Chevy Chase Club first experimented with golf in 1895 on a six-hole loop set within the suburban hunting preserve the Chevy Chase Land Company had developed on the District line. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century the membership wanted a full eighteen, and the club engaged Donald Ross to plan and build a new course on the enlarged property.
Contemporary Washington and national golf reportage places Ross on site in 1909–1910, with construction continuing into 1911; a March 1910 feature in The American Golfer—which described the club as “where President Taft plays golf”—listed Ross among those who “advanced their ideas” in laying out the course, and also noted input from Walter J. Travis during the planning phase. Period newspaper clippings from the Evening Star (May and September 1909) further tied Ross to the design and early bunkering program. The effort replaced the earlier improvised links with a purpose-built eighteen that became the club’s principal athletic venue.
The club soon reconsidered its layout in light of rapidly improving play and the precedent of more elaborately engineered courses in the Northeast. In 1922 the club retained the Colt & Alison firm for a two-year program that the club later characterized as a comprehensive reconstruction. Charles Hugh Alison’s reworking altered the routing, rebuilt greens and bunkers, and re-set the course to a scale and strategic complexity that the club carried forward. Post-war modernization followed: Robert Trent Jones, Sr. directed significant changes in 1947; Tom Clark undertook alterations circa 1990; and Arthur Hills’ office returned later in the decade with a water-management project that added an interior irrigation lake and forced a reconfiguration which, notably, eliminated the former par-3 10th. Most recently, the club hired Andrew Green for a full-course renovation in 2024–25; the club has described Green’s work as comprehensive, and trade notices identified McDonald & Sons as contractor. Today’s scorecard (par-70, roughly 6,900 yards) reflects this layered evolution.
Ross himself appears to have returned in 1910 to intensify the bunkering phase. While his correspondence with the club has not been published, the sequence of press notices and early-1910 magazine coverage imply a two-step process: a routing and grading program in 1909 followed by additional hazard work in 1910. His hand set the club on an 18-hole footing; Alison’s later plan recast that foundation to meet the higher bar of interwar championship golf.
Unique Design Characteristics
The clearest glimpse of Ross at Chevy Chase lies in the bones of the corridors and in the early hazards he introduced before the Alison rebuild. Contemporary press from 1909–1910 emphasized the conversion from a small pastoral links into a full “sporting” course, with Ross adding bunkers to accent the landforms then visible over the club’s gently rolling ground. Those early features did not long remain intact; the Alison scheme rebuilt greens and redistributed sand in broader, diagonal patterns across approaches and turning points, the idiom that still underpins Chevy Chase’s strategy today. Where Ross had sharpened a new 18 out of the property, Alison used that canvas to deepen the questions asked from tee and fairway.
Later modernization has left very specific fingerprints. Arthur Hills’ 1990s irrigation-lake project required reworking holes in the lake’s vicinity and removed the old 10th, altering the sequence through the middle of the round. Green’s 2024–25 renovation—publicly described by the club as comprehensive—reorganized bunkers and surfaces to present more meaningful angles off the tee and around the greens in a manner consistent with the club’s historic character. While no single green complex can be asserted as purely “Ross” after the Alison and Jones campaigns, the property still shows the long, rhythmic movement that Ross first harnessed, particularly in the way fairways rise and fall toward elevated targets and in how hazard lines nudge play away from the club’s interior lowlands.
If one seeks the course’s most historically legible holes, they are the ones where Alison’s 1920s bunkering patterns still control the tee shot and approach and where later renovations have aimed to recapture edge and width rather than rewrite intent. Conversely, the middle stretch affected by the irrigation-lake insertion is the least representative of the pre-war template—an intentional, documented deviation from the earlier geometry.
Historical Significance
Chevy Chase stands out in Ross’s Washington-area work because his eighteen established the club’s modern scale just as golf in the capital entered national view. The club hosted the 1908 U.S. Women’s Amateur on its pre-Ross grounds and, more tellingly for the venue’s identity, the second Curtis Cup Match in 1934 on the Alison-recast eighteen—the first Curtis Cup contested in the United States. The 1910 American Golfer profile, tethered to presidential play at the club, captured the social and sporting prominence Chevy Chase enjoyed and helps establish why the club kept reinvesting—first with Ross, then with Alison, and later with Jones and others. In modern times, Chevy Chase appears consistently on “Best in State” lists for Maryland, an indication that the course’s strategic coherence has survived multiple eras of renovation.
