GDS Golf Design Services Ltd. is located in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, and was established in 1980 by Les Furber and Jim Eremko. Their design philosophy was influenced in part by their long association with Robert Trent Jones Sr. GDS sports a unique international portfolio, including, in 1991, the first modern day course in the Czech Republic and the first18-hole course in Cuba, as well as courses in the USA, Switzerland, and Germany. GDS and Les Furber Design has undertaken a twenty-seven-hole project in Lithuania and, in Canada, created Glasgow Hills Golf Resort on Prince Edward Island; SilverTip Golf Resort, in their hometown of Canmore, and The Links at Gleneagles, in Cochrane, Alberta.
We designed the first modern, eighteen-hole course as part of the present twenty-seven-hole Karlstejn Golf Resort near Prague after the end of the communist rule in the Czech Republic.
During construction, the golf construction contractor refused to attempt to move dirt based on a cubic meter measurement because under the communist system, all earthwork was completed on a price per square meter depending on the depth of material to be excavated.
When it became obvious we were at an impasse, and they could not understand earthwork excavation by the cubic meter, it was agreed to complete all earthworks with equipment charging local hourly rates.
I made a site visit to a golf course in Portugal designed by my mentor, Robert Trent Jones Sr., in 1973.
I was staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in Lisbon when I received a phone call from our contractor advising me that the City of Lisbon was under siege and surrounded by military. The television, radio and all communications were taken over by the troops and all bank assets were frozen as well as all border crossings and air travel cancelled.
The coup lasted three days and there was no bloodshed in the streets. As I was a tourist who had a return airfare out of Portugal, I was allowed to leave to go to our office in Spain on the fourth day. The golf course project was finally finished several years later by Cabell Robinson and Robert Trent Jones Sr.