Broadmoor’s golf course emerged from a 1922 decision by Indianapolis businessmen to form a new club and commission Donald Ross to lay out an eighteen-hole course on roughly 200 acres northwest of downtown. The club incorporated on June 6, 1922, secured the Fox property, and proceeded with course construction through 1923–24. The course formally opened to members on July 4, 1924. Contemporary local histories describe Ross’s initial scheme as a compact routing that fanned in a semicircle near the clubhouse and included a dedicated 400-foot well for irrigation—early infrastructure that underlined the club’s intent to maintain high putting-surface standards in Indianapolis summers. Ross’s “master plan,” as summarized by the local historical record, emphasized defined, continuous routing between holes, intricate green complexes, extensive bunkering, and minimal earthmoving, presenting Broadmoor in its youth as a treeless, wind-exposed, links-like course on sandy soils with creeping-bent turf introduced to differentiate its playing surfaces from other city clubs.
There is no documentary evidence that Ross returned to Indianapolis for subsequent phases after the grand opening. The next clearly recorded design interventions occurred much later. In 1999 Broadmoor retained Tom Doak to develop a master plan aimed at recapturing Ross’s original playing corridors and features that had been obscured by mid-century tree planting and incremental changes. Doak’s plan prioritized irrigation modernization, broad fairway expansions, selective bunker work, and substantial tree removal to restore width and angles. Two decades later the club engaged Bruce Hepner (formerly of Renaissance Golf, the firm that produced the 1999 plan) to execute a full bunker and corridor restoration. By 2022, Hepner had rebuilt and repositioned every one of the course’s bunkers (135 in total by the club’s count), adjusted fairway and green edges to better reflect Ross’s original targets, and thinned approximately 300 trees to remove double-penalties and restore air and sunlight to playing surfaces.
Unique design characteristics
Broadmoor’s most enduring Ross fingerprint is the density and placement of its hazards on a largely level Midwestern site. Early commentators and later researchers have repeatedly noted the course’s unusually high bunker count for an inland Ross—on the order of 135 hazards once Hepner’s work re-established missing features and eliminated later-era add-ons. The bunkering does not simply guard greens; it defines corridors and shot values. Between the parallel fairways of the middle-back nine (notably the stretch beginning at the twelfth), clusters of cross-corridor bunkers influence both holes at once, steering tee balls to preferred lines and complicating recoveries when a player strays into the “wrong” side of a parallel landing zone. This cross-influence is particularly vivid in the 12–15 sequence, where the broader ground begins to undulate.
Specific holes illustrate how those ideas still play. The 1st and 2nd are stout, view-interrupting openers that announce Broadmoor’s intention from the tee, using “topped-shot” bunkers and flanking pits to define a clear playing window without earth-moving theatrics. The 4th—a short one-shotter—leans on a diagonal creek that sheds balls from the green’s right edge, demanding exact carry and landing control. At the doglegging 5th, an inside complex of bunkers presents a classic calculated-risk carry from the tee; width restored by recent tree work has brought the intended angles back into focus. The best-loved run begins at the 12th, draped across the site’s most rolling ground, where a subtle dip 240 yards from the tee can turbo-boost a well-struck drive and where a slightly built-up green quickly turns two shots into three if the approach wanders. The 13th swings left around a bunker cluster to a “gull-wing” green that plays like an “X,” encouraging very different tee lines depending on the day’s hole location. The 14th uses the same stream that animates the 4th, bisecting the fairway well short of the target and feeding into a sharply canted green with a conspicuous back-to-front fall. The 15th is a compact par three pitched across a shallow valley to a two-tiered green whose interior contours, not its bunkers, carry the strategic load.
For students of Ross, these holes remain the clearest surviving examples on the property because their strategic concepts originate in the 1920s plan and have been reinforced—not reinvented—by restoration. Hepner’s work focused on repositioning and re-proportioning hazards to Ross’s intent, expanding short-grass lines, and removing encroaching trees; the greens themselves were not wholesale re-built, but mowing lines and approach widths were adjusted so that original contours and targets again govern play. As a result, the 4th, 13th, 14th, and 15th now best convey the pre-war Broadmoor vocabulary: precise angle-making with hazards set into parallel corridors, exacting short iron demands at modest yardage, and putting surfaces that reward position more than brute distance.
