I first became interested in golf watching Curtis Strange beat Nick Faldo early one Monday morning before school in 1988. Soon after I convinced my dad to take me to the local driving range. As a keen artist I soon found myself scribbling golf holes all over my schoolbooks and 15 years later my interest in golf and art came together as golf renderings.Works include course guides, full course renderings, book illustrations and original golf landscapes.
Lately I have found myself wanting to spend more time painting golf landscapes like my friend and Australian watercolorist Bob Wade. These will be a focus over the next few years with original works available for sale through the website.
My inspiration for the full course renderings was Alister Mackenzie’s terrific sketch of the Old Course at St. Andrews, made almost a century ago. Like the course guides I have moved toward watercolour and in recent times have completed course renderings for Royal Melbourne, Royal Queensland and Millbrook Golf Club for the 2017 New Zealand Open.
My first commission was for Richard Sattler at Barnbougle Dunes in 2004 after we’d been involved in the design and construction of the course with Tom Doak. A simple pen and pencil guide, which looked to capture the rugged undulating nature of this links course in Northern Tasmania. Since then I’ve refined my style a little, now preferring the to use predominantly watercolour
Mike Cocking
ArtistLike most golf-obsessed teenagers my school text-books were filled with little drawings of golf holes. They were mostly nonsensical holes; full of water, trees in the middle of fairways, 90 degree doglegs and of course island greens. And for a time there the back page was reserved for tournaments against my best mate, on an 18 hole ‘championship’ course using the ‘pen-flick’ method. Standing the pen upright with your index finger and starting at the tee , you pushed the nib forward, to make your shot. Finish in the trees, 1 shot penalty. In the water, well that was two shots. That, I guess, was my introduction to golf course design and drawing golf holes.
My dad was an artist and both he and my mum taught art at high school so from early on I was introduced to the finer aspects of drawing and painting. For a long time though I picked up art only to put it down again. It wasn’t until I got into golf course design in my early 20’s that there was a reason to draw.
These days its not always practical to do a lot of drawing in design – perhaps just a line sketch or a few scratches in the dirt to talk through ideas in the field. But I still like to do some artwork in my spare time and as they’ve become more popular it’s a become a more serious hobby…..golfrenderings.com.au
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Golf Courses
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Drawings and Paintings
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