastle Golf Club in New South Wales, redesigning the former 27-hole layout at Townsville Golf Club in Northern Queensland, fashioning nine new holes on flood-prone land for Brighton Lakes Golf Club and remodelling work at Castle Hill Country Club in Sydney.

Extracts:

Golf Australia: “An engaging and intriguing bloke, Harrison could probably be best summed up as an enigma. He is equal parts artist and engineer, dreamer and pragmatist. Harrison has an impressive portfolio of completed courses and a genuine appreciation of classic, strategic golf design.”

Planetgolf.com: “Working with Norman for so long gave Harrison access to some terrific course projects, and he responded by helping create a number of highly regarded Aussie layouts. Harrison’s best work, at places like The National Golf Club (Moonah Course), Ellerston, The Grand and Nirwana Bali, is very good.

Since leaving Greg Norman's company, Harrison has established his own private golf design business, offering the same high-quality design services but without the steep Norman signature fee. His most notable solo course is the spectacular Ardfin course in Scotland, on the remote island of Jura.”

Harissongolf.com.au: “Bob Harrison’s record over the last 30 years demonstrates his belief that golf courses should look as natural and as spectacular as possible, whether you are lucky enough to have land that is naturally beautiful and find the best collection of natural holes, or whether the land doesn’t work in your favour and the objective becomes to manufacture a natural overall shape to give the impression that the golf holes were laid out over it.

There is a practical side to modern golf architecture. Traditional sites were mostly natural and easy to construct. But earthmoving techniques and commercial objectives have led to some courses being built on land which is not naturally suitable. Artistic and strategic design skills are always paramount, but successful design sometimes combines these skills with the ability to plan projects so that golf and residential (or other) components all benefit.

Even before the idea became fashionable, Bob always believed in reducing the costly and environmentally difficult expanse of turfgrass to a minimum that still satisfies reasonable play for golfers. The contrast between turfgrass and the surrounding landscape is part of the appeal of every hole, as well as being good for the environment. Design should not become so rational that fun and inspiration are removed from the scene. You have to take some chances.”