Tucked away in small-town New Jersey an hour’s drive west of New York City, Somerset Hills is an understated club with an audacious A.W. Tillinghast golf course. In the decades after World War II, Somerset did a better job than most Golden Age clubs of preserving its architecture, but the gradual inward creep of mowing and tree lines had their usual effects. Starting in 2009, Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design, with associate Brian Slawnik and superintendent Ryan Tuxhorn co-running point, restored the original dimensions and textures of the course, removing trees, expanding fairways and greens, and reintroducing native vegetation outside of the playing corridors.
In the “Additional Content” section toward the bottom of this post, you’ll find a Club TFE-exclusive mini-podcast featuring Andy and Garrett talking about the architecture at Somerset Hills. Make sure to check it out!
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Take Note…
A tale of two nines. The front nine at Somerset Hills wanders around an open hillside, whereas the back nine tumbles through a dense forest. Suitable to these distinct landscapes, the two nines follow different routing principles. The front has an interlocking structure, returning to certain landforms and creating gathering points; the back is more linear—a journey into the woods and back out. There’s a debate to be had about which nine is better.
The historical tour. It’s required in every Somerset write-up to mention the apple orchard that guards the first fairway and the racetrack earthworks that come into play on the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh holes. These “quirks” may be over-discussed, but they really do add to the character of the place.
One of these things is not like the others. There are 17 Tillinghast greens at Somerset, and they’re all terrific. The odd man out, the 10th green, was built by Hal Purdy when the club decided to extend the hole decades ago. It’s a straightforward elevated construction with a false front and a high back tier, and its ordinariness throws the brilliance of Tillinghast’s designs into relief. About 80 yards short of Purdy’s green, the exterior contours of the original are tantalizingly visible to the right of the fairway.
