Founded in 1912 by a couple of prominent local Jewish businessmen who’d been refused playing privileges at nearby golf clubs, Mountain Ridge Country Club had a 9-hole course in play soon after its formation. These original nine holes were later expanded to eighteen by A.W. Tillinghast then further altered by Herbert Strong but the severely contoured site was deemed to be unsuitable for the construction of a top class golf layout.
And so, when the club acquired a 250-acre property to the north of its original location in 1929, Donald Ross was engaged to design and build a new course, one that would endure for many years to come. The architect had already created a number of notable courses in New Jersey – at Deal, Englewood (NLE), Montclair and Plainfield – so the club had a good idea of what it would get by hiring the best in the business at that time.
The two nines start in parallel but quickly separate, the outward half circling anti-clockwise, the inward half clockwise, with the closing hole on each circuit rising to the finish. The layout is configured with short, medium, and long par threes, several of Ross’s much loved par four and a half holes and one true three-shot par five.
Mountain Ridge hired Ron Prichard in 1998 to develop a restoration master plan. Ross’s original field sketches were used to locate bunkers that had been removed down the years. New back tees were added, trees removed to improve airflow and open up long views across the course, and in 2011-12 fairways were significantly widened.
Unlike many of the old master’s courses, Mountain Ridge now boasts many of its original design features and the routing remains unaltered, even though the order of the nines has been swapped around. Ron Prichard also deserves credit for his work on the greensites, reinstating lost corners.
By way of marking Mountain Ridge’s centennial and showcasing the restoration, the USGA awarded the club the honor of hosting of the 58th edition of the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship in 2012, an event won by Paul Simson.
Mountain Ridge Country Club also hosted the LPGA Founders Cup in 2021 after the event was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ko Jin-young claimed the title and in doing so matched Annika Sorenstam's record of fourteen consecutive sub-70 set by the Swede in 2005.
“Now that Plainfield is receiving its just props,” said Tom Doak in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, “Mountain Ridge may be the most underrated course in golf-rich New Jersey.”
