When Louisville was home, I was a member of a club that Hal Purdy was somehow involved. Club records were spotty, to say the least, but the original course was designed by George Davies and it went belly up twice during the Depression. An heiress of the Bingham fortune came to own the property and sometime in the 50s or so, she sold the property to some men who were members of other clubs (mostly LCC) who wanted a "country" club, as well.
At this point, I believe Hal Purdy was brought in to design the new 18 holes.
Are are the noteworthy things:
1. It had/has a healthy membership and when I was a member, most of the time had a waitlist; however, very few played golf which leads us to...
2. No tee times.
3. Rounds that lasted a minute over 4 hours were frowned upon.
4. We used to play an 8some money game on Saturday mornings and never played in over 4 hours. Ready golf and one pretty much had to pay attention to one's surroundings, lest you take a Titleist to the melon as balls were constantly flying. Figuring out the bets usually took at least two rounds of drinks and lunch.
5. Nothing really of note, architecturally.
6. When I was President, we parted ways with your long-time Supt and brought in a very talented young man from Philly Cricket Club, Stephen Babcock, who did an AMAZING job.
7. We hired Kevin Hargrave (Keith Foster's Lead Design Associate) to draw up a Master Plan and put into the by-laws, as a bunch of rather hideous changes to the course had taken place over the years.
8. HLCC merged with Big Spring Country Club about 9-10 years ago, creating two "campuses" and 36 holes. Apparently it's going well.
9. HLCC is the course that Justin Thomas grew up on as his father, Mike, was the longtime Head Pro.
*Kind of a funny story....when Justin was becoming fairly famous, my son and his friends (10 years Justin's junior) were asking about just how good was Justin. I told them that, yeah, he was an All-American and won some Pro Tournaments and millions of dollars, but go take a look at the Club Champion plaque and tell me if you see his name. About 10 minutes later, they came back to the pool (where I was sitting) and quite wide-eyed, they all remarked how good I must be because my name appeared a few times on the plaque, and Justin's was nowhere to be found. I was their hero, for about 2-3 weeks, until they figured out that Justin had never played in a Club Championship.
Hey, if you're not going to win Father of the Year, why play for 2nd? LOL