SOUTHERN HILLS

Courses

bruced
April 1, 2009

Located in the hills of beautiful Tulsa, Southern Hills where this week’s PGA Championship is to be staged, is among the premier clubs in the US.

Located in the hills of beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma, Southern Hills Country Club where this week’s US PGA Championship, the final major of the year, is to be staged, is among the premier clubs in the nation.
The club pride’s itself, according to its official website, on “exceptional service and warm hospitality.
“We provide our members and their guests with a unique Southern Hills experience through recreation, fine dining and social interaction while taking our historic traditions, present values and innovative ideas into the future.
“Our Perry Maxwell designed Championship Golf Course has been the site of three US Open Championships and three PGA Championships with an unprecedented fourth PGA Championship set to tee off on Thursday.”
HISTORY
Southern Hills Country Club was established in 1936 as a private country club, the land having been donated by wealthy oil industrialist Waite Phillips.
When the stock market crashed, Mr. Phillips’ fortune was almost totally liquid; it was estimated to be approximately $50 million.
He became Chairman of The First National Bank of Tulsa, and he was approached by Bill Warren and Cecil Canary to finance a new country club. They spoke of the need for a family-oriented club that would include a swimming pool, stable, horseback trails, polo field, skeet range, tennis courts, clubhouse and golf course.
Golf was not popular then as it is now and swimming pools were rare.
Phillips immediately labeled their ideas as ridiculous, noting the more important financial demands of the day.
However, he agreed to donate the land for the club if Warren and Canary could demonstrate that there were sufficient numbers of people interested in such a project.
Phillips gave them two weeks to garner pledges from at least 150 Tulsans for $1,000 each, but he would not personally give them a nickel to finance the project.
The money was raised and the Clubhouse was constructed in 1936. Perry Maxwell, who designed the Colonial and Prairie Dunes golf courses, was hired to design the Southern Hills golf course.
GOLF
The club’s pride-and-joy, it’s 18-hole Championship Golf Course, currently ranked No. 15 on Golf Digest’s highly regarded list of “America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses”, was designed by Maxwell in 1935, and renovated by Keith Foster in 1999, some seven years after its West Nine nine-hole Golf Course designed by Ben Crenshaw was completed.
Over the years Southern Hills has hosted 13 top-flight championships on its championship course, these being 3 US Open Championships, 3 PGA Championships, 2 Tour Championships, a USGA Women’s Amateur Championship, a USGA Junior Amateur Championship, a USGA Senior Amateur Championship, a USGA Amateur Championship and a USGA Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship.
THE COURSE – HOLE-BY-HOLE
The championship course is made up of loops with pars of 35 and 36, a total par of 71, is 7,012 yds long and, according to the official Southern Hills CC website, can expect to play as follows: