Lancaster CC And The U.S. Women's Open

Frank Fitzpatrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer on Lancaster Country Club moving into the national spotlight this week while hosting the U.S. Women’s Open.

Of the William Flynn design, Fitzpatrick writes:

The 95-year-old layout that occupies a snug but handsome slice of land between New Holland Pike and the Conestoga Creek doesn't have a big-tournament pedigree. Though this will be the 83d USGA event conducted in the state - by far the most of any - it will be Lancaster's first.

Its staid membership traditionally has shunned big events, though in the late 1940s LCC's Billy Haverstick defeated Arnold Palmer, 4-3, here in the final of the Pennsylvania Amateur.

Ben Crenshaw and Walter Hagen played here - a framed letter from the former, praising its classical design, hangs in the clubhouse - and a young Jim Furyk honed his game at Lancaster while a member of Manheim Township High School's golf team.

But what Lancaster did have, and what sets it in a class with many of the East's most renowned courses, was one of the best and most prolific designers from the golden age of golf architecture.

William Flynn, 29 at the time and the greenskeeper at Merion Golf Club, began mapping out LCC early in 1920 for a weekly fee of $44.92. The course opened 10 months later, but he would spend the next 25 years tweaking and refining his creation.