Golfing societies have become popular in the United States over the last few decades as players seek access to some of the nation’s top courses that they otherwise might not be able to play or afford — or both.
The granddaddy of American golfing societies, though, operates under a totally different and unique model.
The Donald Ross Society, founded in 1989, does not necessarily covet the top layouts — although locations such as Pinehurst No. 2 and Seminole Golf Club — certainly top the list. Instead, the more than 800 enthusiastic members float their golfing boat by playing any and all courses Ross designed, and by doing so help spread the word of his design brilliance, along with efforts to save and restore as many of his courses as possible.
And they certainly have a bunch to choose from. The Scottish-born Hall of Fame golf course architect designed more than 450 courses, many of which date back more than 100 years.
“Let’s be honest, we don’t necessarily have the sexiest courses, but the body of work by Ross is tremendous,” says Vaughn Halyard, who became president of the Donald Ross Society in October. “I acknowledge that Ross didn’t do Cypress Point or some other famous courses, but he did Pinehurst No. 2 and his proliferation of work is appreciated by us as well as his high-end golf course architecture.”
The 65-year-old Halyard, who lives in Milwaukee and is the CEO of StoryLounge Media Group, was a late-comer to the golfing world. His son began playing the game in 2008 at Cedar Rapids Country Club, the only Ross-designed course in Iowa.
“My son wanted to be Tiger Woods,” Halyard says. “That’s when I started learning how to play golf. I picked the game up in my 40s so it was horrifying to me every time I took the club back.”
While Halyard’s game needed some work, he soon took an interest in the details of his home golf course.
“I was on a green as I was learning how to play and it had some fungus and moss on it,” he says. “I went to the superintendent and said, ‘Hey, this doesn’t look like the stuff I see on TV.’ He said if it looked bad to me that I should join the golf and greens committee, so I did.”
Halyard’s curious media background soon kicked in and he began researching Ross, and found that many of his fellow members were indifferent — to say the least — about the club’s design history.
“I talked to one member and he said ‘Nobody knows who Donald Ross was,”’ Halyard recalls of the famed architect who died in the 1940s. “My alter ego kicked in and quite a few superlatives came out of my mouth and I said, ‘You’re out of your mind, I’m pretty sure this Donald Ross guy’s pretty important.”’
Cedar Rapids County Club ended up taking Halyard’s advice and restored the Ross layout to its original state.
“I just became sort of a Donald Ross aficionado out of necessity just to make sure that I could convey the facts of why all of our Donald Ross history and architecture was important,” he says. “And I became more involved in the Donald Ross Society, helping with communications and trying to expand a bit of my role and media expertise. It’s very important to me, and it truly is one of the finest unpaid positions there is.”
Membership to the Connecticut-based Donald Ross Society isn’t complicated, said a laughing Halyard.
“It’s a very meticulous and exclusive process,” Halyard says tongue-in-cheek. “You go to the website, pay $100 via credit card or Venmo or PayPal and we’ll get back to you within 10 or 15 seconds with a decision. And that decision is final at least until you renew the following year.”
Halyard traveled to the North Carolina Sandhills this month with other Ross fans to tee it up at four of the best examples of Ross restorations the traveling golfing public can access. Pinehurst No. 2, Mid Pines, Southern Pines and Pine Needles are all located within 10 minutes of each other.
“This area was a gold mine for Ross. This is a Ross lab,” Halyard says. “He would tinker with these courses all through this region.”
Pinehurst No. 2 was restored in 2010 by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, while upstart architect Kyle Franz worked his magic over the last decade at Mid Pines, Pine Needles and most recently Southern Pines.
“Ross worked in the Sandhills so long that he really had four different styles, so it was a great challenge to find one that fit each property that we were working on,” Franz says. “I enjoyed all three of them equally for different reasons. It’s exciting to keep honing the craft and challenge ourselves to not get caught in painting-by-numbers or repeating past success but to keep illuminating different periods of Ross work.”
“Those courses were Ross showcases and over time people started restoring and realizing that ‘Hey, you know what Ross did the first time was right, we screwed it up. Let’s go back,”” Halyard says. “You can feel Ross here. You can see Ross here. And it really makes a difference in the quality of golf, the quality of the experience and the quality of play.”
One of the first things those new to the Donald Ross Society begin to appreciate as they travel the country is the closeness of green-to-next tee in most all of his designs.
“That’s kind a characteristic of what I call Golden Age courses,” says Halyard, who tries to walk Ross courses as much as possible. “The Golden Age courses would build for golf and before carts, and the new golf courses were built to sell houses.”
Halyard also said a recent emphasis for the Donald Ross Society has been on executing smaller group outings.
“We’ve sort of narrowed our approach a little bit,” Halyard says. “We’re a nonprofit, so we’re not trying to generate a lot of revenue or necessarily generate a lot of buzz. Nothing detracts from the experience of playing a course as much as a shotgun start. So, with smaller groups it allows everybody to go off the first tee and play the course as it was designed and intended by the architect.”