Aronimink Golf Club
Designed by Donald Ross
History
Aronimink Golf Club traces its lineage to 1896, when a group of Philadelphia golfers organized the club amid the sport’s first great surge of popularity in America. The name itself borrows from a Native American word meaning “the fighting ground,” a fitting inheritance for a club that would go on to host some of golf’s fiercest competitions. Like many clubs of that era, Aronimink began on more modest grounds before relocating to its present site in Newtown Square, where the membership sought a permanent home suited to the game’s growing ambitions.
That permanent home took shape under Donald Ross, who was commissioned to design the course that opened in 1928. Ross was then at the height of his career, and Aronimink represented an opportunity to work on rolling Pennsylvania terrain with the resources and vision to match his ambitions elsewhere in Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, and the Carolinas. He considered the result among his finest achievements, and the club has long preserved that sentiment as part of its identity.
Over the ensuing decades, Aronimink built a reputation as a championship test, hosting the 1962 PGA Championship, won by Gary Player, and later the 2003 Senior PGA Championship and the 2010 AT&T National, an event Tiger Woods claimed in a playoff. The club undertook a significant restoration effort in the early 2000s under architect Ron Prichard, working to recover Ross’s original design intentions that had softened through years of incremental change. That restoration set the stage for Aronimink’s continued role as a host to elite competition, including the 2020 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, further cementing its place among the enduring Ross designs still in active championship rotation today.
Playing Notes
Expect a full day of walking hilly, tree-lined terrain that will test your legs as much as your swing — the property's rolling contours mean uneven stances and blind approaches are part of the deal, so a caddie or good course knowledge helps on first play. The greens are large, often multi-tiered, and run fast, which puts a premium on approach shot control and lag putting over raw power off the tee. Bunkering is deep and well-placed around the greens rather than scattered through the fairways, so missing on the correct side matters more than distance off the tee. Bring extra balls for the tree-lined corridors, wear comfortable shoes for the elevation changes, and plan for longer approach shots into firm, well-guarded greens where a poor angle can cost you two strokes fast.