Green Hills Country Club

A.W. Tillinghast designed Green Hills Country Club in 1929 on a piece of Millbrae, California San Francisco Peninsula land — one of his few Pacific Coast commissions during a career that produced more than two hundred American courses, primarily on the East Coast. Tillinghast was at the peak of his career in 1929, completing Green Hills in the same year he worked on Winged Foot, San Francisco Golf Club, and several other landmark routings. The course is one of the most-preserved Tillinghast Peninsula commissions and remains substantially the routing he designed.

The course plays around 6,500 yards par 70 from the back markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. The yardage is short by modern championship standards, but Tillinghast's green complexes — small, contoured, with deep penal bunkers — defend against modern equipment in ways the back-tee yardage doesn't account for. The fairways play firm given the Peninsula subsoil. The mature cypress canopy through the property has grown to championship-narrowing dimensions over the club's century-plus history. The fairway corridors tighten through the routing's middle stretch in the way that Tillinghast intended.

Green Hills Country Club is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership is regional San Francisco Peninsula business and professional families with multi-generation ties through the club's pre-Depression founding. The Tillinghast architectural pedigree is the primary institutional identity, and the hospitality model is traditional country club.

San Francisco Peninsula climate keeps Green Hills playable year-round, with the firmest conditions in September and October. The marine influence keeps summer temperatures moderate. The afternoon onshore breeze is the daily architectural constant, and the cypress canopy through the routing gives the property its distinct Peninsula visual character.