Herbert Fowler

William Herbert Fowler (28 May 1856 - 13 April 1941), also known as Bill Fowler and Herbert Fowler, was an English amateur cricketer best known for his big-hitting when batting. He was also a famous golf course architect and designed Walton Heath Golf Club among many others in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Fowler had strong views on many aspects of a golf course, including bunkers, which he believed should have gradual slopes to allow the ball to roll to the base. He believed strongly that courses should follow the contours of the land, and have a natural feeling, shunning the use of "man-made contrivances", believing that topography could test the world's best golfers just as adequately. Contemporaries suggested that he designed large courses that would favor big hitters such as himself, but Fowler strenuously denied this, always claiming that they were designed with fairness in mind.

He was described in a book by Bernard Darwin as "perhaps the most daring and original of all golfing architects and gifted with an inspired eye for the possibility of a golfing country." He designed a number of golf courses in the United Kingdom and the United States, including the Crystal Springs Course, the Beau Desert Course and in 1922 he redesigned the 18th hole of the Pebble Beach Golf Links.