Historic Golf Clubs
in the United States

Golf arrived in the United States in the 1880s, again carried by British and Scottish immigrants who could not imagine life without it. Within a decade, clubs had formed along the northeastern seaboard — Shinnecock Hills, Chicago Golf Club, The Country Club at Brookline — and the game was spreading rapidly inland. By 1900, the United States Golf Association was already organising national championships.

What followed was one of the great expansions in golf history. The early 20th century saw hundreds of clubs founded across every state, many of them designed by the architects who were simultaneously defining what modern golf course design could be — Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, Charles Blair Macdonald. The courses they built remain among the most admired in the world.

The United States has 171 golf clubs in The Centenary database that are 100 years or older. The concentration is heaviest in the northeast and midwest, where the game took root earliest, but historic clubs can be found in almost every corner of the country.

Below you will find the complete list, ordered by founding year. We also show which clubs currently qualify for The Centenary network based on our Provenance Index — our transparent measure of a club's international and regional standing.