Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
By Erin Jordan
The odds of an average golfer making a hole in one are 12,000-1.
What are the odds of a college math major becoming a golf course designer? Ask Scott Hoffman, BS’95.
Growing up in Omaha, Hoffman daydreamed about golf courses, drawing imaginary holes on the back of church bulletins.
The former collegiate golfer who helped design some of the country’s most prestigious courses, including Gozzer Ranch in northern Idaho and Scottsdale National in Arizona, now has his own design firm, Hoffman Golf Design.
Golf Digest named Lost Rail, Hoffman’s first solo-designed course, in Gretna, Nebraska, the runner-up 2023 Best New Private Course and one of the 200 top courses nationwide in 2025.
Hoffman, 55, of Scottsdale, Arizona, was a talented junior golfer who graduated from Omaha Westside High School in 1990. He started his collegiate golf career at the University of Nebraska, where he pursued a degree in civil engineering.
But the engineering courseload was too much with the golf grind and Hoffman switched to actuarial science, a field that uses statistics to determine risk. When he transferred to Creighton to become a Bluejay, Hoffman majored in math while playing on the men’s golf team.
He hoped to be a professional golfer – or a math teacher like his father.
But after graduation, Hoffman remembered his childhood dreams of designing golf courses. He got a job with a construction company, shoveling sand, driving tractors and estimating material needs for new projects.
“As an estimator, you get plans and specs and I saw how all the architects (did the job); I got to meet them and talk with them on the phone and understand it,” he says.
Five years in that gig helped Hoffman earn a spot as a design associate for renowned golf course architect Tom Fazio. Over 13 years, Hoffman contributed to nearly 40 high-profile projects including Martis Camp at Lake Tahoe and Pronghorn in Bend, Oregon. Hoffman then collaborated with Jackson Kahn Design on other elite golf courses before he started his own firm in 2020.
Hoffman’s early specialty was routing – using topographical maps and design specifications to route holes that make efficient use of the land.
“It’s kind of like doing puzzles,” he says.
What Hoffman loves now is using his math brain with artistic flair to create memorable courses.
His solo-designed courses – Lost Rail, Mapleton in Sioux Falls and Finkbine in Iowa City – have common elements, such as rugged bunkers, minimal rough and surprises like a raised timber bridge or a century-old bur oak by the green.
Joe Wandro, an Iowa-based course designer, said Hoffman has a knack for planning holes to highlight dramatic natural elements and shaping greens with subtlety – a feat with underground irrigation.
“Scott has a very careful, loving touch, and he pays attention to details,” Wandro says.
Hoffman only chooses projects that excite him because, as a perfectionist, he wants to be on site during the construction and that means time away from home. He and his wife, Cara, have two adult sons, Caden and Dylan.
Hoffman knows he’s lucky to have turned his passion into a career. But looking back, for this math major, it all adds up.
