Faculty Spotlight: Clyde Johnston
Posted on April 3, 2018
Heather Glen Golf Links in Myrtle Beach
(Photo from glensgolfgroup.com)
Clyde Johnston began taking steps towards working in the golf industry after watching his father work on golf course design. Johnston’s father was a PGA Professional and designed six golf courses throughout his career. A young Johnston would observe his father working at his drafting table in the basement and absorb everything. “He taught me all about topography, reading maps, drawing, and golf course design strategy.” Then one night with his father a revelation occurred which solidified Johnston’s path, “when I was about 13 years old, he was working on a layout and he looked up at me and said, ‘You know, you can make a living designing golf courses.’ My jaw dropped – it had never occurred to me, but I was immediately smitten with the idea and decided on the spot that was what I wanted to do in life.”
Clyde Johnston during his time as ASGCA President
In the interim from Willard Byrd, Johnston worked at Kirby, Player and Associates, which was a golf course design firm run by Ron Kirby, Gary Player and Denis Griffiths. After working with them for nearly a year, he moved to Reece and Hoopes, a landscape architectural firm. He stayed with Reece and Hoopes for a year before returning to Willard C. Byrd and Associates. Johnston credits his time working with these various course designs firms and his father for his success. “The rest of what I know about golf course design, I attribute to my father’s teaching, apprenticing for Willard Byrd for 13 years, and my own research and studies on golf course design.”
River Landing Country Club in Wallace, NC
(Photo from riverlanding.com)
Clyde Johnston Designs is located in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and has finished nearly 60 course design projects, including new designs and renovations, over its 31 years. Johnston has been recognized many times for his golf course design. His first largely recognized course came in 1987 with Golf Digest awarding Heather Glen Golf Links, which he worked on under Willard Byrd, as the Best New Public Golf Course of 1987. Some of his other award-winning designs include Old South Golf Links, Jacksonville Golf & Country Club, Cherry Blossom GC, and Covered Bridge Golf Club, which was co-designed with Fuzzy Zoeller who also owns the course. Johnston and Fuzzy Zoeller, 1979 Masters champion and 1984 U.S. Open champion, have collaborated on multiple golf course designs together throughout the years.
Throughout Johnston’s 44-year career he’s received multiple awards with many of his golf courses making top 50 lists. In 1998 Carolina Fairways magazine featured Johnston on their cover with an article highlighting his career. That same year, he was recognized as one of the “State’s Best Emerging Golf Architects” by North Carolina Magazine who also listed one of his course designs, River Landing Country Club, on the Top Twenty Courses in North Carolina. Along with the awards Johnston shares a few more career achievements, “I have recently been elected to the Lowcountry Golf Hall of Fame and will be inducted in March of 2018. One of my other highlights is serving as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA).” He served as the ASGCA president from 2003-2004.
Clyde Johnston continues to work on golf course design and shares his wealth of knowledge with our students at the Professional Golfers Career College. While his career in design is a point of pride, so is his teaching. “My proudest moment as an instructor was when a student told me that after taking my class, he looks at golf holes when he’s playing golf in an entirely different manner in that he understands more about golf course design.” Johnston enjoys meeting new students each semester and later seeing them working at the golf courses he visits. “A few years ago, I ran into one of my former students at a course in Chattanooga, Tennessee then last year saw another student at one of my courses in eastern North Carolina.”
Johnston after his Ace at Tobacco Road Golf Club.
(Photo from tobaccoroadgolf.com)
Throughout his vast experience, one of the lessons Johnston understands is a good team is vital. “It takes more than one person to make a golf course successful,” he says. “You have to have good land, a great client, a good builder, a good budget and finally a good golf course superintendent with a good operations budget.” The same philosophy applies to education which the Professional Golfers Career College abides by. Johnston notes, “We have great instructors at the school who are very passionate about what they teach.” He also points out another benefit to PGCC, “Plus you get to play golf almost everyday.”
Johnston shares these words of wisdom “Always be on time for appointments and with whatever you are doing, do your best. And smile.” A tip that seemingly could stem back to the great Arnold Palmer, whom Johnston knew as a young boy. His father, C.B. “Johnny” Johnston, was a PGA professional and the first golf coach at Wake Forest College, where he assisted in getting Palmer to enroll. When Johnston was around the age of 10, his father had a special guest over, “…the guest was Arnold Palmer, who by that time had already won 2 Masters Tournaments. I think that was the moment I began to love golf.” Johnston now shares that love of golf with every student that attends the Professional Golfers Career College.
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