Seth Raynor

White Sulphur Springs, WV

Macdonald & Raynor's 1914 Allegheny Mountain classic: template holes, PGA Tour history, and The Greenbrier's crown jewel.

New Haven, CT

Yale Golf Course in New Haven opened in 1926 on land given to the university by Sarah Wey Tompkins. It was laid out by C.B. Macdonald with Seth Raynor doing the construction work, on a rocky, heavily wooded property that had to be blasted and cleared before golf could be routed through it. The course is built on the template holes Macdonald and Raynor used throughout their work, including a Redan, an Eden, a Short and a Biarritz. The greens are enormous and heavily contoured, and the par-3 ninth plays across water to a Biarritz green split by a swale deep enough to hide a golfer standing in it. The course is home to Yale's golf teams and is open to public play at set times. It went through a long stretch of deferred maintenance and has been the subject of ongoing restoration work aimed at recovering the original green sizes and bunker shapes.

Charleston, SC

Charleston Municipal Golf Course, known locally as the Muni, sits on James Island about five miles west of downtown Charleston along the Stono River. It opened in 1929. The designer is not known for sure, though it was built at the same time Seth Raynor was working at the Country Club of Charleston and Yeamans Hall nearby. In 2020 architect Troy Miller of Miller Golf Design led a $2 million renovation. He rebuilt the greens to their original size and added template holes in the Raynor tradition, including a Punchbowl, Biarritz, Alps, Redan, Cape and Short. He also opened views along the Stono River and used short five-foot flagsticks. The Muni is the city's public course and handles 50,000 to 60,000 rounds a year.

Lakeville, CT

The Hotchkiss School Golf Course circles the campus of the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, with views of Lake Wononscopomuc and the surrounding Berkshire-Taconic hills. Seth Raynor designed the course in 1924; Charles Banks, a Hotchkiss teacher who later became Raynor's design partner, reconfigured several holes in the 1930s after Raynor's death. The nine-hole course plays to a par of 35 across just over 3,000 yards, with undulating greens and moderate elevation changes that give it a reputation among golf architecture enthusiasts for its Raynor template holes. The course closes to the public in afternoons during the school's athletic season and otherwise operates on a membership and daily-fee basis, run through the school's pro shop.

West Orange, NJ

Rock Spring Golf Club in West Orange is one of only two public courses in the United States designed by Seth Raynor. The club was founded in 1925, with Raynor designing the course and Charles Banks completing construction after Raynor's death; the layout carries their trademark template holes and creative green complexes across a rolling, tree-lined site along the first mountain ridge. Long the private Rock Spring Club and later owned by Montclair Golf Club, it was purchased by the Township of West Orange in 2019 and opened to the public that May under KemperSports management. The par-71 course plays about 6,600 yards and has hosted the New Jersey State Open four times, most recently in 2009. The clubhouse looks out over Cable Lake toward the Manhattan skyline.

Alexandria Bay, NY

One of the oldest golf clubs in upstate New York, Thousand Islands Country Club features a Seth Raynor redesign set amid the scenic St. Lawrence River region. The course retains classic Golden Age character with Raynor template holes and sweeping views of the Thousand Islands.

Wheaton, IL

Chicago Golf Club was founded in 1892 by C.B. Macdonald and built the first 18-hole course in the United States at its original Belmont site in Downers Grove. The club moved to Wheaton, where Macdonald's new course opened in 1895; Seth Raynor reworked it in 1923. It was one of the five founding USGA member clubs in 1894 and hosted the U.S. Open in 1897, 1900 and 1911 and the Walker Cup in 1928 and 2005. The course joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.

Lake Bluff, IL · Location not mapped

Shoreacres in Lake Bluff, Illinois was founded in 1916 by a group led by Stanley Field, a nephew of Marshall Field, along with members from the nearby Onwentsia Club. Construction was delayed by World War I, and architect Seth Raynor completed the design in 1921 on a flat plateau cut through by wooded ravines that feed toward Lake Michigan. The par-71 course includes Raynor's characteristic template holes such as a Redan, Biarritz, Eden and Road hole, with a distinctive three-hole stretch playing across, down into, and back out of a ravine. David Adler designed the clubhouse, rebuilt after a 1983 fire, and Tom Doak's firm led a restoration of the course in the early 2000s.