Brae Burn Country Club

Donald Ross designed Brae Burn Country Club's current routing in 1912 on a piece of West Newton, Massachusetts Boston west-suburban land. The course is one of Ross's earlier American commissions and remains one of the most-preserved Boston-area Ross routings. Brae Burn's place in American golf history is permanently tied to the 1919 U.S. Amateur — Bobby Jones, then seventeen years old, reached the final at Brae Burn before losing to S. Davidson Herron, in what was one of the formative competitive experiences of Jones's championship-amateur career. The 1928 U.S. Women's Amateur and various USGA championships have been played at the course since.

The course plays around 6,500 yards par 71 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 set on natural rises defend against modern equipment in ways the back-tee yardage doesn't account for. The fairways play firm given the Massachusetts subsoil. The mature deciduous canopy through the property has grown to championship-narrowing dimensions over the club's century-plus history. The seventeenth hole is a 195-yard par-3 across a natural depression; the eighteenth, a 432-yard par-4 with a green set on a natural rise above the clubhouse, is the routing's most-discussed closing hole.

Brae Burn Country Club is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership is regional Boston west-suburban business and professional families with multi-generation ties through the club's pre-World War I founding. The 1919 U.S. Amateur Bobby Jones institutional history and the Ross architectural pedigree are the primary modern identity.

Massachusetts climate gives Brae Burn a playing season of April through November, with the firmest conditions in September and October. The course closes through brief winter cold snaps. The mature deciduous canopy and the autumn color through October are part of the routing's seasonal photographic signature.