MacKenzie thought he had learned a lot about golf course planning from having designed camouflage. There are references to the latter in his first book on course design, called "Golf Architecture" (MacKenzie 1920), such as when he writes that "there is an extraordinary resemblance between what is now known as the camouflage of military earthworks and golf-course construction", or later, when he states that there "are many other attributes in common between the successful golf architect and the camoufleur. Both, if not actually artists, must have an artistic temperament, and have had an education in science." In the same book, he also writes that "the chief object of every golf course architect worth his salt is to imitate the beauties of nature presumably also the hazards so closely as to make his work indistinguishable from nature itself." His book was later included in Herbert Warren Wind's Classics of Golf Library.