Golden Horseshoe Golf Club (Gold)

The Golden Horseshoe golf complex is one of the finest golfing destinations in all of the United States, featuring two formidable 18-hole layouts – the Gold and the Green – and a charming executive course named Spotswood.

A 9-hole course opened here in the mid 1940s and this served golfers until a Robert Trent Jones Senior-designed 18-hole layout came into play in 1963. The master architect also reconfigured the original 9-hole course around this time, forming the Spotswood.

His son Rees Jones added the Green course in 1991 then he returned later that decade to renovate his father’s original Gold design by thinning out trees, leveling a number of greens and adding or removing bunkers. This work was completed in time for the USGA State Team Championships when the gents played on the Gold course and the ladies teed it up on the Green.

Recognised as an unrelenting, punishing test of golf, the Gold is a tight course where narrow fairways lead to small, well-defended greens with water playing a crucial part at critical points in the round. Golfers are made aware of the challenges early in the round at the par five 2nd hole when they crest a hill after playing their first two uphill shots to find the green sits on the other side of a lake.

The quartet of par threes on the Gold form a magnificent collection of demanding short holes and their placement – at holes 3, 7, 12 and 16 – involves the need to carry water from tee to green. They’re beautiful, seductive holes but fraught with danger too. The last of these marvelous par threes plays from a hillside tee position to an island green – and the Golden Horseshoe club believe this hole was the template for others to follow such as the celebrated 17th at TPC Sawgrass in Florida.

Golden Horseshoe's Gold course was closed during 2016/17 when an extensive renovation was carried out by Rees Jones and Greg Muirhead. Known as the “Open Doctor,” Rees Jones, son of Robert Trent Jones Snr, oversaw the upgrade of his father’s original golf course design. Bunkers were reconstructed, greens resurfaced and the entire course was re-grassed, using Bermuda on tees, fairways and rough and bent grass on the greens.