Historical significance
Broadmoor sits near the midpoint of Ross’s 1920s Midwestern work and stands out as an example of how he created distinctive golf on little topographic relief. In Indianapolis club culture, Broadmoor’s Jewish founders intended a first-class facility and chose Ross at the height of his practice; the finished course opened on July 4, 1924, and quickly became a prominent competitive venue. In the modern era, the Champions Tour (then Senior PGA Tour) brought the GTE North Classic/Comfort Classic to Broadmoor for six consecutive years (1988–1993). The winners’ roster—Gary Player (1988 and 1989), Mike Hill (1990), George Archer (1991), Raymond Floyd (1992), and Bob Murphy (1993)—kept the club in national circulation and tied Broadmoor to a generation of major champions. In rankings, Golfweek listed Broadmoor among its Top 100 Classic Courses at No. 79 in 1997 and No. 89 in 1998 before it slipped off the list; following the 2020–22 restoration, state-level standing improved again, with Golfweek placing Broadmoor among Indiana’s top private courses in 2023.
Current condition / integrity
Broadmoor today reads as a late-Golden-Age Ross with restored corridors and hazards. The routing remains the 1920s plan. The green pads and interior contours generally present as historic, with mowing lines and surrounds adjusted to recapture original apron widths and run-up options. The bunker field—now 135 after removal of non-Ross features and reconstruction of missing Ross hazards—aligns with archival aerials and the Renaissance/Hepner master plan logic. The most consequential departures from 1924 are not architectural but vegetative: the club’s large-scale tree-planting campaign in the 1940s–50s converted the original “open links-like” presentation into parkland; Hepner’s thinning program (roughly 300 trees removed) has since restored air movement, sunlight, and Ross’s intended lateral options.
From a scoring-card perspective, Broadmoor plays to approximately 6,900 yards from the back tees at par 72, with contemporary course/slope ratings reflecting the restored width-plus-precision challenge. The club continues to host state championships and USGA qualifying—most recently U.S. Adaptive Open qualifying (May 2025) and the 2025 Indiana Women’s Amateur—signaling that the restored corridors and targets perform for competitive set-ups without sacrificing day-to-day member play.
What has been preserved vs. altered
Preserved: Ross’s 1920s routing; the strategic identity of the 4th, 13th, 14th, and 15th; the course’s defining use of corridor-shaping bunkers; and the broad character of the green complexes (with edges and short-grass lines recaptured rather than rebuilt).
Altered or lost: Mid-century plantings created a parkland look that obscured Ross’s width; Hepner’s thinning addressed this but the landscape remains more treed than the treeless 1924 debut. Non-Ross bunkers added in late-20th-century projects were removed; historic hazards were rebuilt and repositioned. Tees have been modestly expanded, and modern irrigation overlays the original well-fed system.
Sources & Notes
Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, “Broadmoor Country Club” (revised Nov. 2023): incorporation and land purchase in 1922; formal course opening July 4, 1924; semicircular formation near clubhouse; 400-foot well; links-like, open, sandy presentation and creeping-bent adoption; mid-century tree planting; tournament history; Golfweek classic rankings; 1999 Tom Doak master plan; 2020 commission of Bruce Hepner; by 2022, all 135 bunkers rebuilt/repositioned, fairway/green edges adjusted, ~300 trees thinned; 2023 top-10 in-state recognition.
Broadmoor Country Club, Member Guide PDFs (2021 & 2024): references to the 1999 Doak restoration plan and the 2020 Hepner bunkering/tee work (“over 140 bunkers”), confirming scope and intent.
GolfClubAtlas, “Broadmoor (IN)” (originally 2006; updated 2024): descriptive analysis of hole strategies and green forms; notes on 135 bunkers; detailed comments on holes 1–5 and 12–15 (diagonal creek at 4th; dogleg bunkering at 5th; rolling ground beginning at 12th; gull-wing 13th; canted 14th; two-tiered 15th). Useful for identifying which holes most clearly convey Ross’s concepts at Broadmoor.
BPBM blog, “The Bunkers at Broadmoor” (Aug. 10, 2021): field observations plus conversation with Bruce Hepner about bunker counts and the removal of later non-Ross bunkers; discusses how cross-corridor bunkering between parallel holes shapes play.
Comfort Classic (Champions Tour) records confirming Broadmoor as host 1988–1993 and winners Gary Player (1988, 1989), Mike Hill (1990), George Archer (1991), Raymond Floyd (1992), Bob Murphy (1993).
Disputed or uncertain points
Opening year (1922 vs. 1924): Some tourism/athletics pages state the course “opened in 1922,” likely referencing the club’s formation or early play; the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis documents a formal opening on July 4, 1924, which is adopted here as the course’s opening date.