Originally trained as a surgeon, MacKenzie served as a civilian physician with the British Army during the Boer War where he first became aware of the principles of camouflage.
During the First World War, MacKenzie made his own significant contributions to military camouflage, which he saw as closely related to golf course design.
[3] MacKenzie was born on 30 August 1870 in Normanton, near Leeds in Yorkshire, England, to parents of Scottish extraction.
His father, William Scobie MacKenzie, a medical doctor, had been born and raised in the Scottish Highlands near Lochinver.
(Natural Science Tripos Part 1), with honours, third class, before the next year undertaking and passing a second MB (Bachelor of Medicine.
[4] In 1914, MacKenzie won a golf hole design competition organized by Country Life; the adjudicators were Bernard Darwin, Horace Hutchinson, and Herbert Fowler.
[10] Following the First World War, MacKenzie left medicine and began to work instead as a golf course designer in the United Kingdom, in association with Harry Colt and Charles Alison in 1919, with whom he formed the London firm of Colt, MacKenzie & Alison.
MacKenzie worked in an era before large scale earth moving became a major factor in golf course construction, and his designs are notable for their sensitivity to the nature of the original site.
MacKenzie offered insights on the game and the ethos of working with the land to design strategic holes that provide "pleasurable excitement."
In 1992, golf architecture expert Ron Whitten told a small gathering at Pasatiempo about the lost manuscript.
The gathering consisted of members of some courses designed by MacKenzie in the early stages of forming a Society.
[20] The inaugural year of Ray Haddock Lido Prize was 1998, and the first judges were Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay.
[citation needed] This was an improvement in his ball striking which enabled him to often score in the high 70s to low 80s for 18 holes.
[4] In the late 1920s, he moved to the United States, where he carried out some of his most notable work, although he continued to design courses outside that country as well.