History of Columbia

Chevy Chase, MD

A Brief History of Columbia Country Club

Golf’s popularity exploded nationwide in the 1890s. The first course in the Washington metropolitan area opened for play in 1894 in Rosslyn, Virginia. In 1898, a group of ten merchants, doctors, lawyers, and engineers came together to establish the first golf club within the District of Columbia—Columbia Golf Club. This was only three years after the formation of the United States Golf Association.

  • Early Columbia Golf Club members Frank P. Davis and Reeve Lewis pose in front of the Schuetzen Park clubhouse.

  • The Clubhouse at the Marshall Brown Estate, 1904

  • Plan of Columbia Country Club, ca. 1920

  • President Harding presents the trophy, 1921

  • The Columbia Golf Club was formed on September 29, 1898 “for educational, literary and scientific purposes and for mutual improvement and for social intercourse.” The club was planned on a modest scale with twenty members and an initiation fee of $2.00.

    The club’s first location along Brightwood Avenue (today’s Georgia Avenue) in the Schuetzen Park area was home to a primitive clubhouse and golf course. A few months later, the club moved to a vacant lot a few blocks north where a 2,356-yard, nine-hole course was laid out in a cow pasture.

    In 1900, Columbia Golf Club moved to its third location, still further north along Brightwood Avenue, leasing a property known as the Marshall Brown Estate. Here, they constructed an 18-hole course that stretched to 5,129 yards. The existing residence was converted to a clubhouse with lockers filling the former bedrooms. The club’s roster now included 600 members.

  • When the club was forced to vacate the property at the end of 1908, the leadership disbanded the Columbia Golf Club. Some 200 members reconstituted a new club—Columbia Country Club—that formally opened its new doors on the present Connecticut Avenue site on January 1, 1911.

    This property had been purchased in 1909 from the Chevy Chase Land Company. The clubhouse was designed by Club member Frederick B. Pyle.

  • With the relocation to suburban Maryland, club leadership sought to build the finest golf course in the country. When it opened for play in 1911, the course measured 6,135 yards. Its design is generally attributed to three-time U.S. Amateur champion Walter J. Travis.

    Herbert Barker and Columbia Founding Member Dr. Walter S. Harban, both close associates of Travis, are often noted as the official designers. Barker was the head golf professional at Travis’ home club, Garden City Golf Club, in New York. Barker was Travis’ protégé. 

    When club members felt that the course failed to meet the objective of being “best in the country,” it engaged Travis a second time to implement a number of changes in 1915. Travis was a regular guest and competitor at Columbia and was formally hired as the first “U.S. Open Doctor” to help prepare the course for our National Championship in 1921.

    As one of the world’s top amateur golfers, Travis traveled extensively in America as well as to England and Scotland to study golf “in its best and highest form.” He was particularly struck by the undulating terrain of linksland, the lack of trees, the abundance of strategically sited bunkers, and greens defined by natural contours. Also, as the owner and publisher of The American Golfer from 1908 to 1920, Travis wrote frequently on the art of course design. His finest works came to feature extensive (and sometimes radical) fairway bunkers, even deeper greenside bunkers, and boldly contoured greens.

    Columbia’s golf course has evolved over the century since its creation. Additional acres were purchased to extend and widen the track, practice facilities and a driving range were added and then improved, dams were constructed, creating two ponds that supplied one of the earliest automated irrigation systems on a golf course, bunkers and hazards have been adjusted, but the original layout remains intact. The Travis influence is still obvious in the approaches to characteristically undulating and segmented greens.

  • The Club has hosted three national golf championships: the 1921 United States Open, the 2003 United States Junior Amateur Championship and the 2021 United States Girls' Junior Championship. The 1921 U.S. Open was won by Jim Barnes, the 2003 U.S. Junior Amateur was won by Brian Harman, and the 2021 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship was won by Rose Zhang, who also holds the competitive course record of 62.

    The USGA, in recognition of the championship quality of its golf course and the unrivalled “warm Columbia welcome,” has awarded Columbia with two future national championships: the 2027 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur and the 2035 U.S. Senior Amateur.

  • Columbia’s leaders sought to host the U.S. Amateur in the years immediately preceding World War I. The USGA recognized their generosity by awarding Columbia the 1921 U.S. Open. Columbia is one of only 52 golf clubs to host our National Championship. Defying widely held beliefs that quality golf courses could not be found south of Philadelphia, Columbia staged an exemplary championship won by Jim Barnes.

    Barnes, the winner of the 1916 and 1919 PGA Championship, claimed his only U.S. Open title at Columbia in 1921. He finished nine strokes ahead of Walter Hagen, the 1914 and 1919 U.S. Open champion, and Fred McLeod, the host professional who had captured the U.S. Open title in 1908. Barnes’ nine-shot margin was the largest in the 20th Century. 

    Chick Evans, the 1916 U.S. Open champion, edged Bobby Jones by a single stroke for low amateur honors.

    President Warren G. Harding, a frequent playing partner of Travis and Barnes, was on hand to present the trophy and gold medal to the new champion. The 1921 U.S. Open at Columbia remains the only time that the sitting president has awarded the U.S. Open trophy to its champion.

