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What: “The Golden Age of Golf Design”

By: Geoff Shackelford. Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press.

Price: $65.

The theme throughout this book is “They sure don’t make them like they used to.” The author might have a point there.

Geoff Shackelford, who has written extensively on golf course architecture and occasionally for The Times, clearly has a reverence for courses built in the United States from 1910 to 1937 . . . and for the architects who designed them.

Shackelford points out that any groupings of top courses in this country are dominated by layouts from this golden age, a time when match play, strategy and ingenuity were factored into a layout’s design more than simply length.

“The landmark courses from the golden age were special then and timeless now because of their ability to test the mental as well as the physical component of the golfer’s game, a concept better known as strategy,” he writes.

Consider a few of the golden age courses: Pine Valley in New Jersey, widely regarded as the best in the U.S. and the only course designed by George Arthur Crump; Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, Augusta National, Pinehurst No. 2, Shinnecock Hills, Los Angeles Country Club, Riviera. . . .

Shackelford’s mini-profiles of the architects of that age and those who influenced them offer wonderful tidbits: that Old Tom Morris’ design fee was one pound; that George Thomas, designer of Riviera, never charged a fee; that Alister MacKenzie, designer of Augusta and Cypress Point, developed theories on camouflage that saved thousands of lives in warfare.

The courses and the architects share top billing in this book, with hundreds of photographs of the layouts as they appeared more than half a century ago, courses whose conditions have been refined, but whose integrity has withstood the changes of the game. Oil paintings of several of the courses help bring them to life.

Available in bookstores, by contacting Sleeping Bear Press at (800) 487-2323 or at www.sleepingbearpress.com. Internet price is $45.50.