Southern Hills Country Club is a private

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

and

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 ...

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

History

The club was established in 1935 from land donated by multimillionaire oilman

Waite Phillips Waite Phillips (January 19, 1883 – January 27, 1964) was an American petroleum businessman who created a fully integrated operation that combined petroleum producing, refining and marketing. With headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he also develo ...

(Frank Phillips, Waite's brother, was the namesake and founder of the predecessor to

Phillips 66 The Phillips 66 Company is an American Multinational corporation, multinational energy company headquartered in Westchase, Houston, Westchase, Houston, Houston, Texas. Its name, dating back to 1927 as a trademark of the Phillips Petroleum Compan ...

. Waite worked with his brother for a time before starting his own oil company). Phillips had earned an oil fortune and, upon the crash of the stock market, Phillips became The First National Bank of Tulsa’s chairman. With his oil money and with his reputation, Bill Warren and Cecil Canary asked Phillips to sponsor the development of a new country club. The boosters argued that there was the need for a family-oriented club that would include a swimming pool, stable, horseback trails, polo field, skeet range, tennis courts, clubhouse and golf course. Phillips was skeptical of this proposition, and in response he told Warren and Canary that they had a couple of weeks to assume 150 pledges to become members of this club, with each of those pledges paying $1,000 each, to ensure his cooperation. The construction costs were raised by the founding members. The clubhouse, designed in "English country manor" style by Tulsa architects

John Duncan Forsyth John Duncan Forsyth (1886 or 1887–1963) was a Scottish-American architect who became prominent in Oklahoma. Based in Tulsa and working in a variety of styles, he was connected with a number of significant buildings around the state. Biogr ...

and Donald McCormick, opened on October 17, 1936; the clubhouse was extensively renovated during a three-year project prior to the 2007 PGA tournament.

Murder

On May 27, 1981, Roger Wheeler, a Tulsa businessman and owner of

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

's World

Jai Alai Jai alai (: ) is a sport involving bouncing a ball off a walled-in space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held wicker ''cesta''. It is a variation of Basque pelota. The term ''jai alai'', coined by Serafin Baroja in 1875, is also oft ...

, was murdered in the parking lot of the club. The killing was ordered by

Winter Hill Gang The Winter Hill Gang is a loose confederation of organized crime figures in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. The gang members and leadership are predominantly Irish-American and Italian-American descent. The organization itself derives its n ...

mobster

Whitey Bulger James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. (; September 3, 1929 – October 30, 2018) was an American organized crime boss who led the Winter Hill Gang in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, a city directly northwest of Bost ...

, who discovered that Wheeler had uncovered the gang's ongoing embezzlement from the jai alai organization.

Golf courses and amenities

Once the money was raised, the pledges signed, and the land was donated, the main 18-hole golf course was laid out by golf course designer

Perry Maxwell Perry Duke Maxwell (June 13, 1879 – November 15, 1952) was an American golf course architect. He was a founding member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects and was an inductee into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame in 2012. He was kn ...

. The course was later on renovated by Keith Foster in 1999. Maxwell, a friend of Phillips, oversaw the entire project and its construction. There is also a 9-hole West Course that was designed by

Ben Crenshaw Ben Daniel Crenshaw (born January 11, 1952) is a retired American professional golfer who has won 19 events on the PGA Tour, including two major championships: the Masters Tournament in 1984 and 1995. He is nicknamed ''Gentle Ben''. Professiona ...

in 1992. Southern Hills also has the typical facilities of a country club, including extensive banqueting facilities, a fitness center, swimming and diving pools, and tennis courts. Southern Hills offers swimming, personal training, and tennis instruction. The course is ranked No. 30 among ''Golf Digest''’s 2013-2014 “America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses."

Course layout

Hole 1, 12, and 18 are par 5 for women. Lengths of the course in previous major championships:
U.S. Open Championship *

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

: 6,973 yards , Par 70 *

1977 Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic R ...

: 6,873 yards , Par 70 *

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

: 6,907 yards , Par 70 PGA Championship *

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

: 7,556 yards , Par 70 *

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

: 7,131 yards , Par 70 *

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...

: 6,834 yards , Par 70 *

1982 Events January * January 1 – In Malaysia and Singapore, clocks are adjusted to the same time zone, UTC+8 (GMT+8.00). * January 13 – Air Florida Flight 90 crashes shortly after takeoff into the 14th Street bridges, 14th Street Bridge in ...

: 6,862 yards , Par 70 *

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of X (''Extrem ...

: 6,962 yards , Par 70 Senior PGA Championship *2021 : 6,968 yards , Par 70

Golf tournaments hosted at Southern Hills

Southern Hills has hosted eight major championships for men, including the U.S. Open three times (

) and five

PGA Championship The PGA Championship (often referred to as the US PGA Championship or USPGA outside the United States) is an annual golf tournament conducted by the Professional Golfers' Association of America. It is one of the four men's major championships ...

s (

). It is the only course to host the PGA Championship five times. Southern Hills also hosted the first-ever

U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur The U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur is one of thirteen United States Golf Association national championships. First played in 1987, it provides amateur women over the age of 25 an opportunity to compete for a national championship. Entrants must have a ...

in 1987, and the

U.S. Women's Amateur 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 ...

was played at Southern Hills in 1946.

Winners

Notes

References

External links

*
Voices of Oklahoma interview with George Matson.
First person interview conducted on January 28, 2015, with George Matson, Golf Shop manager of Southern Hills Country Club {{coord, 36, 4, 21.49, N, 95, 56, 58.77, W, type:landmark, display=title Golf clubs and courses in Oklahoma Sports in Tulsa, Oklahoma Sports venues completed in 1936 1936 establishments in Oklahoma