Wilmington Country Club - Delaware, U.S.A.

Wilmington Country Club is located in the Brandywine Valley, just a few miles to the west of Wilmington in an area of attractive stone houses, stone walls, and stone cisterns. The club was founded in 1901, moving to its current site in 1959 after it purchased 335 acres from Henry Francis DuPont that had been the orchards and vegetable gardens of Winterthur, the famous DuPont Estate that adjoins the club. First came the South Course, designed by Robert Trent Jones, and in 1962 the North Course, designed by Jones's rival Dick Wilson, was completed. The courses feature a series of small ponds, which are linked by an underground irrigation system to the reservoir that serves as a water hazard on both courses. H.E DuPont, who expanded Winterthur and turned it into a world-renowned, 175-room museum of American period furniture with wooded gardens, was himself an avid golfer. He built a private nine-hole course at Winterthur that he and his guests would play while listening to opera music broadcast from speakers placed in the woods, and which is now part of the Bidermann Golf Course.

Bulle Rock - Maryland, U.S.A.

Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace, a half-hour north of Baltimore, features a lustrously green Pete Dye-designed layout that opened in 1998. With views of the Chesapeake Day, the sleek, contoured fairways of Bulle Rock's South Course are framed by hardwoods and tall golden grasses. There are three lakes that come into play, each replenished by a three-mile pipeline specifically constructed for the course that connects to the Susquehanna River. The course is named for Bulle Rock, the first thoroughbred racehorse in America, brought over from England by James Samuel Patton in the 1730s and known as the father of all thorough­breds in this country. Patton's granddaughter's husband owned the Blenheim horse farm that is now the site of the golf course. The golf course was founded by Ed Abel, who became hooked on the game after he sold his two construction companies in 1993. He then dedicated himself to building a course that would be open to the public but provide conditions and amenities comparable to the best private country clubs. Bulle Rock has been named the site of the McDonald's LPGA Championship starting in 2005.