Atlantic City Country Club

Atlantic City Country Club is one of the oldest clubs in America, founded in 1897 in Northfield, New Jersey. Its historic course near Atlantic City is where the term 'birdie' originated, giving it a unique place in golf history.

Atlantic City Country Club was founded on September 11, 1897, with its first meeting organized by wealthy businessmen, most of them Atlantic City hotel owners seeking a private retreat accessible from the resort city. The club formally opened on June 18, 1898, under its original name, the Country Club of Atlantic City, with 200 charter members. The original nine holes were completed before the official opening, and the course was routed by John Reid—a professional golfer serving as the club's first designer—across bayside property chosen for optimal hole placement on the coastal plain of southern New Jersey. The course was substantially redesigned in 1915 by Willie Park Jr., the two-time British Open champion (1887 and 1889) who had become among the prolific course designers on both sides of the Atlantic. Park expanded the routing to 27 holes during his redesign, a significant enlargement that reflected the club's growing membership. Ten years later, in 1925, the partnership of Howard C. Toomey and William S. Flynn—responsible for some of the great American courses of the Golden Age, including Shinnecock Hills—reshaped the layout again, and the course continued largely in that form for more than seven decades. The club's final major redesign came in 1999 (completed 2000) when Tom Doak was commissioned to renovate and restore the layout.

Doak rerouted several holes on the front nine, amalgamated holes 10 and 11 to create a strong par five, elongated the old 12th hole to fashion a testing par four, and created new holes at 14 and 15. Doak created approximately seven acres of new tidal wetland on holes 14 and 15—the State of New Jersey had never previously received an application for a golf course to create more wetlands rather than fill them in. Atlantic City Country Club holds a singular place in the history of golf terminology: it is the established birthplace of the word "birdie." In December 1903, during a round on what was then the club's 12th hole, Abner "Ab" Smith of Philadelphia hit a long approach shot that came to rest within inches of the cup. One member of the group—which included Ab's brother William and Pine Valley architect George Crump—exclaimed it was "a bird of a shot," using the then-current slang for something outstanding. Smith proposed that an under-par score should earn double the stakes, his partners agreed, and the term entered the game's vocabulary. Because Atlantic City was a major resort destination visited by golfers from across the country, the term spread rapidly from its origin point. The club has hosted six national championships conducted by the United States Golf Association. The 1901 U.S. Amateur was won by Walter Travis, an early demonstration of the then-new Haskell rubber-core golf ball.

The club also hosted the first Ivy League intercollegiate championship in 1901, won by Harvard. Three U.S. Women's Open Championships have been held at the club: in 1948, won by Babe Didrikson Zaharias in the first of her three Open victories; in 1965, won by Carol Mann; and in 1975, won by Sandra Palmer. The club further hosted the 1967 U.S. Senior Women's Amateur, won by Marge Mason, and the 1997 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur, won by Carol Semple Thompson. Atlantic City Country Club's most prominent club professional was John J. McDermott, who served the club at the start of his career. McDermott, born in Philadelphia in 1891, was a 19-year-old head professional at Atlantic City Country Club when he won the 1911 U.S. Open at Chicago Golf Club in a playoff—becoming the first American-born golfer to win the national championship. He repeated the feat in 1912, and remains the youngest U.S. Open champion in history. His career was cut short in 1914 when, following a transatlantic sailing incident, he collapsed upon entering the Atlantic City Country Club clubhouse at age 23 and spent the remainder of his life in care. The club was purchased by Hilton Hotels and later came under Caesars Entertainment Corporation ownership, before being sold on April 15, 2014, to the Ottinger family group, which also operates Scotland Run Golf Club and Ballamor Golf Club in New Jersey. The course occupies 170 acres at One Leo Fraser Drive in Northfield, New Jersey, historically served by a trolley line connecting Atlantic City, Somers Point, and Ocean City. A bell at the club entrance once signaled the final trolley departure of the evening and remains a symbol of the club's heritage.