Congressional Country Club has all sorts of history, most but not all of it having to do with golf. Lots of ghosts in the woodwork, or grass roots, or wherever. The most current will be Tiger Woods, the host of the AT&T National being played at the club this coming week. He may show up to hand out the trophy, but we don’t know that yet.
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The club was opened for play in 1924. A couple of Indiana congressmen had the idea for it as an “informal common ground where politicians and businessmen could meet as peers, unconstrained by red tape.” Herbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, was the club’s first president, and Calvin Coolidge, the American President at the time, attended the inaugural ceremonies and was a member, as was William Howard Taft, the first American President to get into golf, much to the dismay of Theodore Roosevelt. The “Rough Rider” told Taft, when he was President, that he should shun the game on the grounds that it was a sissy game and would put a poor image on him. I wonder what TR would have said about Tiger’s one-legged performance at Torrey Pines. Two other golf-minded Presidents were members of the club, Warren Harding and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and many a high-powered congressman and corporate biggie trod the fairways. Over the years many a political deal was originated, and consummated, in Congressional’s locker-room, dining room, on the course, and probably even in the stained-glass Christian chapel.
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Before the next major was played at the club, Congressional hosted a match between Sam Snead and Roberto DeVicenzo for the Emmy-Award-winning made-for-television series, Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf. It was a fitting match-up, if only because it was Snead, after playing a series of exhibitions with DeVicenzo in Argentina in the 1950s, who encouraged him to travel out from his native country and compete in the wider world of golf.
It is not likely Congressional’s championship course was as difficult in the beginning as it has become since. For one thing, there is virtually none of the original left. Devereaux Emmett was the first designer. He created the 18-hole Blue course, which to this day is the premier “Open” and tournament course. (He also put down the nine-hole Gold course, to which another nine was added in the 1970s by George and Tom Fazio.) But over a period of years the Blue has been revised by six architects. They include Tom Winton, Donald Ross, Alfred Tull, Robert Trent Jones, Sr., Edmund Ault, and most recently, Rees Jones, the Open course “doctor.” It’s now a most formidable layout, more so however when a major is played on it.
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In the eight Kemper Opens played at Congressional between 1980 and 1986, the winning scores reflected the PGA Tour’s more show-business (read, birdie-oriented) approach to the game. For example, Greg Norman won the last Kemper Open at Congressional with an 11-under par 277 (course par, almost always 70, was changed that year to 72). And, in last year’s inaugural AT&T National, K.J. Choi won with a 9-under 271. Of course, modern-day equipment technology and course-conditioning, not to say the more assiduous physical conditioning of today’s players, must also be accounted for in these scores.
When the U.S. Open returns to Congressional, in 2011, though, we expect the course will morph back from a semi “track” to a championship challenge, just as Torrey Pines did this year, and prove once again that golf is not on your life a sissy game.
