Glens Falls

Glens Falls Country Club opened for business in 1912, with a Donald Ross-designed 9-hole course appearing two years later. The same architect returned eight years after that to add another nine holes to the layout and today– apart from an alteration to the 16th hole in 1985 – the course that’s now in play is largely the one that Ross laid out a century ago.

Feature holes include short par fours at the 5th, which plays to a wickedly contoured “top hat” green, and the 7th, where three bunkers cut into the front and left side of the green on a diagonal line at the top of a ridge. The par four 17th is regarded by many as the best two-shot hole on the course, routed downhill into a valley then up towards a false-fronted green.

Tom Doak speaks highly of Glens Falls in the Confidential Guide to Golf Courses book, volume 3: “There is a broad hill in the center of the property, perhaps 50 feet high, and the routing works around it and across it and twice up and over, so even though there are many parallel holes, you never have the sense of playing Army golf… I would put it comfortably in Ross’s top ten courses, and that’s a pretty special list.”