Special Places - Greenbrier

This week the US PGA Tour moves on to the Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. . The Tour’s newest event on the calendar, the inaugural Greenbrier Classic, is taking place at one of the country’s oldest golfing venues. Named by Golf Digest as the eighth best resort in North America, the Greenbrier boasts three championship courses. The Meadows Course annually hosts numerous regional championships; The Greenbrier Course hosted the 1979 Ryder Cup and the 1994 Solheim Cup, and The Old White Course welcomes The Classic for the next six years.

Named after a well-known hotel that stood on the grounds for nearly 70 years until the 1920s, The Old White Course opened for play in 1914. The layout was designed by famed Canadian-born course architect Charles B. Macdonald, who is often called “The Father of American Golf Architecture”. Collaborating with Seth Raynor, Macdonald used a strategy repeated in a number of his other designs, and created his own version of famous holes from British courses. Fourteen of the Old White’s holes are designed this way, with the 8th hole styled after the Redan at North Berwick, the 13th after the Alps at Prestwick, and the 15th after the Eden at St. Andrews. A full refurbishment and restoration was completed in 2006 to preserve the heritage of this traditional and historic course that has hosted many past US Presidents and golfing legends. The course itself is over 6300 metres long and plays to a par of 70 – 34 out with no par fives and 36 in with two - with generous fairways and challenging undulating bent grass greens. At this time of year thunderstorms are frequent occurrences here in the Allegheny Mountains, so look for weather interruptions to play their part in the tournament.

Following in the footsteps of all-time-great Sam Snead, Tom Watson is the Greenbrier resort’s current golf professional emeritus, and this award-winning National Historic Landmark dating back to 1778 is happy to host the return of the PGA Tour after a gap of 72 years.

You can follow the tournament weather here: http://www.golfweather.com/70349/westvirginia/greenbrierthe