Roger G. Rulewich

Roger G. Rulewich arrived at Yale as a scholarship student and, remarkably for a future major architect, with little genuine golfing background. He graduated in civil engineering in 1958. After initial work in engineering and landscape, a professional encounter led him to Robert Trent Jones Sr. during the early 1960s. He formally joined the practice in 1961 and remained for thirty-four years. That loyalty made Rulewich one of the most important yet least visible authors of post-war American architecture. Jones was the brand, public strategist and master salesman; Rulewich gradually became the principal architect converting ideas into routings, documents and built form. During the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s he directed or completed a substantial share of American commissions carrying the Robert Trent Jones name. He contributed to Robert Trent Jones Golf Club and played a central role in Alabama’s enormous Golf Trail, initially comprising twenty-four courses across ten sites. When Jones closed his offices in 1995, Rulewich finally had the opportunity to work under his own name. He formed the Roger Rulewich Group, later Rulewich & Fleury. Ballyowen, Metedeconk National, Saratoga National, Fox Hopyard and Grande Dunes demonstrated that his ability did not depend solely on his mentor’s vocabulary. The courses retain the scale, legibility and power of major Jones projects while often displaying greater personal flexibility and close attention to detail. Rulewich prefers hand drawing and intensive field direction. He seeks balance between beauty and playability, shot value and flexibility, challenge and recovery. Renovations at Yale, Bellerive, Wakonda and Tucker’s Point also show an ability to understand existing work without reducing improvement to the enlargement of hazards. An ASGCA member since 1974 and president in 1987-88, he has worked on more than 125 courses. A living architect, Rulewich embodies the historical problem of signature firms: essential authorship disappears behind the commercial name. He was not merely Robert Trent Jones’s assistant but, for decades, one of the conceptual and construction engines of the empire.