The Hill Course originated amid French Lick’s boom as a Midwestern spa resort. In 1916–17 Ross laid out 18 holes on high ground north of the hotel, reportedly scouting the property on horseback with hotel owner Thomas Taggart and taking advantage of a natural plateau broken by swales and ravines. The course opened in 1917 and quickly became a national tournament stage. In September 1924 it hosted the PGA Championship, a match-play major won by Walter Hagen; three and a half decades later the LPGA Championship arrived in 1959 and 1960, when resort branding had shifted and the Hill Course was referred to in press materials as the Sheraton Hotel Country Club. Those three majors anchor the course’s early competitive reputation and fix the Hill Course as Ross’s principal championship venue in the state.
The long arc of alterations has been relatively light. In the early 1970s an irrigation pond created consequential changes at the 14th and 15th: the original long par-4 at 14 became a shorter two-shotter playing with the pond as backdrop, while the 15th tee shifted behind the new water to preserve a true three-shot hole. The other corridors remained fundamentally as Ross set them, but decades of tree planting and fairway contraction dulled the ground game and erased many of the fairway bunkers that once governed lines of play.
A comprehensive restoration in 2005–06, directed by Lee Schmidt with the cooperation of the Donald Ross Society, set out to return the Hill Course to its 1917 strategic expression. Central to that work was the reinstatement of long-removed bunkers—particularly center-line and diagonal fairway hazards on holes like 2, 3, 5, 7, 15, and 18—along with recaptured green perimeters, squared tee pads, and expanded native/fescue areas. The restored course reopened to public play in late 2006 (with additional resort announcements following in 2007) and now presents Ross’s routing and green complexes with a hazard scheme more faithful to his original plan.
Unique Design Characteristics
The Hill Course is celebrated for its set of par-3s and for the drama of its middle and finishing stretches. The fourth, sixth, and thirteenth are long one-shotters that cross, respectively, a broad valley, a ravine, and a steeply sided defile; each asks for a committed carry to a perched target and offers ample short grass for recoveries when the ball doesn’t quite get there. The eighth is the course’s most discussed two-shotter: a left-turning hole over a deep grass ravine to a vast green that still drops roughly six feet from back to front, so that an approach above the hole is an error that lingers for multiple strokes. Throughout the round Ross’s green sites—often on natural high points, occasionally benched—show pronounced interior movement: tiers at the thirteenth, spines at the eleventh and eighteenth, and back-to-front pitch at the first and eighth that keeps the putter fully engaged.
The 2006 restoration did not soften those greens; rather, it re-armed them. Re-introducing central fairway hazards altered modern driving decisions and restored angle play to approach shots. At the second, a pair of center-line bunkers once again divides the best landing zones. At the third, a large right greenside bunker now matches the sweep of the hillside into which the green is benched. The fifth’s fairway, laid along a hog-back ridge, regained a bunker protruding into the ideal lay-up distance. And the home hole’s reinstated cross-hazards and flanking sand have renewed the emphasis on shaping drives to open the correct approach to a skyline target. In aggregate, the course now reads as Ross intended: open vistas with wide fairway corridors that are strategically narrow in the places that matter.
If one were to nominate the clearest surviving expressions of Ross’s hand here, the one-shot holes (4, 6, 13) and the closing trio stand out; they display minimal earth-moving, use of natural drop-offs and benches, and green pads whose internal contours remain central to scoring. The routing’s integrity—out-and-back loops that change wind direction frequently, with short green-to-tee links—completes the impression that this is an early, athletic Ross preserved on its original ground.
Historical Significance
Within Ross’s body of work, the Hill Course shows him capitalizing on inland topography to create championship-caliber golf without heavy construction. It was among his earliest major-host courses in the Midwest, and its 1924 PGA solidified the resort’s national standing. The LPGA Championships of 1959 (Betsy Rawls) and 1960 (Mickey Wright) associated Ross’s green contours and the hilltop setting with the growth of the women’s professional game. In the modern era the resort has leveraged both classics on property—the Hill Course and the Pete Dye Course—to host high-level events; when the PGA Professional National Championship came in 2010, rounds were contested on both courses, while Big Ten Championships in the early 2010s split women’s play to the Ross and men’s play to the Dye. This continuity of competitive use, combined with the restoration’s intent to return Ross’s strategy, has kept the Hill Course in the conversation among public-access Ross venues.
Current Condition / Integrity
Today the Hill Course retains Ross’s routing intact, with the acknowledged exceptions at 14 and 15 linked to a 1970s irrigation project. The greens—long regarded as the course’s signature—remain boldly contoured and largely on their original pads, and the hazard scheme now reflects Ross’s drawings more closely than it did for most of the late twentieth century. Modern construction techniques, sand profiles, and fairway grassing patterns inevitably differ from 1917 conditions, but the strategic asks are once again plainly visible from the tee. The course plays firm in summer winds, and its open interior and treeless horizons are unusual for a Midwestern resort property, enhancing both views and cross-breezes. From the back tees the rating/slope and yardage (par-70, 7,030 yards) confirm that the Hill Course is a genuine championship walk; from forward sets it remains playable, with the same emphasis on approach play and green-reading that defined its earliest decades.
Citations and Uncertainty
The resort’s published history and a detailed architectural profile supply most of the specifics on routing, green character, and the 2006 restoration; tournament attributions are corroborated by governing-body archives and contemporary accounts. Two items warrant explicit caveats:
Restoration cost figures: resort-adjacent materials refer to a $4.6 million project completed in 2006, while other resort publications round to $5 million. Without access to construction contracts or board reports, both figures should be treated as approximations.
Original-construction presence: secondary sources indicate Ross spent time on site and that construction foreman Sandy Alves executed significant work in the field; however, the precise cadence of Ross’s visits and any surviving on-site directives would require consulting the Tufts Archives project file and the resort’s original construction correspondence.
Sources & Notes
French Lick Resort, “A Golf Enthusiast’s Paradise / The Donald Ross Course at French Lick Resort” (overview; Ross 1917 attribution; resort awards and event hosting context).
French Lick Resort Blog, “100 Years Ago: The 1924 PGA Championship at French Lick” (Ross’s 1917 design date; horseback scouting with Thomas Taggart; site context).
GolfClubAtlas, “French Lick (Ross) [2008]” by Ran Morrissett (architectural analysis; restoration specifics; reinstated central hazards; hole-by-hole notes; 1970s pond changes to 14 and 15).
PGA of America / Wikipedia summary, “1924 PGA Championship” (dates, venue identification as French Lick Springs Golf Club; winner Walter Hagen).
LPGA/Wikipedia summaries, “1959 LPGA Championship” (Betsy Rawls; venue as Sheraton Hotel Country Club; note on original Hill Course name) and “1960 LPGA Championship” (Mickey Wright; same venue naming).
PGA of America, 2010 National Championship materials (fact sheet and field listing indicating competition on both the Pete Dye Course and the Donald Ross Course).
University athletics releases re: Big Ten Championships (men on Pete Dye; women on Donald Ross in 2012–2014).
Globe Newswire, “The Donald Ross Course at French Lick Ready to Tee Off Sept. 9” (restoration reopening timing and scope).
Orange County (IN) press kit excerpt (2007) referencing the $4.6 million renovation and 2006 reopening.