Page 60 - Western Amateur 120th Championship Program 2022, Exmoor Country Club

The Exmoor Golf Course: Authentic Donald Ross

The Exmoor course will present this with open run-ups, others with false 1899, Ross designed more than 400
year’s field of players with a classical fronts; and all greens with subtle golf courses and is renowned for
golf experience, one that exemplifies contours and multiple options for incorporating aspects of strategic
the Golden Age of golf architecture — pin placements. design learned from his days at St.
1910–1937 — a period when many of Andrews and as greenskeeper and head
Exmoor is located on the crest of
America’s most influential courses professional at the course in Dornoch.
a 12,000-year-old glacial ridge, a
were built. The layout features design
geological feature that inspired Ross At age 46, and nearing the height of
antecedents to the great courses of
to direct the course of play uphill, his design prowess, Ross walked the
Scotland: imaginative grass-faced
downhill and across the flatter areas of Exmoor property, listening to club
bunkers, challenging green complexes
the club’s 145 acres. He crafted a course officials, taking notes, and thinking
and 18 holes shaped in natural ways
that requires golfers to gauge the ideal deeply about design changes that
by the land on which they were built.
playing angles off the tee and to assess would elevate the existing course to
Donald J. Ross, considered the “Dean” the risk-or-reward of each stroke. a new level of championship quality.
of American golf architects, designed Players learn quickly to be alert to the
When work commenced, his plan
the Exmoor golf course in 1915. Golf changing winds off Lake Michigan,
installed new greens, which were raised
architect Ron Prichard completed a one mile to the east, which may shift
and sloped from back to front, and he
course restoration in 2003, and directions two or three times during
squared the fronts and backs of some
working through 2018 with Prichard, a round.
greens, while adding deceptive false
Exmoor resurfaced its greens with
fronts to others. Greenside bunkers
Pure Distinction bent grass, redefined
DONALD ROSS captured errant strokes, but the fronts
green pad shapes, and added new
A native of Dornoch, Scotland, Donald of most greens were left open — again
grass approaches to all greens.
Ross apprenticed at the Old Course in in classic style — enabling players to
The course will challenge every aspect St. Andrews under the guiding hand of keep their shots under the wind and
of a player’s game, with broad fairways Old Tom Morris, Scotland’s famous 19th roll them onto the green, just as Ross
and abrupt doglegs; with creative century champion player and course did as a young man on the sandy soil
bunkers, long grasses and some greens architect. After coming to America in of windswept St. Andrews.

The birthplace of Donald Ross, Dornoch, Scotland

58 The Exmoor Golf Course Exmoor Country Club