Southern Hills

Maxwell had surveyed the property before the Club was established and identified the clubhouse location together with the ninth and eighteenth greens. The Club’s history records construction with picks, shovels and mules, followed by the first members’ rounds on May 23, 1936.¹

The hilltop clubhouse site was a condition of Waite Phillips’s land donation, reflecting Maxwell’s preliminary recommendation. Placing the building there helped establish a dramatic opening tee shot and the demanding return home. The location shaped the golf as well as the institution’s architecture.²

Before beginning the restoration, Hanse and Wagner studied what Maxwell intended a course in Oklahoma to look and play like. Their changes expanded short grass, reopened creeks that had been filled and removed raised edges that had prevented missed approaches from running away from greens.³

Those recovered features alter the choices after a miss. A ball can travel farther from the putting surface, leaving a recovery from closely cut ground instead of being stopped at the edge. Wider corridors and restored watercourses brought more of the underlying landscape back into the player’s decisions.³