Columbia’s Legendary Head Golf Professionals

Since the founding of the club in 1898, Columbia has been blessed by an extraordinary cadre of golf professionals. Early professionals wore multiple hats as instructors, club makers, greenkeepers, and club managers. 

Starting in 1912, three extraordinary professionals served the club for a combined 110 years—Fred McLeod, Bill Strausbaugh, and Bob Dolan. No other club in America can lay the same claim.  Even more remarkable, all three have been inducted into the PGA of America’s Hall of fame.

  • Fred McLeod moved into the pro shop at Columbia in 1912 and stayed for 55 years. Born in North Berwick, Scotland, in 1882, McLeod found success in amateur competitions before turning professional and emigrating to America in 1903. Though slight in stature—he stood just 5 foot 4 and weighed 108 pounds when he won the U.S. Open—McLeod was a highly competitive golfer renowned for his short game. His peers called him “The Wasp.”

    There were few professional tournaments at the time, but McLeod quickly established his reputation with eight top-ten finishes in the U.S. Open. The highlight of his career came in 1908, when he captured the U.S. Open in a playoff at Myopia Hunt Club. In 1919, he finished runner-up to Jim Barnes in the PGA Championship.

    With friend and fellow Scot, Jock Hutchison, McLeod served as the honorary starter at the Masters from 1963 to 1976.

  • Bill Strausbaugh, known respectfully and affectionately as “Coach,” spent a lifetime serving the game of golf. The Baltimore native and World War II Marine Corps veteran was the head golf professional at Columbia for 27 years from 1968 to 1995. Respected by his peers as the “pro’s pro” and the “teacher’s teacher,” Strausbaugh was named PGA Golf Professional of the Year in 1966 and PGA Teacher of the Year in 1992. In 1983, he received the PGA's Horton Smith Award for outstanding contributions to professional education, becoming the only professional to receive all three of PGA’s most distinguished honors. 

    Strausbaugh, who dressed every day in his button-down shirt, striped tie, and wide-brimmed hat, encouraged students to focus on the fundamentals: “The golf swing is 98% set-up, 2% is the take-away, and the rest is in the Lord’s hands.”

  • Bob Dolan Jr. turned professional and entered the PGA of America’s apprentice program in 1983. After 12 years serving as assistant professional and head professional at golf clubs along the East Coast, Dolan succeeded Bill Strausbaugh as Columbia’s head golf professional in 1995 and remained in the role for 28 years. 

    The recipient of several prestigious awards for junior player development, Dolan was responsible for accelerating the growth of Columbia’s youth programs. He received the Bill Strausbaugh Award in 1999 and 2011 for integrity, commitment to mentoring fellow professionals, and involvement in community and charitable activities. In 2023, Dolan was inducted into the PGA of America Hall of Fame.

Columbia Tennis

Although Columbia was born from a love of golf, tennis has a long and venerable history at Columbia and served as an integral part of the Club from the beginning.  The first tennis courts were constructed at the same time as the golf course, in 1910. The Club has hosted numerous notable events in tennis including the Mid Atlantic & U.S. National Boys Clay Championships.

Columbia has developed a significant number of local, regional and national tennis champions over the years, including Conrad Doyle, Clarence Charest, Fred McNair III, Donald Dell, Fred McNair IV, Dooly Mitchell, Charlie Channing, Hugh Lynch, Jr., Frank Shore, Kahl Spriggs, Henry Barclay, John Myers, Tim Coss and George Myers.

Six people from Columbia have been inducted into the U.S. Tennis Association’s Mid-Atlantic Hall of Fame: legendary, long-time professional Frank "Buddy" Goeltz, and Club members Fred McNair III, Fred McNair IV, Donald Dell, Sara Fornaciari and Mark Ein. In addition, Dell was a 2009 inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

  • A legendary figure in U.S. tennis, "Buddy" Goeltz served as Columbia's Head Tennis Professional for 33 years. As an instructor, he had few peers. As a competitor, he won 49 “Gold Balls” (national championships), including "Grand Slams" in both singles and doubles on three different surfaces -- hard, clay and grass courts -- in 1971 and again in 1976.  He also won two national indoor championships.

  • Donald Dell, a three-time All-American at Yale, reached the NCAA Singles Final in 1959 and the semifinals in 1960. He played on the U.S. Davis Cup Team in 1961 and 1963 and captained the winning American teams in 1968 and 1969. Dell was also a co-founder of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the modern men’s professional tour. 

  • Between 1965 and 1972, Fred McNair III won seven national USTA clay court championships with his two sons, six with Fred IV and one with John.

    With partner Sherwood Stewart, Fred McNair IV won the men's doubles title at the French Open in 1976. They were then the number-one ranked men's doubles team in the world.

  • One of Columbia's most accomplished women tennis players, Betsy Heidenberger was the number one player for the University of North Carolina's women's team and led her team to two Atlantic Coast Conference championships.

  • John Adam's 14 years of distinguished leadership of Columbia's tennis program (1978-1992) included the formation of the “Point of Compass” men’s member-guest event. Town & Country magazine recognized it as one of the premier such events in the D.C. area.