Documented minutes and contemporary accounts establish that the Zanesville Golf Club leadership sought a new course on the Train–Tannehill farm in early 1931.
On March 11, 1931, Walter Hatch—an associate in Ross’s office—presented a “preliminary plan” on Ross’s behalf; the membership approved proceeding that spring. In June 1931, Chick Evans arrived in Zanesville and, the next month, presented four sets of plans; construction followed and the course opened at the current site in 1933. Club records show Zanesville paid Evans $1,500 and Ross $350 for the “Hatch Survey,” aligning authorship as a Ross conception implemented by Evans’s construction plans.
The club’s own public materials and statewide listings have long credited both Ross and Evans.
Unique Design Characteristics
The routing engaged Joe’s Run as the site’s defining hazard. From the opening tee, players soon confront the stream’s influence: the 2nd is a 432-yard par-4 where Joe’s Run runs the length of the hole down the right and crosses the fairway on the line of play; the fairway sits slightly elevated today to manage periodic high water. The 5th is a long, uphill par-3 that begins from the edge of the creek; historically unbunkered, it now features flanking traps and a green sloped back-to-front. These features appear in period descriptions (1935) and later professional notes (1960) and remain legible on the ground.
Joe’s Run also shapes the early-front-nine corridor at the 4th, where the creek hugs the fairway much tighter, and it reappears later with at least one approach where the water sits immediately in front of the putting surface—an atypical use of frontal water within Ross’s broader catalog and a point of distinction for Zanesville. Together these creek interactions give the course much of its identity and strategy.
The finishing hole, a par-3 of 168 yards from the back markers, is another hallmark. Par-3 finishers are uncommon among courses associated with Ross, and Zanesville’s 18th maintains that tradition on the ground and on the card; it demands a precise final swing rather than a march of three full shots.
Two present holes mirror concepts in Ross’s preliminary routing: the current 15th shares the downhill-over-a-stream character with Ross’s proposed 1st, and the current 5th corresponds in length and topography with Ross’s drawn 7th, an elevated-tee par-3 over the ravine carved by Joe’s Run. Though the precise locations differ (the present holes lie south of those on the preliminary), these continuities help identify where Ross’s ideas most clearly persist within today’s sequence.
Historical Significance
Within the Ross corpus, Zanesville is notable as a documented case where the club hired Ross for the concept and Hatch presented the plan, but Evans prepared multiple plan sets and guided the build—an unusual collaboration that places Zanesville alongside a small number of courses where Ross’s name appears with another figure on the marquee. That the course finishes with a par-3 and threads a modest creek through multiple strategic moments further differentiates it from more familiar Ross sites.
Competitive history underlines the course’s standing in Ohio golf. The Ohio Golf Association has selected Zanesville repeatedly for major championships, including the Ohio Amateur in 1955, 1960, 2005, 2015, and again in 2025, when the association’s preview specifically highlighted Joe’s Run and the course’s Ross/Evans provenance. The club also hosts the long-running Genesis HealthCare Foundation Pro-Am, a fundraising event with a multi-decade record in the community.
Current Condition / Integrity
At a macro level, the Ross/Evans routing remains intact across the gently rolling, wooded tract, with the stream corridors still governing the strategy of the early holes and sections later in the round. Incremental alterations are well-documented in contemporary research: on the 1st, two right-side fairway bunkers visible in a 1947 aerial were later eliminated, while new bunkers were added at the elbow of the dogleg; a pond left of the green appeared in the 1980s to address a persistently wet area. At the 2nd, the fairway was raised to mitigate storm events in Joe’s Run, and additional bunkers flank the green; the hole still plays with water tight to the right. The 5th, historically an untrapped long par-3, now features added bunkers left and right and forward tees beyond the creek. Later-round changes include raising the 15th green and the 2nd and 4th fairways a few feet to offset flooding as upstream development increased runoff over the past 75 years.
Elsewhere, tree planting and mounding from the 1990s altered sightlines around the practice range and the 1st; these landscape changes are typical of the era and not Ross-derived. Despite such updates, the bones of the course—the sequence of creeks, landforms, and central strategic asks—remain consistent with the 1930s descriptions preserved in the local paper and with the concept credited to Ross and translated to plans and construction by Evans.
From an integrity perspective, the strongest surviving windows into the original intent are the creek-engaged corridor of holes 1–5 (especially the creek-edge 2nd and the ravine carry at the 5th) and the demanding par-3 finish. Conversely, the pond addition at the 1st and later grading work to lift low corridors reflect pragmatic environmental responses rather than historical restoration, and they have inevitably altered the exact look and ground lines Ross and Evans would have expected. The club’s public materials indicate no recent outside architect-led restoration; observed changes appear to have been incremental and, at times, in-house.
Sources & Notes
GolfClubAtlas – Feature Interview with Mike Bennett (2024). Substantial primary-source synthesis, with quotes from 1931 club minutes and 1935 Zanesville Times Recorder descriptions; details the Hatch presentation (Mar. 11, 1931), Evans’s plan submittals (June–July 1931), payments to Evans ($1,500) and to Ross ($350 for “Hatch Survey”), and later alterations to specific holes (e.g., raising fairways/green to address Joe’s Run flooding; added/removed bunkers).
Top100GolfCourses – “Zanesville” (page profile). Notes co-credit with Chick Evans, the par-3 finisher, and Joe’s Run’s repeated strategic role (including at the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and a later approach fronted by the creek). Useful for identifying holes where the stream directly informs play.
Zanesville Country Club – “About Us” and “Golf” pages. Establish the club’s 1898 founding, the course’s location at the current site since 1933, and the dual attribution to Ross and Evans; also lists practice facilities and recurring events hosted.
Zanesville Country Club – Official Scorecard (PDF). Confirms par (72), yardage (6,983 from Black), and the unusual par-3 18th; provides hole-by-hole yardages used in this essay.
Ohio Golf Association – 2025 Ohio Amateur pages. Confirms Zanesville as 2025 host and prior host years (1955, 1960, 2005, 2015) and supplies a concise “About the Course” tying Joe’s Run and green characteristics to present play; also notes long-time professional Paul Thomas’s tenure.
Ohio Golf Association – Club listing (“Zanesville Country Club”). Lists the club as private and attributes design to Chick Evans and Donald Ross.