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A Brief History...


Blue Mound Golf and Country Club has been providing its members with an excellent golfing experience for over 100 years. The club has 18 challenging holes, an elegant clubhouse, fine dining and a variety of social activities along with a dedicated staff. The atmosphere is designed to encourage the kind of satisfying golf and rewarding social experiences found in the country's finest clubs. Once you and your guests have experienced Blue Mound, you will consider it your "home away from home." Our historic golf course, designed by the acclaimed Seth Raynor, was the first in Wisconsin to host a golf major: the 1933 PGA Championship, won by Gene Sarazen. Mr. Raynor's masterpiece is maintained at the highest levels; with greens and fairways in pristine condition.

Tournaments

  • 1916 Western Open: Walter Hagan takes a 1 stroke victory over Jock Hutchison & George Sargent at Blue Mound Golf & Country Club to win his first of 5 Western Open titles. Hagan won 11 majors in his career and is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.  He also captained 6 Ryder cups and is considered by many as one of the greatest golfers of all time.

  • 1933 PGA Championship: Gene Sarazen won the third of his three PGA Championship titles, defeating Willie Goggin 5 & 4, it was the sixth of his seven major titles. Sarazen is also a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame and is one of five players (along with Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods) to win each of the four majors at least once.

  • 1940 Women’s Western Open: Babe Didrikson Zaharias won the championship in match play competition by defeating Mrs. Russell Mann in the final match, 5 and 4. Zaharias is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time.  She excelled in basketball, baseball and golf.  She won two gold medals at the 1932 Summer Olympics in track and field before turning to professional golf, and went on to win 10 LPGA majors.

  • 1955 Miller High Life Open: Dr. Cary Middlecoff won the Miller High Life Open during his second recorded 6 win season in 1955, including wins at the Masters Tournament and the Western Open.Dr. Middlecoff has 40 PGA tour wins to his credit, including 3 Major Championships.

  • 2010 Western Junior Championship: Patrick Rodgers wins the first of two amateur titles before starting a record breaking collegiate career at Stanford University. During his three years at Stanford, Rodgers tied the record set by Tiger Woods by winning 11 tournaments.

  • 2011 US Amateur Co-hosted with Erin Hills: Kelly Kraft defeated Patrick Cantlay (2 up) at Erin Hills after 18 holes of stroke play at each course to qualify for match play. Other participants in the 2011 US Amateur included, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Bryson deChambeau, Harris English, and Brooks Koepka.

  • 2020 100th Wisconsin State Open: Blue Mound Golf & Country Club hosted the first Wisconsin State Open in 1919, and our Golf Pro, Francis Gallett, was the first to win the state open title 5 times. He would later be joined by Manuel de la Torre, Bob Brue and Steve Stricker with 5 state titles each. Vanderbilt rising senior and Brookfield native Harrison Ott held off what many considered the best field in State Open History.  Ott birdied his last hole and finished 10 under for the four round tournament.  In a field that was made up of tour pros and amateurs, only 5 of the 157 golfers who qualified finished under par for the tournament.  As expected, Blue Mound’s firm conditions and fast greens held their own against the best golfers in the state.
  • 2020 Junior Ryder Cup (Cancelled due to COVID): The Junior Ryder Cup is a team golf competition between Europe and the United States for junior golfers aged 18 and under. It is based on the men's Ryder Cup and is run by the same organizations, the PGA of America and Ryder Cup Europe.
  • 2022 Mid-Am at Erin Hills: The U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship is limited to amateur golfers aged 25 and older who have a Handicap Index not higher than 3.4. The 2022 championship was played September 10 – 17 at Erin Hills and, just as with the 2011 U.S. Amateur, Blue Mound Golf & Country Club co-hosted the stroke-play portion of the championship.

     

    Golf Course Architect: Seth Raynor

    “In the realm of early American golf architects, Seth Raynor stands apart from virtually all his contemporaries by what he was not or what he didn’t do as much as what he created.

    Raynor was not Scottish. He didn’t play golf as a young man nor did earnestly take up the sport later in life. He played his first round after assisting in the construction of four courses but never became an avid golfer.

    While everyone from his mentor, Charles Blair Macdonald, to the likes of Harry Colt, AW Tillinghast, Devereux Emmet and Walter Travis talked and wrote about the world of golf course design, Raynor was all but silent. There are only a few short lines of quotes that have ever been uncovered and none in golf magazines such as Golf Illustrated.

    All Raynor left behind for us to judge him and understand his theories of architecture were the golf courses that he designed, expanded or renovated. The number, now in excess of 100, continues to grow. This year, alone, two more courses he designed were rediscovered.

    What makes Raynor’s career all that more remarkable is its brevity. His first solo design did not come until 1914, when he was already 38, and he died, from pneumonia, aged only 51, in January 1926 in a hotel in West Palm Beach, Florida, his wife with him, both there to attend the opening of a course.

    What Raynor did share with fellow architects was the understanding that virtually all great golf holes have within them multiple strategies and options giving players with varying degrees of acumen and length more than one way to get from tee to green. Raynor sought to reveal the best player by creating some golf holes that required left-to-right ball flights off the tee or on the approach and others that insist on right-to-left trajectory for the best path to be uncovered.

    His designs invariably included holes where length was rewarded. His short par fours pay off to the accurate player, while his large greens, some as big as 15,000 square feet, meant putting is at a premium. The well-defined edges of greens and the accompanying swales can direct even slightly misplayed shots into bunkers. To score on a Raynor course, adeptness with the sand wedge is a must.

    Ask golfers who are only slightly familiar with Raynor’s work and they’ll tell you about square greens, deep bunkers and the massive amounts of earth moved to create courses and his redundant hole styles.

    Raynor learned his craft from Charles Blair Macdonald, the first great golf course architect in the United States and the creator of the National Golf Links of America, as well as the winner of the first ‘official’ US Amateur in 1895. Macdonald had studied at St Andrews University, played the Old Course and nearly every other great layout in the British Isles and met Old Tom Morris. He believed there were about 25 hole designs in the entire world and that the best versions of each should be used as guides when constructing a course.

    On the works of Macdonald and Raynor, you will invariably find versions of the Road Hole, the Redan, Eden and others. There was nearly always a Punchbowl green. Macdonald and Raynor did not duplicate the originals, but adapted them to fit the specific site. So in some cases, for instance, what is their version of Road might have a tee shot that reminds of the original but the green is angled in the opposite direction.”

    Anthony Pioppi is a golf journalist based in Connecticut, USA.

    This article appeared in issue 22 of Golf Course Architecture, published October 2010