Claremont Country Club

Claremont Country Club occupies a singular place in Bay Area golf history. The club was founded in 1897 as Oakland Golf Club near Lake Merritt — making it one of the oldest golf clubs in California — before relocating to its current site in the Oakland Hills and commissioning Alister MacKenzie to redesign the course in 1926. MacKenzie, the Scottish-born architect who would go on to design Cypress Point and Augusta National, left his unmistakable fingerprints all over the property. The bunkering is dramatic and strategic in the way only MacKenzie could achieve, the greens have the subtle contours and false fronts that reward careful study, and the routing makes exceptional use of a restricted 100-acre site by carving holes through hillside terrain that provides natural separation and constant elevation change.

The course measures only 5,469 yards from the back tees at par 68, which positions it firmly in the short-course category by modern standards. But length has never been the point at Claremont. What MacKenzie built here was a precision examination — tight corridors, clever angles, and putting surfaces that require golfers to understand the relationship between approach position and pin location before they pull a club. Tom Doak and Jim Urbina completed a thoughtful restoration in the mid-2000s that honored MacKenzie's original intentions while improving drainage and modernizing the conditioning without altering the architectural character. Several holes on the back nine are terraced to provide separation, and the variety between the par 3s alone gives the course a personality that longer courses sometimes lack.

The club hosted the inaugural 1937 Oakland Open, the first professional event that Sam Snead ever won, cementing its place in the history of American professional golf. Today Claremont operates as a full-service private country club with tennis courts, pools, fitness facilities, and dining alongside the golf. Access is by membership or reciprocal arrangement with other private clubs.