Bucknell Golf Club

Opened in 1930 and designed by Emil Loeffler, Bucknell Golf Club serves as the home course for Bucknell University's varsity golf teams while remaining open to private members. The 18-hole layout was later modified by Edward Ault, who added a large pond and reconfigured five holes within the original acreage.

Bucknell Golf Club holds a singular place in the history of golf in central Pennsylvania as an university-affiliated course designed by a standout accomplished club-shaping hands in the Pittsburgh area tradition. The club's founding was inseparable from Bucknell University's institutional life in Lewisburg, Union County, reflecting the growing importance of golf as both a recreational pursuit and a competitive sport during the early decades of the twentieth century. The path to a permanent golf facility began in December 1929, when the Bucknell Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution to complete payment for a farm purchased by Judge Albert W. Johnson, with the explicit purpose of constructing a golf course on the property. With land secured, the university moved quickly to engage professional design expertise. On February 28, 1930, Professor James P. "Scottie" Whyte — a driving force behind the project — announced that Emil Loeffler had been retained as the architect. The choice of Loeffler was a significant one. Loeffler had built his reputation primarily through his long association with Oakmont Country Club, where he served as superintendent alongside the Fownes family — William and Henry Fownes, who had built Oakmont into a demanding course in the United States. That connection gave Loeffler intimate knowledge of what distinguished a truly challenging layout from a merely pleasant one. Loeffler's brother Archie supervised the construction at Bucknell, with total costs of approximately $15,000 — a substantial sum for a Depression-era project, made possible through the personal guarantees of several founding members including Frank Burpee, Whyte himself, James McClure, and Robert Matz. The course was ready for play by the fall of 1930, and Bucknell Golf Club held its formal opening ceremonies on October 31, 1930, as part of the university's Homecoming Weekend festivities. The inaugural tournament that day was won by a sophomore named Ernie Graner, who posted an 88 to take the prize — an appropriate score for a course that Loeffler had designed to reward careful play over brute force. The original nine-hole layout took full advantage of the rolling central Pennsylvania terrain, with natural elevation changes and mature tree lines that gave the course immediate character and definition. Over subsequent decades, the course was expanded and modified as resources and land allowed. Edmund Ault, one of the mid-Atlantic region's most prolific post-war architects, contributed design work in later years, and Ron Forse — a Pennsylvania-based architect with a particular interest in historical restoration and renovation — has also been involved in course improvements. These contributions have extended and refined the original Loeffler routing while maintaining the course's essential parkland character. The expanded eighteen-hole layout that the club eventually achieved reflects decades of thoughtful stewardship and a commitment to improving the course as a competitive and recreational venue. Bucknell Golf Club serves dual purposes as a facility for university students, faculty, and staff as well as a membership-based private club. The Bucknell University men's and women's golf teams have used the course as their home facility, a relationship that has shaped the club's identity as a place where competitive and recreational golf coexist. The course's connection to the Fownes Foundation, which has supported golf development at Bucknell, reflects the broader legacy of the Fownes family's influence on Pennsylvania golf — a legacy that began at Oakmont and extended, through Loeffler's connection to that club, to the hills above the Susquehanna River valley. The course today occupies a setting that has changed considerably from the farm that Judge Johnson purchased in the late 1920s. The fairways cut through mature woodland, the greens have been refined through multiple renovation cycles, and the course has taken on the established character of a layout that has been played and loved for nearly a century.