BallenIsles Country Club: North Course

Originally part of John D. MacArthur's PGA National project, the North Course first opened in 1964 as a nine-hole Dick Wilson design and was extended to 18 holes in 1969 when Joe Lee added a second nine. A 2013 redesign by Kipp Schulties reworked the layout tee to green, incorporating ground from the former on-site short course.

BallenIsles Country Club's North Course began life in 1964 as part of the PGA National Golf Club, the ambitious Palm Beach Gardens development commissioned by John D. MacArthur and the Professional Golfers' Association of America. MacArthur and the PGA retained architects Dick Wilson and Joe Lee to plan the original 54-hole complex; the North Course opened first as a nine-hole Wilson routing, and Joe Lee added a second nine in 1969 to complete the 18-hole layout. The property served as the national home of the PGA of America from 1964 to 1973, hosting the PGA Seniors' Championship, the 1971 World Cup, the first PGA Merchandise Show and the original PGA Tour qualifying school, with the adjacent East Course hosting the 1971 PGA Championship won by Jack Nicklaus. After the PGA's departure in 1973 the facility operated as JDM Country Club before being reorganized and rebranded BallenIsles in 1989. The North Course became the most dramatically transformed of the club's three layouts in 2013, when South Florida architect Kipp Schulties led a roughly $5 million redesign that reshaped tees, fairways, greens and bunkers and absorbed land from the former BallenIsles short course into the main layout. The renovation gave the North a more modern character, with expanded water features and strategic fairway bunkering, while retaining the corridors Wilson and Lee had originally set through the South Florida flatland. Today the North Course is one of three 18-hole courses within a gated community of roughly 1,575 homes and sits alongside BallenIsles' Rees Jones-designed South Course and the Dick Wilson / Joe Lee East, a trio that links the property's current identity directly to its PGA National origins.