Kelly Blake Moran Golf Course Architects is a professional golf course architecture practice providing a complete design service.  The firm’s modus operandi is based upon Mr. Moran’s iron-clad conviction that hands-on experience with the land is the only way to develop rich and meaningful design solutions for all aspects of this business: course routing; strategy; infrastructure; maintenance; and aesthetics.  This land-based approach ensures the course will be challenging, interesting, and pleasurable to play. The key to success is to ensure that each hole makes best use of the site’s natural features. 

Few principal architects are involved in a project from beginning to end. Kelly Blake Moran, however, has established an enviable reputation for his land-based design approach. Being ‘Johnny on the spot’ places Kelly at the center of all aspects of the design, construction, grow-in, and operation of a new golf course all critical stages to the development. This willingness continues to make him highly sought after by clients who wish to have their course reflect the charms and nuances inherent to their site. 

Kelly Blake Moran has been designing golf courses for over twenty years.  Notable projects are as follows: Buenos Aires Golf Club-a private residential golf course community outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bay Colony Golf Club, and Pelican Marsh Golf Club-both private, residential golf course communities in Naples, Florida; Tres Vidas Country Club-a private, residential golf course community in Acapulco, Mexico; and, since 1995, Hawk Pointe Golf Club-a private, residential golf course community in New Jersey; HideOut Golf Club-a private golf course in Naples, Florida; Laurel Links Country Club-a private, residential golf course community on the North Fork of Long Island;

The Club at Morgan Hill-a residential golf course community near Easton, Pennsylvania; and, opening in 2006 is Lederach Golf Club-a residential golf course community in Lower Salford Township, Pennsylvania, northwest of Philadelphia. 

The fine work of Kelly Blake Moran is not limited to the design and construction of new courses. Indeed, he has completed master plans for the improvement of the following existing golf courses: Moorestown Field Club-a private club in Moorestown, New Jersey; Overbrook Golf Club-a private club in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; Deal Golf and Country Club-a private club in Deal, New Jersey; Old York Road Country Club-a private club in Spring House, Pennsylvania; The Muttontown Club-a private club in Norwich, New York; and, Center Square Golf Club-a public course near Philadelphia. 

Kelly Blake Moran’s land-based design approach places extra emphasis on making the course more challenging, interesting, and pleasurable for a wide range of golfing abilities. As a player improves their physical, mental, and playing abilities, they find new ways to play each hole, and discover new challenges and pleasures in his courses. In this way, Kelly’s courses give the greatest amount of pleasure to the greatest number of players, and his courses capture the organic spirit from deep inside the land thereby never becoming outdated or boring. Were the great Alister Mackenzie alive today, he would no doubt approve of these design virtues.  

Kelly Blake Moran golf courses remain intriguing, mysterious, and enjoyable-even after a player graduates to the next playing-level and becomes more familiar with the natural and manmade features that define the strategy of each hole. Kelly Blake Moran has delivered outstanding stand alone golf courses, and golf courses within residential communities that are pivotal to selling home sites, and memberships.  

At ease with stakeholders within each project, he often collaborates with owners, engineers, greens superintendents, land use attorneys, and land planners during the design and construction phases. Kelly Blake Moran brings a sensibility to the design process by studying the natural patterns and processes of the land so that the best golf course will emerge.

After all, a golf course is a living, breathing organism. Without this aforementioned safeguard, the course risks being ‘out of place’ with where it resides. This dictum reeks of common sense and yet it runs contrary to recent comments by a ‘big name’ designer-brand architect who said that gone are the days when architects design holes with the land because investors are willingly to spend money to make a course look like another part of the country.  Stilted thinking such as this produces standardized courses with no soul, making each one resemble too closely the last course they did in some other part of the country, rather than looking the part of the landscape within which they have been placed.   

The clients of Kelly Blake Moran have confirmed time after time, that it is the course’s inherent strategy that lies at the nub of providing a pleasurable and quality golfing experience. Land-based design is a specific engagement with the land-in many ways a contract between land and designer-that produces a highly imaginative design. This design approach results in a shorter permitting process, plus a more reasonable, affordable, and responsible construction budget. It can be stated with great confidence that Kelly Blake Moran golf courses provide a strategic design of the highest order, provide avenues for the lesser player to enjoy the course, and respect the exceptional value of the natural features of the land by incorporating those features into the experience of the course.