Bloomfield Hills Country Club

Donald Ross designed Bloomfield Hills Country Club in 1922 on a piece of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan suburban Detroit land — a few miles north of the Oakland Hills Country Club that Ross also designed in 1918. The course is one of two Ross commissions in the Bloomfield Hills area and remains one of the most-preserved Ross routings in southeast Michigan. The membership has resisted significant redesign through generations, and the modern course retains substantial fidelity to Ross's 1922 architectural framework.

The course plays around 6,900 yards par 72 from the back markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. The yardage is short by modern championship standards, but Ross's green complexes — small, crowned, set on natural rises — defend against modern equipment in ways the back-tee yardage doesn't account for. The mature tree canopy through the property has grown to championship-narrowing dimensions over the club's century-plus history. The fairways play firm given the southeast Michigan glacial-deposit subsoil. The seventeenth hole is a 412-yard par-4 with a tee shot played over a natural creek; the eighteenth, a 442-yard par-4 with a green set on a natural rise above the clubhouse, is the routing's most-discussed closing hole.

Bloomfield Hills Country Club is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership is regional Detroit and Bloomfield Hills business and professional families with multi-generation ties through the club's early-1920s founding. The Ross architectural pedigree is the primary institutional identity, and the hospitality model is traditional country club.

Southeast Michigan climate gives Bloomfield Hills CC a playing season of April through October, with the firmest conditions in September and October. The course closes through Michigan winter and reopens when the soil thaws — typically late April. The mature tree canopy through the property gives the routing cooler summer conditions than the surrounding suburban Detroit area, and the autumn color through October is part of the seasonal signature.