Robert Trent Jones Golf Club

Robert Trent Jones is easily the most prolific golf course designer to ply his trade around the globe since the end of the Second World War. Born in England in 1906, he moved to East Rochester, New York with his parents soon after and it was in his adopted country that he would spend a large part of the next 89 years of his life immersed in course architecture.

It was well into his retirement years in the late 1980s when Jones is said to have come across an 850-acre property on the shores of Lake Manassas, thirty miles west of Washington D.C. which he felt would be just the place to construct a championship course that would attract the great and the good of the golf world as members.

And so, the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club came into being, bearing all the trademark design traits of the old master – expansive fairways, plenty of water hazards, lots of flashed bunker complexes and large, contoured greens. Cynics might say, “seen one RTJ design, seen them all,” but that misses the point entirely – there is a place in the golfing world for courses constructed to a certain tried and tested formula that somehow finds favour with so many.

Certainly, the PGA Tour were pleased enough with the course after it first opened that it was chosen to host the inaugural Presidents Cup matches three years later in 1994. Such was the success that year, the USA versus International Team event was held a further three times in 1996, 2000 and 2005, with the American team winning every match.