Naples National Golf Club, Florida
Let’s see. Florida. That should mean loads of mounds, plateau greens tipped toward the line of play to ensure visibility, plenty of palm trees, big frothy bunkers, including two at every green to force the approach shots to carry. Sorry, not here. Naples National starts with the forceful personality of Dr. Charles Benton, a successful […]
Prairie Dunes Country Club, Kansas
Long before Sand Hills captivated golf purists, this outpost was the paragon of the links game in America’s heartland
Myopia Hunt Club, Massachusetts
Myopia Hunt Club wastes no time displaying its distinct and venerable virtues. A long entryway carries the visitor past Gidney Field, the oldest polo grounds in America, then alongside a private stable and kennel before reaching the front of the club’s elegant, yellow-clapboard clubhouse. There is room to breathe on this property less than […]
Plainfield Country Club, New Jersey
Scotsman Tom Bendelow, whose 1898 layout survives in part at Plainfield Country Club, bore the unfair burden of this dismissive catchphrase supposedly describing his course-design methodology. The Plainfield we’re most familiar with today is a tough-but-fair Donald Ross design, but its link to the pre-Ross era only adds to its historical significance. Most tradition-minded […]
A Round at Oakmont Country Club
Lee Trevino once said that “there’s only one course in the country where you can step out right now and play the U.S. Open, and that’s Oakmont.” He later added that first they had to slow down the greens. You’ll get no disagreement here. I played Oakmont for the first time last August and I felt like I […]
Cypress Point Club, California
Cypress Point is, among golf courses, perhaps the ultimate enigma. It is one of the most famous, has been called the most beautiful and is widely considered to be one of the greatest golf courses in the world. Yet relatively few play it, there is no practice range or high-end logo-filled pro shop, the […]
Metairie Country Club
The New Orleans of 1922 was booming. Streetcar carryed residents from Uptown, Metairie or Gentilly to the bustling business district by day, and when night fell, to the jazz clubs that would change the country’s music history. Ships entered the ports carrying sailors eager for landfall, and riverboats docked near the French Quarter. Perhaps […]
Crumpin-Fox Club, Massachusetts
The Crumpin Fox Club sits in the middle of the Pioneer Valley, 50 miles north of Springfield, Massachusetts, on the eastern edge of the Berkshires at the foot of Vermont’s Green Mountain. The club’s name derives from a local 19th century bottling firm, the Crump and Fox Soda Company, which everyone in town used to refer to as […]
Columbia Country Club, Maryland
Greens Committee chairman Walter Harban couldn’t have been happier: After a dogged four-year effort, the putting surfaces at his beloved Columbia Country Club were in top shape for the 1921 U.S. Open. The legendary Harry Vardon and the reigning U.S. Open champion, Ted Ray, had toured Columbia, located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, the previous […]
Inniscrone Golf Club, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia’s Main Line is home to such museum pieces as Hugh Wilson’s Merion East, and the William Flynn-Howard Toomey collaborations at Manufacturers and Philadelphia Country Club’s Spring Mill course. Any new course along this real estate certainly draws comparisons to these classics. But at Inniscrone Golf Club, Gil Hanse and his associates, Jim Wagner […]