Old Warson Country Club is a

country club A country club is a privately owned club, often with a membership quota and admittance by invitation or sponsorship, that generally offers both a variety of recreational sports and facilities for dining and entertaining. Typical athletic offer ...

located in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

. Founded in 1953, it hosted the

1971 Ryder Cup The 19th Ryder Cup Matches were held September 16–18, 1971, in the United States at the Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri. The U.S. team won the competition by a score of 18 to 13 points. Format The Ryder Cup is a match play ev ...

and the 2009

U.S. Women's Amateur Golf Championship The U.S. Women's Amateur is the leading golf tournament in the United States for female amateur golfers. It is played annually and is one of the 13 United States national golf championships organized by the United States Golf Association (USGA). F ...

. The golf course was designed by

Robert Trent Jones Robert Trent Jones Sr. (June 20, 1906 – June 14, 2000) was a British–American golf course architect who designed or re-designed more than 500 golf courses in 45 U.S. states and 35 countries. In reference to this, Jones took pride in sayi ...

Hale Irwin Hale S. Irwin (born June 3, 1945) is an American professional golfer. He was one of the world's leading golfers from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. He is one of the few players in history to win three U.S. Opens, becoming the oldest ever U.S. Op ...

, the winner of three U.S. Opens, joined the club in 1974 as a junior member; since 1977 he has been an active member. Until 1991, Old Warson Country Club banned Black and Jewish people from joining. That year, it cancelled plans to host a

PGA Senior Tour PGA Tour Champions (formerly the Senior PGA Tour and the Champions Tour) is a men's professional senior golf tour, administered as a branch of the PGA Tour. History and format The Senior PGA Championship, founded in 1937, was for many year ...

event rather than change its discriminatory rules. Several months later, the club admitted its first Black member: Frederick S. Wood, a retired executive vice president at

General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded, aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and 5th largest in the Uni ...

. The initiation fee was $45,000 ($ today) in 1996 and $80,000 ($ today) in 2006.

Major tournaments held at Old Warson

Notes

External links

Official website
{{Ryder Cup venues , state=collapsed Golf clubs and courses in Missouri Golf in Missouri Ryder Cup venues Buildings and structures in St. Louis County, Missouri 1954 establishments in Missouri