Baltimore Country Club (East)

Although the club was inaugurated in 1898, the East course at Baltimore Country Club was designed by the great genius of golf course architecture, A.W. Tillinghast: Creator Of Golf Courses (to quote the title of the architect’s biography by Philip Young), and it opened for play in 1926.

“Five Farms, which was once just the suburban course of the Baltimore Country Club, is now the hub of the club. It sits amid the rolling hills of Maryland’s “hunt country”, where horses have always been the major sport but from which golf is fast taking over… the course is not overly bunkered and neither is is tremendously long. But those hills present numerous sidehill lies after mishit drives and the greens can get fearsomely slick, although remaining awesomely true.

Baltimore has hosted a number of major events, including the exciting 1965 Walker Cup matches in which Britain and Ireland tied the US team, so breaking a string of losses dating back to 1938. In 1988 the Women’s Open was held there.” From the New World Atlas of Golf.

Keith Foster completed a restoration project in 2015. According to Tom Doak's Confidential Guide to Golf Courses - Volume 3: "It's still a wonder; Keith Foster's work softened the tilt in a handful of greens, but they are still treacherous after the changes. The most memorable holes are the dogleg par-5 6th, with the maintenance barns in play on the tee shot something like the railway sheds at St Andrews, and the very long 14th, with its Sahara cross-hazard that has to be cleared on the second shot."