Broadmoor Golf Club, Seattle
Designed by A. V. Macan
History
The year was 1924, and Seattle’s community of Broadmoor — a neighborhood platted just north of the city on land that had once belonged to the Puget Mill Company — needed a golf club to anchor it. The developers turned to the game itself as a selling point, folding a private course into the residential scheme so that homes and fairways would share the same address. This was not an uncommon arrangement in the era, but Broadmoor’s execution set it apart from the start.
The man they hired was A. V. Macan, the Irish-born architect who had settled in Victoria, British Columbia, and built a reputation across the Pacific Northwest as a designer of uncommon rigor. Macan had studied law before turning to golf course design, and he brought a lawyer’s precision to his routings — a habit of examining land on foot, often for days, before committing a single hole to paper. At Broadmoor, working with a comparatively flat, low-lying parcel near Lake Washington, Macan had none of the dramatic elevation change he found on some of his other Northwest commissions. His response was to rely on green placement and shot values to generate interest, a signature that golfers and historians alike have long associated with his body of work.
Broadmoor has remained a private club throughout its history, its membership drawn largely from Seattle’s civic and business community since the 1920s. The course has hosted regional amateur competitions over the decades and has undergone routine maintenance and upkeep consistent with a club of its vintage, though its routing has retained the essential Macan framework laid down in 1924. It stands today among the oldest continuously operating private clubs in the Seattle area, a rare survivor of the original wave of Pacific Northwest course construction from the early twentieth century.
Playing Notes
Broadmoor sits on flat, tree-lined ground in the middle of the city, and that shapes almost everything about the round. Expect a walk that's easy on the legs but tight through the corridors — mature trees line most holes, so accuracy off the tee matters more than raw distance. The flatness means few surprises in stance or lie, but it also means the course leans entirely on tree placement and green complexes to create difficulty, rather than elevation change or water. Greens tend to run true and moderately quick, so lag putting is worth dialing in on the practice green beforehand. Seattle weather is the wild card — mist, drizzle, and low light are common, so a rain jacket and extra glove are smart additions to the bag regardless of the forecast. This isn't a course that beats you up physically; it's one that asks you to hit fairways and stay patient with your putter.