Pittsburgh Field Club, Pennsylvania
During the 2007 U.S. Open, one of the world’s greatest courses was occupied, wearing down the best players in the world. But savvy visitors to Pittsburgh were able to enjoy a round at Pittsburgh Field Club just a few miles from Oakmont, across the Allegheny River. While it doesn’t have nearly the bite of […]
Anglebrook Golf Club, New York
Last hurrahs don’t often get the crowds cheering. Alfred Hitchcock signed off with Family Plot, Stanley Kubrick with Eyes Wide Shut. Sure, Ted Williams homered in his final at-bat, but most Hall of Famers finish with pop-ups. Robert Trent Jones Sr. capped an unparalleled career in course design with Anglebrook Golf Club. His final […]
The Ultimate Private Club: Cherokee Plantation
I knew I was in a special place my first morning at Cherokee Plantation when a mule-drawn carriage arrived at the front door to carry me to breakfast. For a moment, I felt as if we had been transported back to Victorian England. Or maybe it was Tara. Cherokee may be the most exclusive club in the world. […]
TPC Snoqualmie Ridge
The TPC designation lends golf courses a certain cachet. The oft-challenging TPC layouts share a number of recurring design features: risk-reward par 4s; grassy mounds and swales; tightly mown chipping areas; and at least one short-but-dangerous par 3, which often seems to appear at the 17th hole (a la TPC Sawgrass). Surely one of the […]
The Orchards Golf Club, Massachusetts
The great golf secret of the Berkshires was the achievement of Donald Ross at the Orchards, followed by the unspoken tale of the course’s decline. A round of applause, then, for its stirring comeback. On New England woodland that creaks, slants and upwells into drumlins and ridges, Ross was always able to see the future. […]
Crosswater Golf and Social Club, Oregon
Rare is the golfer who hasn’t driven past a wide-open patch of grass and envisioned a golf course on it. Case in point: Jim Ramey, a former California club pro and avid outdoorsman who moved to Sunriver, Oregon, in the mid-’70s. For years as golf superintendent at Sunriver Resort, Ramey would look longingly on a nearby meadow at the […]
Philadelphia Country Club, Pennsylvania
Byron Nelson won the U.S. Open only once, in 1939 at Philadelphia Country Club’s Spring Mill Course. For every golfer who can recite that bit of golf history, a dozen more will say, “That’s the year Sam Snead blew it with an 8 on the last hole.” Indeed, Snead had needed only a par […]
Spyglass Hill Golf Course, Pebble Beach Resorts
The 3rd Hole at Spyglass Hill Golf Course. Photo by Evan Schiller. When Robert Trent Jones Sr. was designing Spyglass Hill Golf Course in the 1960s, the working title was Pebble Pines. But Pebble Beach visionary Samuel F.B. Morse came up with a better name: Spyglass Hill, in honor of Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived […]
Ocean Course at Hammock Beach Resort
Jack Nicklaus may have hailed from landlocked Columbus, Ohio, but his career has been tied to the ocean from the very earliest days. While practicing for the 1961 U.S. Amateur Championship he would go on to win, where Nicklaus first lost his heart to coastal California and the Pebble Beach Golf Links. Later, he […]
Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course, Nevada
Lake Tahoe surely is one of the most spectacular settings you’ll ever find for a golf course. Measuring 12 miles across and nearly 1,000 feet deep on average, these blue waters are so pure you could spot a golf ball 75 feet below the surface (and if you did, it would probably be one […]
