Morris Country Golf Club - New Jersey, U.S.A.

Morris County Golf Club in the town of Convent Station has the rare distinction of having been founded as a women's-only club in 1894. By that summer, there was a seven-hole course designed by John Brinley, the landscape architect for the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. The club hosted the second U.S. Women's Amateur in 1896, won by 16-year-old Beatrix Hoyt of Shinnecock Hills. The women members made the fatal mistake of allowing 200 men, mainly husbands and fathers, to become associate members. By 1896, the men had seized control of the club with Paul Revere, the great-grandson of the midnight rider, elected president. The current course, designed by Seth Raynor, opened in 1920 and is laid out on a rolling, hilly site with rocky outcroppings. There are a number of short par fours that require accurate pitches to small, tightly trapped greens set in punchbowls and on knolls. The 18th hole swings around a pond that guards the left side of the green. The course opened with a 36-hole exhibition match between the barnstorming British duo of Harry Vardon and Ted Ray and the American amateurs Bobby Jones and Chick Evans.

Somerset Hills Country Club - New Jersey, U.S.A.

Somerset Hills Country Club is in Bernardsville, not far from the USGA's headquarters in Far Hills. The club dates to 1896, when it was formed as the Ravine Land and Game Association with an early nine-hole course. In 1916, the club purchased 194 acres from the estate of Frederic P. Olcott, which included a private racetrack, and the great architect A. W Tillinghast was hired to create what turned out to be one of his more unusual designs. Completed at the end of 1917, the course does not bear much resemblance to Tillinghast's other famous layouts, such as Winged Foot and Bethpage Black, but instead the holes reflect the variety and subtlety of the terrain. The front nine is laid out over the old Olcott racetrack on open ground with large, odd-shaped mounds created by Tillinghast known as "the Dolomites." The back nine runs through wooded terrain with a rocky stream and a pond that guards the peninsula green on the par-three 12th. Somerset Hills is an exclusive club, but it has hosted various USGA events over the years, including the 1990 Curtis Cup.