Firestone Country Club (South)

Harvey Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, originally established the Firestone Country Club in the late 1920s as a park for his employees. Bert Way designed the first Firestone course in 1929 and Harvey Firestone commemorated the occasion by hitting the opening drive.

There are now three courses at Firestone Country Club, South, North and West. The South course is the original layout, which has been refashioned on a number of occasions, most notably by Robert Trent Jones in the 1960s. RTJ also designed the North course and Tom Fazio fashioned the West.

Firestone reckon the South is the only course in the world to have held three televised golf events in one calendar year – American Golf Classic, CBS Golf Classic, and the World Series of Golf. The South is certainly an armchair favourite and will no doubt conjure up fond memories for many golfers but critics label the course as rather boring. Fairways run arrow straight, often parallel to each other and the holes are long and arduous for the handicap golfer. Tour professionals, on the other hand, see the South course as an honest and demanding test of their skills.

Since 1999, Firestone Country Club has been home of the World Golf Championships – apart from in 2002 when it was played at Sahalee Country Club. Branded for the first seven years as the WGC-NEC Invitational, the event is now sponsored by Bridgestone and it’s a favourite tournament for Tiger Woods, who has won the WGC title here at Firestone an incredible seven times since 1999.

If you’ve played the South course, why not post a course review? We’d love to know what you think.