Eugene (OR) Country Club

[Ari Techner]

To all who have played there, I would love to hear your opinions/impressions of Eugene Country Club.  

[Matt OBrien]

Eugene is an amazing course and I really enjoyed it. I have never played a course with such tall trees. The trees made the course look like it played 7500 yards. The back nine I feel was a little stronger then the front and I cant wait to see the scores from the Womens amatuer this year.

Does anyone have any pics from Eugene?

[Troy Alderson]

Ari,

Impeccably maintained, Chris the superintendent has a great relationship with the members and they support him the the staff fully.  One of the nicest poa annua courses in the PNW.

Troy

[Pete_Pittock]

Matt,
Go to this link and take the course tour.
http://www.eugenecountryclub.com/course_history.cfm

[Matt OBrien]

Thanks pete for the link to the website. I could of got that myself.

[Bill_McBride]

I was lucky enough to make a trip down to Eugene last summer - or was it the summer before? - and play with Ari and my brother who lives in Eugene.

Eugene CC is a very strong, solid golf course with an interesting history.

Chandler Egan laid out a good golf course in the '20s, and it was a good golf course for many years.

In the early '60s, the club invited Robert Trent Jones to come take a look at the course and make recommendations about how the course might be improved.

RTJ's advice: You have a very good course here but it would be a lot better if we reversed the routing and put greens where the tees are today and vice versa!

Bingo!  There are four or five holes where there were water hazards in front of the tees and not in play.  Today these water hazards are in front of greens.  Two or three of these are lengthy par 3s and very difficult, and the other one is now a par 5 where the touchy little pitch third shot is over the water to a triangular green with a very narrow front pin area.

There are indeed a lot of big trees, typical NW golf layout, but the corridors are wide enough to demand accurate placement of tee shots.

A very cool thing is the side by side routing maps in the same scale and orientation that hang in the clubhouse.  It's fun to see where Egan's routing took the course and how RTJ's routing turned this into a truly championship layout.  One fascinating detail is that there were more long par 4s in Egan's routing.

IMHO Eugene CC is a Top 100 course, very good greens, great routing, outstanding conditioning.

[Jim Franklin]

I just got back from playing Eugene and agree with what has been stated. Reversing the course was terrific. The greens are awesome and the course did not feel claustrophobic at all even with the giant trees.

[Matt_Ward]

I don't deny that Eugene CC is a fine course but I do take issue with the fact that it's still a top 100 course today.

That might have been the case when it came onto the scene after the hand of RTJ was invovled. But, the state of golf design has elevated itself dramatically since then and candidly the State of Oregon has also gone miles and miles beyond that with the advent of Bandon and the course development in and around the Bend area, to name just two locations.

Eugene CC is a solid RTJ effort but the tree situation and the lack of anything that would elevate it to my first page of compelling architecture would keep it from holding onto a top 100 postion as the world of golf architecture has come a long way since that time.