Congressional (Gold)

Congressional Country club started out with an 18-hole course (consisting of the Blue and Gold nines) designed by Devereux Emmet in 1924 before Robert Trent Jones was called in thirty years later to add a new nine to the existing layout. The USGA then staged the Women’s Amateur Championship at Congressional in 1959, two years after the updated Blue and the New nine were combined to form the 18-hole championship Blue course.

With the 1964 US Open due to be held at Congressional, Jones took two holes from the Gold nine, remodelled both of them then inserted them into the routing of his new nine at the 16th and 17th , converting what he had designed as the par four 17th into the new closing hole on the Blue. This was the course that then hosted the sixty-fourth edition of the US Open, won by Ken Venturi.

The Gold course continued as a 9-hole track until 1977, when George Fazio and Tom Fazio renovated the course and added another nine. Arthur Hills then completed an upgrade of the 18-hole Gold course in 2000, reconstructing tees, fairways, greens and cart paths. The Gold will always live in the shadow of a sibling that has hosted five major championships (and is due to stage another two in the 2030s) but it’s still a formidable track deserving the greatest respect..