Blue Mound Golf & Country Club

Blue Mound Golf & Country Club is a textbook Seth Raynor design featuring a remarkable collection of his famous template holes, including the Biarritz, Alps, Redan, Eden, Punchbowl, and Double Plateau. The 1926 layout is a complete examples of Raynor's design philosophy in the United States, with all 18 original greens still in play nearly a century after construction. Routed through the rolling terrain west of Milwaukee, Blue Mound was the first course in Wisconsin to host a major championship — the 1933 PGA Championship.

Blue Mound Golf and Country Club in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, is one of the architectural treasures of Midwestern golf — a Seth Raynor design from 1926 that hosted the 1933 PGA Championship (won by Gene Sarazen) and stands as the first Wisconsin course to host a golf major. All eighteen original Raynor greens from 1926 remain in play, and the original design plans survive in extraordinary detail, making Blue Mound among the most complete surviving examples of Raynor's design philosophy in American golf. Seth Raynor, who worked as Charles Blair Macdonald's chief designer and later established his own practice, created at Blue Mound a course that translated the strategic principles of the great Scottish links — the Redan, the Road Hole, the Eden, the Short — into the rolling Milwaukee County terrain with characteristic Raynor precision and sophistication. The routing includes a par-4 Redan, a Double Plateau, a Biarritz, an Alps hole, a Road Hole, a Punchbowl at the par-4 eighth, and two par-3 template holes on the back nine — an additional Redan and an Eden. The large, flat-topped greens with dramatic false fronts and surrounds that typify Raynor's finest work are present at Blue Mound in their most complete surviving form, providing a playing experience that connects directly to the strategic traditions of classical golf course design.

The club's tournament history is exceptional. The 1916 Western Open was played at Blue Mound before Raynor's course was built, establishing the property's championship lineage early. In 1933, the PGA Championship came to Blue Mound — Gene Sarazen's victory that year came between his remarkable 1932 double of the U.S. Open and British Open and his historic 1935 Masters double eagle, placing his Blue Mound win at the center of one of golf's greatest competitive stretches. The 1940 Women's Western Open was also played at Blue Mound, where Babe Zaharias defeated Mrs. Russell Mann in the 36-hole match-play final, 5 and 4. Multiple Wisconsin Open championships and accomplished amateur events have continued the club's tradition of hosting competitive golf across its century of operation. Like many Golden Age designs, Blue Mound underwent changes during the mid-twentieth century that obscured Raynor's original intent: trees were planted, green sizes were reduced, bunkers disappeared, and alterations sapped the character of the original layout. In the late 1990s, the club engaged Tom Doak's Renaissance Golf Design, with architect Bruce Hepner leading the restoration work. Hepner's approach involved tree removal to restore original sight lines and views, bunker rebuilding to recover lost features, and green restoration to recover the dramatic contours and size that define Raynor's template designs.

The long restoration process returned Blue Mound to peak condition as among the top Raynor originals in the country. Blue Mound has been recognized by Golf Digest and other major publications as one of the best private courses in Wisconsin and among the historically significant courses in America, recognition that reflects both Raynor's original design and the quality of the long-term restoration effort. Today Blue Mound Golf and Country Club continues to serve the Milwaukee metropolitan area as one of Wisconsin's most historically significant private golf institutions — a Seth Raynor masterwork of 1926 with 18 original greens intact, a PGA Championship history, and a restoration that has returned this course to the condition that makes it among the top Golden Age designs in the Midwest.