Aronimink Golf Club

Ross’s involvement survives in construction film showing him on the property. His associate J.B. McGovern, also Aronimink’s green chairman, supervised day-to-day work. The early course had roughly 175 bunkers, an unusually extensive arrangement that placed repeated choices in the player’s path.²

Later decades simplified the design: bunkers disappeared, trees multiplied and fairways narrowed. Ron Prichard began a restoration in the mid-1990s. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner carried it further in 2016-17, using historical photographs to recover a much larger bunker system.²

The recovery also enlarged greens, restoring peripheral hole locations and reconnecting putting surfaces with surrounding hazards. This mattered because Aronimink’s challenge extends beyond reaching a green: its size, slopes and protected corners change the useful angle of approach as the hole location changes.²

The opening hole makes the terrain legible immediately: the drive descends from the clubhouse before the approach climbs. At the fifth, bunkers curve around the front of a short par-three green. These contrasting demands make elevation and precise placement part of the round from its opening stretch.³