Brooklawn

Brooklawn Country Club was formed in 1895, with $100 budgeted for establishing a 9-hole golf course, $300 allowed for building six tennis courts and $250 set aside for constructing a baseball diamond. The following year, Brooklawn became one of the first twenty-six clubs to join the newly formed USGA.

Tom Morris, Old Tom’s grandson, was Brooklawn’s first professional, and he was followed as a club employee in later years by Gene Sarazen, who got his first job in golf by “cleaning jobs and sweeping up” around the clubhouse. Honorary club membership would come the Squire’s way further down the line.

There have been several major tournaments played at Brooklawn down the years: the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship in 1974, the U.S. Women’s Open in 1979, the U.S. Senior Open in 1987, the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship in 2003 and the U.S. Senior Women’s Open in 2021.

In the book The American Private Golf Club Guide, Daniel Wexler describes Brooklawn as “an A.W. Tillinghast redesign of an earlier member-built layout on a tree-lined, fairly compact property (which) may not occupy a spot on Tillinghast’s top shelf, but it’s a fine, classic layout well worth seeing.”

In more recent years, Ron Forse has been gradually restoring the layout and the architect commented as follows: “The strength of this place is amazing. It was the next-to-last major design work Tillinghast ever undertook. And it shows off – or showed off – his talents at the peak of his career.”