Bloomfield Hills Country Club

Bloomfield Hills Country Club is a historic C.H. Alison design in suburban Detroit, one of Michigan's oldest and most storied private clubs. Its tree-lined layout and classic green complexes exemplify Golden Age architecture.

Bloomfield Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, traces its origins to 1909 — making it among the older continuously operating private golf clubs in the Detroit metropolitan area — and its current championship golf course to a 1913 redesign by Harry S. Colt, the legendary British architect who visited America briefly but left a lasting imprint on several of the Midwest's finest courses. The club was founded in 1909, with an original nine-hole golf course designed by Tom Bendelow in 1911. As the membership grew and the club's ambitions expanded, it purchased an additional 50 acres to the west of the original property. For the redesign of the expanded layout, the club engaged Harry S. Colt — the British architect who, alongside his partner Charles Alison, was responsible for some of the finest golf course design produced in the English-speaking world during the early 20th century. Colt visited the Bloomfield Hills property and designed the expanded 18-hole course, which opened for play in 1915. Research has confirmed that Bloomfield Hills Country Club is the last remaining golf course in the United States designed by Colt alone — a distinction that gives the club a significance in golf architecture history that extends well beyond Michigan. Colt's approach at Bloomfield Hills reflected his characteristic philosophy: using the natural contours of the terrain as the primary design element, positioning greens and bunkers to reward intelligent course management rather than raw power, and creating a course that played differently depending on wind conditions and pin positions. The gently rolling Bloomfield Hills terrain — the product of glacial activity that left the Oakland County landscape in a state of pleasant undulation — gave Colt the natural foundation he needed for a design of genuine character.

Over the subsequent century, the club maintained and periodically improved the layout. In 2019, Bloomfield Hills Country Club formally committed to a structured restoration of the golf course, engaging Mike DeVries of DeVries Designs, Inc. and Frank Pont of Infinite Variety Golf Design to lead the project. DeVries and Pont — two architects recognized across the profession for their expertise in restoring classic-era courses — developed a long-term plan to recover the Colt design's original intent. The restoration included restoring bunkering to an early vintage Colt style and reclaiming the edge margins of putting surfaces to enhance the topography's natural beauty. The majority of construction work was completed in 2021.

LaBar Golf Renovations served as the on-site contractor throughout the project. The course plays through mature tree cover that has developed across more than 110 years on the Bloomfield Hills property, giving holes the enclosed, parkland character typical of the finest southeast Michigan private clubs. The natural beauty of the Oakland County countryside, with its combination of hardwood forests, gentle hills, and carefully maintained turf, provides a setting for golf that has remained consistent in quality since Colt established the course's foundations in 1915.