Congressional Country Club: Blue Course

Founded in 1924 so that members of Congress would have a course worthy of the capital, Congressional's Blue Course has since staged three U.S. Opens — including Rory McIlroy's record-setting 2011 breakthrough and Ken Venturi's legendary march through brutal heat in 1964. Andrew Green's 2021 restoration peeled back decades of accumulated changes to reveal Devereux Emmet's original strategic genius on 350 sweeping acres along the Potomac.

Congressional Country Club was born from a simple observation: in the early 1920s, Washington, D.C., lacked a golf club befitting the nation's political leadership. Two Indiana Republican congressmen, Oscar E. Bland and O.R. Luhring, recognized this gap and set about creating a club where members of Congress, Cabinet officials, and other government leaders could gather in a sporting atmosphere away from the pressures of Capitol Hill. In 1921, twelve founding signatories each pledged $1,000 for lifetime memberships, and the organizational wheels began turning. The founders recruited Herbert Hoover, then serving as Secretary of Commerce, to serve as the club's first president, lending immediate gravitas to the venture. Five sitting or former Presidents of the United States -- William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Hoover himself -- were given founding life memberships, alongside prominent industrialists including John D. Rockefeller, Walter Chrysler, Harvey S. Firestone, and William Randolph Hearst. The club secured a magnificent 380-acre property in Bethesda, Maryland, bordering the Potomac River, and commissioned architect Devereux Emmet to design the original golf course. On May 23, 1924, Congressional opened in a gala ceremony attended by more than 7,000 guests, with President Calvin Coolidge, Mrs. Coolidge, and Chief Justice Taft presiding over the festivities. Emmet's original layout was built on sparsely treed, gently rolling terrain and featured bold design choices, including a remarkable opening par-6 hole. The course was complemented by a massive Spanish Revival-style clubhouse that remains the largest golf clubhouse in the United States at approximately 140,000 square feet. Emmet's original course served the club well for its first two decades, but Congressional's ambitions extended beyond social golf. The club aspired to host national championships, and in 1957, the membership engaged Robert Trent Jones Sr. to undertake a comprehensive redesign of what would become known as the Blue Course. Jones combined nine remodeled Emmet holes with nine entirely new holes of his own design, creating a layout that introduced modern championship standards: extended bunkering, strategic water hazards, lengthened par-4s and par-5s, and the demanding character that would define the Blue Course for generations. Jones's work fundamentally reshaped the course's identity and prepared it for the national stage. During World War II, Congressional's grounds served a remarkable wartime purpose. From 1943 to 1945, the Office of Strategic Services -- the predecessor to the CIA -- commandeered the property as a training facility designated "Area F." Agents practiced live-fire exercises with rifles, grenades, and mortars, along with commando tactics and sabotage techniques. Civilian operations ceased entirely during this period, and the government's subsequent compensation aided the club's postwar recovery and helped fund later improvements. The Blue Course's championship era began with the 1964 U.S. Open, a tournament remembered for Ken Venturi's heroic victory. Playing in searing heat that pushed temperatures above 100 degrees, Venturi overcame a two-stroke deficit entering the final round and defeated Tommy Jacobs by four strokes, claiming his only major championship despite warnings from physicians about dehydration. Arnold Palmer finished tied for fifth, eight shots back. The 1976 PGA Championship followed, with Dave Stockton closing a four-shot deficit with an even-par 70 in the final round to defeat Charles Coody and claim his second major title. Tom Weiskopf added to Congressional's championship legacy by winning the 1995 U.S. Senior Open, defeating Jack Nicklaus by four strokes on a course that rewarded precision and patience. The 1997 U.S. Open brought Ernie Els to Congressional, where the South African claimed his second major championship by a single stroke over Colin Montgomerie after rallying from two shots behind Tom Lehman entering the final round.S. Open. That championship produced one of golf's most dominant performances: a twenty-two-year-old Rory McIlroy captured his first major title by eight strokes over Jason Day, posting a sixteen-under-par total of 268 -- the lowest winning score in Congressional's major championship history and a wire-to-wire victory that announced the arrival of a generational talent. The Blue Course also served as a regular PGA Tour venue, hosting the Kemper Open from 1980 through 1986 and the AT&T National (later the Quicken Loans National), hosted by Tiger Woods, from 2007 through 2018. These annual tournaments kept Congressional in the public eye between major championship appearances. In 2019, the club embarked on its most ambitious transformation since the Robert Trent Jones redesign. Architect Andrew Green was hired to submit a wholesale renovation plan for the Blue Course, and his vision proved boldly creative. Green retained only two elements of the former layout -- the routing and the par on each hole -- and reimagined virtually everything else. His stated goal was to create the course that Devereux Emmet might have originally designed had he possessed modern construction capabilities, while incorporating the strategic variety that defines great championship venues. The renovation, completed in 2021, transformed the Blue Course's character. Fairways nearly doubled in acreage from twenty-five to forty-six acres, creating wide strategic corridors that reward thoughtful positioning off the tee. Green complexes expanded from two and a half to three and a half acres, with surfaces that are often wider than they are deep, featuring open fronts that encourage creative ground-game approaches. The number of bunkers increased from ninety-eight to one hundred thirty-eight, while over a thousand trees were removed to restore the sweeping views and open character of the original property. Forty acres of native fescue areas were introduced, framing the playing corridors with a naturalistic aesthetic. Several individual holes were dramatically reimagined. The 10th was converted from a long forced-carry par-3 over water to a short, downhill drop-shot par-3 of 100 to 150 yards, recreating its original peninsula green location. The 11th and 12th now share a horseshoe-shaped fairway bisected by a creek, with the par-5 11th featuring a split-fairway strategy. The 15th plays as a pleasantly quirky Scottish-style par-4 with a blind uphill shot over a ridge to an infinity green tilting toward the clubhouse. The renovation earned Golf Digest's Best Transformation award for 2021 and reestablished Congressional as a modern championship venue of the highest order. In 2022, Congressional hosted the KPMG Women's PGA Championship -- the club's first women's major -- won by Jennifer Kupcho. The PGA of America subsequently awarded Congressional an extraordinary slate of future championships: the 2027 KPMG Women's PGA Championship, the 2030 PGA Championship, the 2033 KPMG Women's PGA Championship, and the 2037 Ryder Cup. With its storied history, its connection to the nation's political heritage, and Andrew Green's visionary renovation, the Blue Course at Congressional Country Club stands poised to write many more chapters in the annals of championship golf.