Legend has it that when Stanley Thompson designed some of Canada’s greatest golf courses, he’d regularly spend days tromping the sites armed with a walking stick, flask of whiskey and sketchpad.

How times have changed.

“Well, we still take the whiskey,” laughs Gary Browning, a Calgary golf course architect who also enjoys a good hike to capture the feel of the land he’s working.

But Thompson, Canada’s foremost architect of the first half of the 20th century, might need a few stiff drinks if he stepped into Browning’s Inglewood office today.

Chris Wood, Business Edge
Course architect Gary Brown's company has more than doubled in size.

He’d probably welcome the western decor, but the bottom half of the two-storey building — filled with state-of-the-art computers, printers and scanners — likely would take his breath away.

“It’s quite mind-boggling what technology has done,” says Browning. “We’ve been at it (using technology) for the last six or seven years, but the advances the last two years are so amazing we’re having trouble keeping up.

“I don’t understand it all,” adds the 47-year-old, who is most at home in cowboy boots, jeans and relaxed shirts. “That’s why I’ve hired all these young guys.”

In the past two years, Browning Design Inc. has expanded to a staff of eight from three, and the work keeps pouring in. Without the technology, Browning concedes his company wouldn’t get all the work it has, nor would he be able to bring it to completion.

How has the electronic world changed his life?

For example, earlier this year the company received an e-mail from Norway. A landowner wanted to know if his property was suitable for a golf course.

Included in the message was an attachment with a topographic map of the site.

“The drawing came up on our computer and it was plotted off in seconds,” recalls Browning. “It had all the contours, the tree cover, showed the streams, all the things I needed. Within minutes, I was on the phone talking to him and looking at the site. It was amazing.”

The landowner didn’t know the acreage of the land. But with a click of the mouse, the computer gave Browning the answer.

Like Stanley Thompson, Browning could never have imagined the impact technology has made. A native of Edmonton, he studied environmental design at the University of Alberta, and apprenticed as a course designer in Texas in the late ’70s. In 1982, he returned to Calgary, earned his Masters degree in environmental design and began his business.

Unlike most architects who travel the world, he’s found a solid base of work in Western Canada. His most recent projects include designing the spectacular Stewart Creek Course in Canmore. He’s also designed Calgary’s McKenzie Meadows, Harvest Hills and co-designed the Links Course at Country Hills. His mark has been left on courses as far west as Whistler, B.C., and today he has more than a dozen projects to keep his staff busy.

With each project, he says, the company becomes more adept with the technology. All projects begin with an aerial picture of the site. The photo is sent to a mapping company and the image is burned on to a CD.

The designers make a rough routing plan on paper of the various holes, and then go to the site for “field truthing,” or actual checks.

More renditions are manually made, followed by more field checks until the designers have a layout on paper with which they are satisfied. The rendition is then sent to a production company where it’s scanned for the computer.

“That’s when the magic happens,” grins Browning.

Using the computer-assisted design program (CAD), design associate Wade Horrocks overlays the routing plan on top of the topography map. With a couple of mouse clicks, he can reshape the land and immediately know its new measurements.

It’s important because they can tell the owner exactly how much grass seed he’s going to need or how much sand is required for the bunkers.

Adds Browning: “One of the biggest costs in building a course is moving earth. You have to tell the developer we’re going to cut so many metres of earth and we’re going to fill so many metres of earth, creating mounds or cutting ponds or whatever.

“A computer can do that instantly for you. It was a mind-boggling task of doing it manually before. (Now) I can tell you within a teacup of how much dirt we’re going to do.”

Much of Browning’s work today involves restoration and renovation projects. Today, in the Calgary area, he has work at the Glencoe Golf Club, Turner Valley, Silver Springs, Priddis Greens and McCall Lake.

He has conceptual designs on the board for a number of courses in Alberta and in the Columbia Valley.

“When we’re done, it’s perfect,” says Horrocks. “If it works on paper it works on the land.

“We just hand it over to the contractor and it’s as it should be. They can stake it to fractions of an inch.”

Stanley Thompson would be impressed.