Current Condition / Integrity
Measured against Ross’s original work, the course today is best described as a palimpsest: Ross’s eighteen created the framework; Alison’s early-1920s rebuild supplied a new strategic language; Jones’s 1947 modifications and Clark’s and Hills’ late-century changes added modern length, hazard positions, and water; Green’s 2024–25 project refreshed surfaces and hazards within that lineage. The club presently lists the course at roughly 6,918–6,920 yards, par 70, with a course rating around the mid-73s and slope in the low-130s. Routing continuity from the Alison era remains strong, but very little of Ross’s original bunker work survives in form. Where the 1990s irrigation lake and associated rerouting altered the sequence, Ross’s geometry has been lost by design; elsewhere, Green’s recent work has moved the presentation back toward historic widths and green edges rather than forward into an all-new scheme.
Greens and bunkers show the accumulated touch of Alison, Jones, Hills and, now, Green; the club’s stated aim in the latest renovation was an all-course refresh rather than a strict restoration to any single author. Tree management and turf improvements over the last generation have reopened cross-course vistas typical of Chevy Chase’s pre-war scale. The single most explicit alteration to the Ross/Alison inheritance remains the removal of the par-3 10th tied to the irrigation project, which the Hills/Rogers materials identify as a conscious tradeoff to secure sustainable water on site.
Citations & Uncertainty
USGA, “Host States and Clubs: 1895 to Present” (confirms Chevy Chase Club hosted the 1908 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 1934 Curtis Cup).
The American Golfer, March 1910, noted in Montgomery History’s The Montgomery County Story (Vol. 44, No. 4) as “The Chevy Chase Club Where President Taft Plays Golf,” and by the Travis Society as crediting Walter J. Travis alongside Ross for aid in laying out the course.
Contemporary 1909 press clippings (Washington Evening Star) reproduced and discussed in GolfClubAtlas “Reunderstanding Ross,” indicating Ross’s 1909–1910 presence and bunker program.
Club-adjacent summary of major reconstruction by Colt & Alison beginning in 1922 and characterized as a two-year renovation; and early-1990s and 1997 era modifications (Tom Clark; Arthur Hills) including insertion of an irrigation lake and removal of the par-3 10th, per architect J. Drew Rogers.
Top100GolfCourses profile summarizing the sequence—Ross (c.1910), Alison (1922/23 “complete reworking”), Robert Trent Jones (1947), Arthur Hills (1997), and a 2024–25 Andrew Green renovation.
Club employment/agronomy posting (TurfNet) noting Ross redesign in 1911 with Travis input, a two-year Colt & Alison renovation beginning 1922, and a comprehensive Andrew Green renovation in 2024.
Course Finder and 18Birdies entries reflecting current par, yardage, and rating/slope.
USGA Curtis Cup records and secondary summaries confirming the 1934 Match at Chevy Chase.
Fried Egg note listing Chevy Chase among Andrew Green’s in-progress or planned projects (context for 2024–25 timing).
Uncertainties / Disputed Points:
• Ross’s dates and scope (1909–1911): Primary-source periodicals and later club/architect summaries vary between “1909,” “1910,” and “1911” for plan and build, and between “new design” and “remodel.” The American Golfer and Evening Star references indicate planning in 1909 with hazard work extending into 1910; later summaries sometimes telescope this to “1911 redesign.”
• Colt & Alison timing: Club- and architect-side materials cite a two-year program beginning in 1922, while some third-party summaries list 1923 as the principal construction year. The weight of sources supports a 1922–24 window.
• Attribution of specific hole features to Ross: After Alison’s comprehensive rebuild and later Jones/Hills/Green projects, it is difficult to assign any present green or bunker form directly to Ross; claims of surviving Ross micro-features should be treated cautiously absent original drawings or on-site archaeology.
Sources & Notes
USGA, “Host States and Clubs: 1895 to Present.”
Montgomery History, The Montgomery County Story, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2015), citing The American Golfer, March 1910.
The Walter J. Travis Society, “Directory of Travis Golf Course Projects (Chronological/Alphabetical),” citing The American Golfer, March 1910.
GolfClubAtlas Forum, “Reunderstanding Ross,” reproducing 1909 Evening Star clippings referencing Ross’s Chevy Chase work.
Top100GolfCourses.com, “Chevy Chase Club” profile (Maryland).
J. Drew Rogers, ASGCA, project page “Chevy Chase Club,” noting irrigation-lake plan and removal of the par-3 10th.
TurfNet job posting, “Chevy Chase Club – Turfgrass Internship (2026),” club-supplied historical summary (Ross 1911 with Travis input; Colt & Alison 1922; Andrew Green 2024 renovation).
Golf.com Course Finder entry for Chevy Chase Club (par 70; ~6,918 yds; rating/slope).
18Birdies course listing for Chevy Chase Club (yardage/rating/slope).
USGA, Curtis Cup results (1934 Match at Chevy Chase).
Where2Golf, Curtis Cup archive (1934 venue confirmation).
The Fried Egg, “Design Notebook” (2024), noting Andrew Green projects including Chevy Chase.