St. Louis Country Club

Favorite Hole

No. 6 (“Blind”), par 4, 353 yards

You might call it a “Maiden” hole because of its distinctly Maiden-ish green (though under current conditions the top-left shelf is unpinnable), but regardless of its name, No. 6 is a truly remarkable design that has improved with age.

A blind tee shot requires players to decide whether to push driver up near the green or to lay up with an iron. The day’s pin position influences strategy; the observant player might take a peek at the sixth green while driving up the entrance road. When the pin is front right, accessing it after hitting driver up the right side is challenging, so if you’re playing aggressively, steer left. Playing safe leaves a relatively short approach from a right-to-left lie, but it’s tough to pass up the possibility of a pitch shot if you can get a driver into the swale short of the green.

The green’s mounding is amazing, and pins at the base of the humps make for fun backboard scenarios.

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Overall Thoughts

As a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, I despise most things St. Louis has to offer, especially the Cardinals, who have consistently beaten up on the Cubs (outside of 2016). I do, however, have a soft spot for St. Louis Country Club.

One of C.B. Macdonald’s few surviving courses, SLCC is simply outstanding. The land was seemingly made for golf, with enough but not too much movement, and the design is fantastic. It plays the usual MacRaynor hits while also including several original hole ideas inspired by the terrain. Perhaps because the project occurred early in Macdonald and Raynor’s partnership, before they had settled into a groove, it boasts some unique renditions of their famed templates.

A few of the original holes:

Almost every Macdonald-Raynor design features the same four par 3s: “Redan,” “Biarritz,” “Eden,” “Short.” At St. Louis, however, there is a fifth: the 12th hole, a one-off “Crater” concept. It might be the best par 3 on the course because of its excellent topography. The hole plays over a large valley, which is the central feature of SLCC’s property. The tee sits on one side of the valley, and the green is set into a depression, or “crater,” on the other. The green itself is small, severe, and surrounded by bunkers and mounds. The hole lends balance to St. Louis’s set of par 3s and kicks off the course’s remarkable closing stretch.

The next hole, “Clubhouse,” is another non-template design and one of my favorite par 5s, period. Playing along the left side of the same valley that No. 12 traverses, the 13th fairway tilts from left to right. The lower right side can gobble up wipey fades off the tee, but it offers flatter lies and a way to shorten the hole. On the second shot, you have to decide whether to take on the bunkers running across the approach area. Laying back is safe but leaves a long third shot to a canted green perched on a ridge. An aggressive second can earn a short wedge, but it brings the punishing bunkers into play. The green has a scary false front, and any misses long will result in a delicate chip coming back.

The ninth hole, “Ladue,” is another one-off par 5 on some of SLCC’s best land. A blind tee shot plays to a fairway that banks hard to the left. A good drive will give some players an opportunity to reach the green in two, but if you miss, you will likely need to lay up short of a creek that crosses the fairway about 160 yards in front of the green.

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A few of the unique templates:

Although Macdonald and Raynor repeated certain design ideas at all of their courses, they always adapted features and strategies to particular pieces of land, producing unique holes in the process. SLCC has several good examples of how the architects accomplished this feat.

The 15th hole is a par 5 named “Narrows” that plays over dramatic ground. To go for the green in two, you have to contend with blindness and a road cutting in from the right. The green is a fierce variation on the “Double Plateau” idea. Whereas most Double Plateau greens have two sections in the front—one low and one high—and a raised shelf in the back, the 15th green at SLCC has a slight Biarritz character: a front plateau tumbles into a low middle-left section before swooping up to a small back pedestal. No doubt this is a MacRaynor Double Plateau, but it’s unlike any other version of the green I’ve seen.

The fourth, St. Louis’s “Road” hole, is also somewhat remixed. It’s more of a reverse-Road design, in that playing left off the tee and contending with danger (in this case a bunker) yields the best approach angle. Also, there is a large dip in the fairway that plays a major strategic role. If you can’t carry this landform, you’ll have a semi-blind uphill approach, whereas those who clear it will have a flatter lie and an unobstructed view of the slanting green.

Couple these modified templates with the similarly distinctive “Maiden”-like sixth, which I chose as my favorite hole above, and with one-of-a-kind holes like “Crater,” “Clubhouse,” and “Ladue,” and you have a Macdonald-Raynor course unlike any other. When critics of the duo talk about the repetitive nature of their designs, I can only assume they’ve never been to St. Louis Country Club.

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2 Eggs

St. Louis Country Club is the top course in the St. Louis area and likely in the whole of Missouri. With perfectly scaled golf terrain and well-restored MacRaynor features, it easily earns an Egg for land and design. The club has made massive strides in recent years with tree removal but still has a considerable way to go, and a few more edges of the greens could be recaptured. As it is, though, SLCC is one of the finest examples of golf architecture in the Midwest and just a few steps away from reaching three-Egg status.

Course Tour

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