18th Metropolitan Amateur to be played

at historic St. Louis Country Club

By Bill Burton/metga.org

While the 2007 Metropolitan Amateur will be conducted at one of the area’s newest championship venues – the Nicklaus-designed WingHaven Country Club, the 18th playing of the Metropolitan Amateur Championship will be held at one of St. Louis’ oldest.

St. Louis Country Club, designed by one of the game’s revered masters, Charles Blair Macdonald, will host the 18th annual – August 7-9, 2008. 

“We are pleased to announce that the members of St. Louis Country Club have accepted our proposal to conduct our oldest and most prestigious event at their club,” said Tom O’Toole, Jr., Executive Director of the MAGA. “St. Louis now joins a wonderful list of host courses allowing us to showcase the top amateur talent in the region.”

Since the inception of the Metropolitan Amateur in 1991, the event has served as a platform to recognize veteran champions such as Jim Holtgrieve, Don Bliss, David Estes and the late Craig Schnurbusch as well as identify talented young players such as Mike Sabo, John Kelly, Parker LaBarge and Darren Lundgren.

St. Louis has graciously hosted many qualifiers and championships through the years. O’Toole said the organization is honored to bring its top event to the site that host hosted the 1947 U.S. Open, 1960 U.S. Amateur and 1971 U.S. Women’s Amateur.

Founded in 1892 in the St. Louis’ northern suburbs, the Country Club moved to Clayton in 1896, then to its current site in 1913. Macdonald and his protégé, Seth Raynor, applied their brand of Mid-American links-style design to the rolling property located just west of Price Road and south of Ladue Rd. in St. Louis County. St. Louis featured all of the signature Macdonald touches, including liberal use of cross bunkering, mounded fairways, and undulating greens.   

Metropolitan Amateur Championship History
1991            Don Bliss                           Country Club at the Legends
1992            Derre Owsley                     Bogey Hills Country Club
1993            Don Bliss                           Lake Forest Country Club
1994            Jim Holtgrieve                    Country Club of St. Albans
1995            Craig Schnurbusch             Spencer T. Olin Golf Course
1996            Tom Barry                          Bellerive Country Club
1997            David Estes                        Fox Run Golf Club
1998            David Estes                       Old Warson Country Club
1999            Brian Kennedy                   Norwood Hills Country Club
2000            Bob Beckmann                   Meadowbrook Country Club
2001            Scott Fann                        Gateway National Golf Links
2002            Mike Sabo                         Westwood Country Club
2003            Scott Edwards                   Persimmon Woods Golf Club
2004            John Kelly                         Glen Echo Country Club
2005            Parker LaBarge                  Fox Run Golf Club
2006            Darren Lundgren                Boone Valley Golf Club
2007            Ryan Franks                      WingHaven Country Club

 About Charles Blair MacDonald:

Have you longed to play some of the great old courses of Scotland? Thanks to the work of Canadian-born Charles Blair Macdonald, you could at the very least experience the look and feel of some of Scotland’s great holes by playing St. Louis Country Club’s stunningly beautiful 18-hole layout.

Macdonald’s regard for Scotland’s greatest golf holes is evident in much of his work throughout the United States.

Macdonald built only two dozen courses, most of them with the help of Seth Raynor, a Southampton, N.Y., engineer. While little remains of their work, the surviving courses are among America’s greatest pieces of golf real estate. The National Golf Club, located on Long Island, is Macdonald’s best known, but St. Louis Country Club remains a perfect example of his design concepts.  

Virtually all of Macdonald's courses include tribute holes from some of the great old courses of Scotland, where he studied as a young man. Among them, a Redan par-3 (St. Louis’ No. 16) paid tribute to a well-bunkered short hole from North Berwick. Other replica holes at St. Louis include a Cape-style par-4 (St. Louis’ No. 8), a dogleg that plays along and up to a meandering creek.

St. Andrews’ short eighth became St. Louis’ No. 7 “Shorty,” a devilish little par-3 with an elevated target protected by deep bunkers. The Old Course’s famed 11th, "Eden," was recreated at St. Louis’ No. 3. In fact, writer George Peper included St. Louis’ No. 3, which plays at just over 200 yards, as one of the 500 greatest holes in the history of golf.

A "Biarritz"-style par-3 (St. Louis’ No. 2) features a massive green divided across the middle by a sprawling four foot-deep swale. It owes its name to the “Chasm Hole” at Golf De Biarritz in France, designed by Scots Willie and Tom Dunn in 1888.

A prominent stockbroker who learned to play golf while attending the University of St. Andrews in the 1870s, Macdonald moved to America and played a pivotal role in shaping the game on many levels in the United States.

After designing America’s first 18-hole course for the Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Ill., Macdonald joined an elite group of golf enthusiasts who met to form the United States Golf Association (USGA) in 1895. He won the association's first U.S. Amateur in 1895 and, as an officer of the association, was instrumental in making the USGA the acknowledged national governing body.

Other C.B. Macdonald designs:
Chicago Golf, Wheaton, Ill. (1895)
National Golf Links, Southampton, N.Y. (1911)
Piping Rock, Locust Valley, N.Y. (1913)
Mid-Ocean Club, Bermuda (1924)
Creek Club, Locust Valley, N.Y. (1925)
Yale, New Haven, Conn. (1926)