Pine Hills Country Club

About the club

Not much is known about Harry Smead, the architect who built Pine Hills in the 1920s. Compared to his contemporaries, his portfolio of courses is small and quiet, with one exception: Pine Hills. Pine Hills is an eruption of contour as holes are draped like linen over the brawny knees and elbows of earth. Fairways pitch this way and that, going where the land takes them, and Smead's greens are miniature versions of the natural movements, full of swales, knobs and dips. The first hole sets the tone, a par 4 that banks of slopes like a roller coaster, swooshing into an elevated green. The fourth, coming back the other direction, tackles the same topography, pitching off the opposite tilt, plunging down toward a tabletop putting surface. The par-3 fifth looks like the slalom course, climbing steeply toward a jetstream green. And on it goes. Drew Rogers has been tending to the course over most of the last decade, polishing this and burnishing that, but leaving the remarkable green contour alone. A notable improvement was removing the forest of trees along the inside of the curving par-4 18th, exposing the ravine on the left and giving players something sinister to think about as they tee off. If Smead had designed more courses like this, we'd know his name as well as we do Perry Maxwell or Seth Raynor.