Whitemarsh Valley Country Club

 Whitemarsh Valley Country Club
815 Thomas Road
Lafayette Hill, PA  19444
  www.whitemarshvalleycc.com

Architect:  G.C. Thomas
Founded:  1899

Club Contacts

Golf ProfessionalDavid Pagett  (215) 233-3904
General ManagerAshly Ryan  (215) 233-3901
SuperintendentDarren Farrar  (215) 233-3901

Course Slope & Ratings

Whitemarsh Valley Country Club TeesFront 9Back 9Course
RatingSlopeRatingSlopeYardsRatingSlopePar
 Junior  Male  30.3 100  29.8 103  3725  60.1 102  72 
 Red  Male  33.4 117  32.9 118  5145  66.3 118  72 
 Gold  Male  34.2 118  34.2 120  5638  68.4 119  72 
 White/Green  Male  35 131  35.5 130  6100  70.5 131  72 
 Green  Male  35.1 131  35.2 127  6101  70.3 129  72 
 White  Male  35.8 139  36.3 131  6463  72.1 135  72 
 Black/White  Male  36.8 136  36 142  6639  72.8 139  72 
 Black  Male  37.4 137  36.6 143  6846  74 140  72 
 Junior  Female  31 107  31.5 110  3725  62.5 109  72 
 Red  Female  35.5 130  35.6 130  5145  71.1 130  72 
 Gold  Female  36.6 139  37.5 131  5639  74.1 135  72 
 Green  Female  37.7 138  38.1 131  6101  75.8 135  72 

Directions


Club History

Not all of the early golf clubs flourished. Gone is Belfield Country Club, founded in Germantown in 1899. Albert W. Tillinghast, a member who would become one of America’s half-dozen greatest golf course architects, held the course record (twice around the 2,666-yards nine in 80) there in 1903. Gone, too, is Belfield’s neighbor. Mount Airy Country Club. But its successor club thrives today. And over the years since Whitemarsh Valley’s formation, in 1908, it has certainly witnessed more rounds by the finest players of the 20th century—ranging from Jock Hutchison, who in 1917 won the wartime substitute for the U.S. Open here, to Jack Nicklaus, three-time IVB champion—than any other course in the Philadelphia area.


Whitemarsh Valley’s original clubhouse — about 1914.

Whitemarsh Valley Country Club was incorporated in April, 1908, by a group of former members of Mount Airy, which was forced to disband when the club was unable to get a satisfactory extension of its lease. William Disston was elected president, S. Boyd Carrigan first vice president, Joseph A. Slattery secretary, and William F. Kling treasurer. The bulk of the club’s land—its present property—was bought from George C. Thomas, Jr., over the next three years. Thomas had made this estate, which his father gave him when he was 21 and which he called Bloomfield Farm, his home, and he would make it an outstanding golf course.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1894, George Thomas worked with his father in the banking firm of Drexel & Co. until 1907. His early avocation was gardening—in fact, he became a recognized authority on the breeding of roses, about which he wrote several books—and this led him into the landscaping aspects of golf course design. He laid out a nine-hole course in Marion, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s, and he gained valuable insight into the art of golf architecture by observing Donald Ross’s work on the original Sunnybrook course. He also consulted with Tillinghast on his design for the Cricket Club’s course at Flourtown, and welcomed the opportunity to observe what his friends Hugh Wilson and George Crump were up to at Merion and Pine Valley, respectively.

The Whitemarsh course project, incorporating the Wissahickon Creek and embracing lovely rolling meadows that had once been the grazing land for some of America’s most famous thoroughbreds—among them, Leamington, Lexington, and Iroquois—and that had been his own home now for more than 15 years, was a natural one for Thomas. He made the most of it. In years to come his original design would be revised—more a matter of bunkering and green contouring than the basic routing of holes—first by William Flynn, then by Donald Ross. But the course we play today is, by and large, the work of George Clifford Thomas, who moved to California in 1919. Here he would become renowned as the designer of such outstanding courses as Bel-Air, Los Angeles Country Club’s North course, and Riviera. Here, too, he would write his classic Golf Architecture in America: Its Strategy and Construction. But his legacy to Philadelphia, the superlative eighteen at Whitemarsh (in 1952 Ben Hogan called it "one of the great golf courses")" is an enduring one.


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