Biddeford Saco Country Club

Located in southern Maine's coastal community of Saco, Biddeford Saco Country Club features a 1921 Ross design on rolling terrain near the Saco River. The course offers a classic New England parkland experience with ocean-influenced weather and mature trees.

Biddeford Saco Country Club in Saco, Maine, traces its golfing heritage to Donald Ross's 1921 design — a nine-hole layout that opened on the southern Maine coast during one of the busiest periods in Ross's career and was later completed to 18 holes by Brian Silva in 1991, fulfilling the vision that Ross had established for the site seven decades earlier. The club began as a typical early 20th-century country club offering a range of recreational activities including bowling, skating, tennis, shooting, and golf. When Donald Ross accepted the commission to design the golf course, he laid out nine holes on a property that balanced the requirements of various activities with the specific demands of golf, producing a routing that made good use of the available terrain while leaving room for the club's other amenities. The original nine holes opened for play and established the character of the front nine that members still enjoy today.

The clubhouse itself is housed in a refurbished original farmhouse that stood on the Kelly property, giving the club's central building a direct connection to the land's agricultural past. Over the following decades the club gradually shed its other activities to embrace golf as its primary mission. The vision of a full 18-hole Ross layout remained, and in the mid-1980s the membership engaged restoration architect Brian Silva to complete the design. Silva studied Ross's design intentions for the property carefully, working to extend the course in a manner consistent with Ross's approach — greens with subtle but demanding slopes, bunkers positioned to penalize positional errors, and a routing that used the natural contours of the Maine terrain as its foundation.

The back nine was completed and the clubhouse renovated in 1991, giving the club for the first time the full 18-hole experience Ross had originally envisioned. The resulting course reflects both eras of its construction: the front nine carries the authentic character of a Ross design in its original form, while the back nine, though built 70 years later, was conceived explicitly to honor and continue what Ross had established. The two halves work together comfortably on the rolling southern Maine terrain, with the coastal New England landscape — mature pines, birches, and the topographic variety of glacially shaped ground — providing the visual framework that distinguishes golf in Maine from the course design of the flatlands. The 1991 completion year proved historically significant in another respect: Biddeford Saco was selected to host the Maine Amateur Championship that same year.

During the championship, Sean Gorgone shot a 63 from the championship tees to set the course record — a score that still stands as a measure of the course's demanding character at its best. The club hosted the Maine Amateur Championship again in 2008, establishing it as one of the premier competitive venues in the state. Located in Saco on the southern Maine coast, the club has been one of the more popular golf destinations in the state since the 1920s, serving members from the York County communities of Saco, Biddeford, and the surrounding coast. The completion of the 18-hole layout in 1991 elevated the club's competitive programming and expanded its appeal to golfers seeking a full-length Donald Ross experience on the Maine coast.