Brian Silva, 72, is widely acknowledged as golf’s consummate practitioner and interpreter of vintage course architecture. In the fall of 2025, he invited longtime colleague Brian Johnson to partner in a new design firm, Silva & Johnson, Ltd., whose roots and client list each reach back to the golden age of course design.

“More than 40 years ago, Geoffrey Cornish — who got his start as an agronomist working for Stanley Thompson in the 1930s — extended to me the same sort of partnership opportunity,” says Silva. “I’ve worked alongside Brian Johnson for 25 years now. He’s as good a strategist as there is working today, but I might not have recommended this move 10 or 15 years ago. There wasn’t enough work out there. Today there is.”

Brian Silva grew up in Framingham, Mass., the son of a shaper who worked for many course architects across New England, including Mr. Cornish. The younger Silva studied turf science at the University of Massachusetts’ Stockbridge School and taught agronomy at Lake City Community College before joining the USGA as a Green Section agronomist in 1981. Two years later, Cornish brought him on as a partner.

The protégé’s first original 18-hole design, The Captains GC in Brewster, Mass., was selected by Golf Digest as the country’s Best New Public Course for 1985. His subsequent, original design work — at New England daily-fees Waverly Oaks and Red Tail; at private clubs like Black Rock CC in Hingham, Mass. (see images above), Cape Cod National GC and Black Creek Club in Chattanooga, Tenn. (host of the 2005 USGA Men’s Mid-Amateur Championship) — has been similarly feted. In 1999, he was named GolfWorld magazine’s Architect of the Year.

Silva concurrently built a highly influential reputation as an interpreter of American course architects active between the World Wars. This so-called Golden Age of course design saw the rise of Donald Ross, of course, but also of Seth Raynor, William Flynn, Alistair Mackenzie, William Langford, Wayne Stiles and A.W. Tillinghast. Starting in the 1990s, Silva has been consistently commissioned to renovate and restore the work of all these old masters. His work influenced and continues to influence an entire generation of 21^st century architects doing the same sort of sympathetic design, a phrase Silva himself coined.

Since the Recession of 2008, some 1,500 U.S. golf courses have closed down or been radically repurposed. In that grim business environment, renovation and restoration acumen dominated the course-development market — and Silva’s vintage credentials have shined even more brightly, as he carefully restored the classic elements of Ross (at Seminole, Gulfstream, Palm Beach CC, Biltmore Forest, Maketewah in Cincinnati), Ross and Tom Bendelow (at Brookside in Columbus, Ohio), C.B. Macdonald/Seth Raynor (at Lookout Mountain, the Everglades Club, Mountain Lake, Fox Chapel, Metairie CC just west of New Orleans) and Tillinghast (at Baltimore Five Farms and, starting in 2026, San Antonio CC).

Put simply, “sympathetic renovation” is the practice of working from original plans, alongside bedrock understandings of the original architect’s style, to effectively and dynamically retool Golden Age golf courses. But his attitudes toward this work has also proved an ongoing evolution. The same can be said of his preferred lingo.

“You’d have to remarkably thick-headed, or just plain arrogant, to work on so many amazing vintage golf courses and not apply those styles and strategies to your own work,” Silva says. “For many years, early in my career, my hole corridors were too narrow. Pete Dye’s work first showed me the light — then I started seeing how wide Ross and C.B. Macdonald built their own fairways. Starting in the late 1990s, Raynor’s work in particular convinced me that sharper, more defined edges didn’t just look great — they enhanced the angles that all skilled architects seek to create. Those understandings and a dozen more gave me the courage to deploy and adapt these features and strategies in my own work, but also my renovation work — regardless of who the original architect might be.

“Today, when original design commissions are so rare, I’ve also evolved on the whole idea of renovation and ‘restoration.’ If we’ve done our job well, I think ‘transformation’ is more apt. Because most old clubs don’t have the old plans or the aerial photography — or maybe that imagery isn’t so great, or it’s actually from 1957. What’s more, I trust my own instincts far more freely today. I’m not ‘channeling’ anyone. I’ve never done that. But I do feel ever more confident in my understanding of what Ross and Raynor and Flynn were trying to do because, today, it’s what I’m trying to do, given the opportunities and restraints of terrain. And when some course rater congratulates me on restoring someone’s work, on hewing so closely and effectively to the original plans — when, in fact, I had no such plans — I smile and nod appreciatively.”