Meadow Club

Architect: Dr Alister MacKenzie
Restoration: Mike DeVries
 

Meadow Club is set in a high mountain meadow 30 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge and was the first course in America to be designed by Alister MacKenzie. He took an open landscape with a small creek and developed an American version of the Old Course at St Andrews.

When it opened in 1927, the course was a treeless landscape with multiple routes available to the golfer to find their preferred angle of attack while avoiding bunkers and the Bon Tempe stream. Greens were large and undulating, rewarding precise approach play and creative putting. The Depression and WWII caused the course to change very dramatically, with the greens shrinking to a fraction of their 7,000-10,000 sq ft sizes and the removal of many hazards. The course remained relatively untouched and unaltered thereafter.

In 1999, Mike was commissioned to oversee a restoration of the course to its original specifications. The result is a return of the greens to their original dimensions and bunkers to their original style and locations. There is an ongoing programme of tree management to restore vistas and playing strategies while retaining the picturesque qualities of maturing specimens that don’t affect the turf quality.