Upper Montclair Country Club
Designed by A. W. Tillinghast
History
The story of Upper Montclair Country Club begins in 1901, in the years when New Jersey’s commuter towns were sprouting country clubs the way they sprouted new rail lines — as gathering places for a growing professional class eager to claim a patch of green for themselves. The club took root in Clifton, on land that would eventually host one of the more significant names in American golf course architecture.
That name arrived a bit later, when A. W. Tillinghast was brought in to lay out the course that members would come to know. Tillinghast, already building his reputation as a designer who could read a landscape and ask hard questions of it, gave Upper Montclair a routing that reflected his growing command of the craft — the same eye for terrain he would soon bring to Winged Foot, Baltusrol, and San Francisco Golf Club. For a club still finding its footing in the early 1900s, securing a designer of his caliber marked a turning point in its ambitions.
Over the following decades, Upper Montclair settled into its role as one of the enduring private clubs of northern New Jersey, its Tillinghast design remaining the backbone of the membership experience through generations of changing tastes in golf. The club has hosted competitive play over the years, including LPGA Tour events, lending it a place in the broader story of women’s professional golf in the region — a role few Tillinghast courses of this vintage can claim.
Playing Notes
With 27 holes split across three nines, you'll want to call ahead and confirm which combination you're playing, since the routing changes the character of your round entirely. Expect rolling New Jersey terrain that's walkable but will test your legs by the back nine, with tree-lined corridors that put a premium on keeping tee shots in play rather than reaching for extra yardage. Greens here tend to have subtle breaks that are easy to misread if you're playing too fast, so give yourself time on the practice putting surface beforehand to get a feel for the speed. Bunkering shows up at the spots you'd expect around green complexes, and shot placement off the tee matters more than raw length on a number of holes, so leave the driver in the bag when a fairway wood or long iron sets up a better angle. Bring extra balls for the tighter tree-lined stretches, and don't be surprised if club selection into the greens ends up being the difference-maker in your score.