Aronimink Golf Club

Aronimink Golf Club is a celebrated Donald Ross design in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, that has hosted a PGA Championship, a U.S. Amateur, and a Senior PGA Championship. Known affectionately as 'The Mink,' it is a superb example of Ross's strategic artistry in the Philadelphia region.

In December 1896, a small group of cricketers led by Harrison Townsend laid out a few rudimentary golf holes at the corner of 52nd Street and Chester Avenue in Philadelphia. This modest beginning, an outgrowth of the Belmont Cricket Club known as the Belmont Golf Association, would eventually grow into Aronimink Golf Club, a course that Donald Ross himself considered his masterpiece. The Belmont golfers formally incorporated as the Aronimink Golf Club in 1900, taking their name from a local Lenape word. The young club moved in 1902 to a site at 54th Street and Whitby Avenue, and then in 1913 relocated again to Drexel Hill, where it remained for thirteen years. By the mid-1920s, the membership had outgrown its surroundings and was seeking a permanent home worthy of their ambitions. In 1926, the club sold its Drexel Hill property and purchased a sweeping 300-acre tract in Newtown Square, roughly fifteen miles west of center-city Philadelphia. It was here, amid the rolling farmland of Delaware County, that the club would finally put down lasting roots. To design the new course, the club commissioned Donald Ross, the Scottish-born architect who by the late 1920s stood at the pinnacle of his profession. Ross, working alongside his associate J.B. McGovern, began construction in 1925. Footage from that year shows early steam shovels carving the landscape into shape.

Ross lavished extraordinary care on the Newtown Square property, producing a layout that featured more than 190 bunkers arranged in his characteristic clustered style -- groups of three and four sand hazards guarding approaches and green complexes. Wide fairways offered strategic variety, and the green surfaces displayed the subtle, deceptive contours that became Ross's hallmark. The course opened for play on Memorial Day 1928, the same day the membership moved into its new clubhouse, an elegant structure designed by architect Charles Barton Keen. Ross returned to Aronimink two decades later in 1948 and, surveying the mature course, offered what has become the defining statement of his career: "I intended to make this my masterpiece, but not until today did I realize that I built better than I knew." That remark has resonated through the decades, serving as both a tribute to Ross's vision and a reminder of the enduring quality of his work at Aronimink. The course quickly established itself as a worthy championship venue. In 1962, Aronimink hosted the PGA Championship, where Gary Player captured the title with a four-round total of 278. Fifteen years later, in 1977, the club welcomed the U.S. Amateur Championship, where John Fought dominated the final match, defeating Doug Fischesser 9 and 8 in just 28 holes. The 1997 U.S. Junior Amateur followed, further cementing Aronimink's place in the national championship rotation. The club continued to attract major events into the twenty-first century.

In 2003, John Jacobs won the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship at Aronimink. The AT&T National, a PGA Tour event hosted by Tiger Woods's foundation, came to the club in both 2010 and 2011, with Justin Rose and Nick Watney taking the respective titles. These events were a prelude to an even more ambitious period of championship hosting that would follow a comprehensive restoration of the course. Over the decades following Ross's original construction, Aronimink's bunker count had gradually dwindled from the original 190-plus to just 74. Fairways had narrowed, greens had been reduced in size, and the strategic character Ross had embedded in the design had been diluted. In the fall of 2016, the club engaged architect Gil Hanse and his partner Jim Wagner to undertake a thorough restoration. Working from a remarkable trove of historical photographs, aerial surveys, and ground-level images from the late 1920s and 1930s, Hanse and Wagner set about repainting the picture Ross had originally intended. The restoration, completed in the spring of 2017, was transformative. The bunker count rose from 74 to 174, reflecting Ross and McGovern's original clustered scheme with only minor modifications for modern playability. Greens were expanded significantly, with some growing by as much as 30 feet, restoring the original putting surface dimensions and recovering lost pin positions. Fairways were widened to re-establish the strategic angles Ross had built into his approaches.

Tees were returned to their original freeform shapes and brought back to grade level. The work revealed design features that had been buried for decades, including the distinctive punchbowl green on the 15th hole and the dramatic 11th hole with its 20 bunkers and the steepest green contours on the property. The restored Aronimink made its championship debut at the 2018 BMW Championship, where Keegan Bradley prevailed in the FedExCup Playoff event. Two years later, in 2020, the club hosted the KPMG Women's PGA Championship, won by Sei Young Kim. That event gave Aronimink a singular distinction: it became the first venue in history to have hosted all three of the PGA of America's rotating major championships -- the PGA Championship, the Senior PGA Championship, and the Women's PGA Championship. Aronimink's championship story continues to unfold. The club is set to host the 2026 PGA Championship, bringing the PGA's flagship event back to Newtown Square for the first time since 1962. The timing is fitting: the championship will coincide with America's 250th anniversary, and the course Ross built nearly a century ago remains as demanding and captivating as ever. From a handful of makeshift holes on a Philadelphia street corner to a venue that has tested the greatest players across generations, Aronimink stands as an enduring testament to Donald Ross's genius and the membership's commitment to preserving it.