Army Navy Country Club

Army Navy Country Club is a storied military-affiliated club in Arlington, Virginia, with 36 holes. Its two courses near the Pentagon serve active and retired military officers and their families with a tradition dating to 1924.

Army Navy Country Club was incorporated on November 11, 1924—Armistice Day—a date chosen deliberately to honor the military service that defined the founding membership. The club was established under the name Army Navy and Marine Corps Country Club; the name was officially shortened to Army Navy Country Club in 1930. The founding mission addressed a practical problem: Army, Navy, and Marine Corps officers stationed in the Washington area had modest military salaries that put the high initiation fees and dues of existing private country clubs out of reach. Among the founding members were General Omar Bradley and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz later served as club president. The club began purchasing land in Arlington, Virginia in 1925, and developed quickly into a significant institution in the Washington golf community. An original 18-hole layout by Richard Newman was the club's first course, later expanded to 27 holes to serve the growing membership. The Arlington campus is located at 1700 Army Navy Drive in Arlington, Virginia. In 1958, Army Navy Country Club acquired Fairfax Country Club and its Robert Trent Jones Sr.-designed 18-hole golf course. The Fairfax course, located at 3315 Blenheim Boulevard in Fairfax, Virginia—approximately 11 miles from the Arlington campus—had been designed by Jones with a master plan dating to 1940.

The acquisition gave the club a dual-campus structure with 27 holes at Arlington and 18 holes at Fairfax, a configuration that has defined Army Navy's offering to its membership ever since. Rich Mandell undertook subsequent architectural work at the Fairfax campus in 2011. The presidential membership list accumulated by Army Navy Country Club over its history reflects the club's position at the center of Washington's power structure. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and William J. Clinton all held membership at the club—a list that spans administrations from the early Cold War through the 1990s and underscores the club's institutional relationship with the highest levels of American government. The dual-facility structure—Arlington and Fairfax—gives Army Navy Country Club a range of experience unusual among Washington-area private clubs. Robert Trent Jones Sr.'s Fairfax course, acquired by the club more than 65 years ago, provides a combination of golf and social history that few private clubs in the Mid-Atlantic region can match. For the officers and their families who have made Army Navy their institution across a century of membership, the dual campus honors the founding commitment to serving those who serve the nation.