early golf course architects

The NY Times points out the obscurity of early 20th Century golf course architects other than Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie and A. W. Tillinghast. Instead they focus on Stiles and van Kleek.

But, I am asked, is golf course design really landscape architecture? Stiles started out as a landscape architect and those experience informed his course design:

"Stiles always found his green sites first, then worked backward from there,” Mendik said. “And as a landscape architect, he knew what the trees on a hole would look like in 60 or 80 years. He saw the picture from the tee.”