Bedford Springs Hotel Golf Club

The resort first commissioned Spencer Oldham to lay out a full 18 in 1895, one of the earliest resort courses in the Mid-Atlantic. In 1912, A. W. Tillinghast was retained by the hotel to rethink the golf; his work reduced the course to nine holes and introduced distinctive par-three and bunkering concepts that would be remembered by name a century later. In 1923, the hotel turned to Donald Ross to restore the course to a full 18. Ross did not treat Bedford Springs as a tabula rasa. Contemporary and restoration accounts agree that he used existing corridors where they suited his aims, added new holes along Shober’s Run to complete an 18-hole sequence, and re-graded greens and surrounds to the firmer, more intricately contoured targets typical of his 1920s work. The Ross revision opened in May 1923 as the resort’s championship-length layout. No evidence has surfaced in public sources that Ross returned for a later on-site phase; the evolution afterward was incremental—maintenance choices, flood response on the low holes, and, in the 1970s, the removal of two finishing holes that would later be reconstructed from period imagery during the 2007 restoration. Unique Design Characteristics Ross’s 1923 sequence at Bedford Springs is most clearly seen on holes that use the creek not as a scenic edge but as a strategic line of decision. The par-4 seventh (“Shober’s Run”) contains no formal bunkering; instead, placement along the creek bank determines whether a player can feed a running approach through a swaled entrance to a compact green ringed by low mounding. The par-5 sixteenth (“Hole o’ Cross”) combines cross-bunkering in the landing areas with a distinctive cross-shaped green—an overt architectural flourish in a course otherwise content to make the stream and contours do most of the work. The par-3 tenth (“Gulley”) plays across a ravine to a double-tier green—a vertical change that compresses the target and punishes misses more severely than its modest yardage suggests. Two other stretches show Ross modifying or absorbing older ideas. The third (“Steeplechase”), a par-5, marries remnant Oldham bunker forms—“S-curves” and donut shapes—to a Ross green re-built with plateaus and internal swales; the effect is a Victorian-to-Golden-Age hybrid that still reads as a single hole. And the eighteenth (“Home”)—removed in the 1970s and rebuilt in 2007 from a period mural—finishes with a pronounced “S” fairway and the heaviest bunker count on the course, elements recorded in the resort’s historical materials as part of Ross’s last-hole concept here. The clearest surviving Ross par-3 is the fourth (“Volcano”), a steep uphill shot to a narrow, two-tier green cut into the slope, which contemporary writers and the resort’s own documentation have long singled out as the course’s sternest single-shot test. On the two-shot holes, Ross’s hand is most legible in the string of small, multi-level targets—at the sixth (a tree-lined “cathedral” corridor to a tiered green), the eighth (short but tightly bunkered to a precise target), the eleventh (a fairway segmented by low mounding feeding into a slick, small surface), and the twelfth (left-tilting approach to a green defined by five right-hand mounds that survive from the 1923 plan). Not every celebrated hole is Ross’s. Tillinghast’s “Tiny Tim” par-3 fourteenth remains in the modern sequence, its green re-center-ridged in the 2007 works to match Tillinghast’s published sketches. Oldham’s imprint is most obvious on the second (a creek-guarded short three) and the fifteenth (“Bunker Hill”), where bold mounding and drop-offs create recovery dilemmas without relying on bunkers at the green. Bedford Springs is unusual in how openly it shows these layers: the 2007 restoration made the curatorial choice to conserve and, where necessary, reconstruct features from all three eras to keep each architect’s intent legible in the present-day round. Historical Significance Within Ross’s catalog, Bedford Springs represents a resort commission in which he re-expanded a pre-existing complex and integrated legacy holes rather than replacing them. The 1923 opening falls within a productive period in which he was frequently asked to re-order earlier golf for longer, more demanding 18-hole play; in this case, the low-lying floodplain and the linear constraint of Shober’s Run forced him into a chess match with both water and history. As a venue, the Old Course is also part of a National Historic Landmark resort district, and the course’s layered authorship has become a teaching example in the restoration era—cited repeatedly in trade and enthusiast literature as a “golf architectural museum” where Oldham, Tillinghast, and Ross can be studied on the ground in a single loop. Recent ratings have emphasized playability and presentation rather than championship pedigree; it is a resort course without a major-tournament record, but one whose historical reconstruction has been widely noted in the last 15 years. Current Condition / Integrity The course reopened in 2007 after a comprehensive hotel-and-golf revival that followed decades of decline and periodic flooding. Forse Design led the golf work. Two priorities steered the project: re-establishing Ross’s 1923 18-hole routing (including returning the seventeenth and eighteenth to the card from period imagery) and repairing the floodplain ecology so that Shober’s Run could be a reliable strategic and aesthetic presence instead of an ongoing liability. In practice that meant raising low fairway benches in select areas, naturalizing creek margins with native vegetation, reconstructing historic bunkers and mounds that had been erased by mid-century “tidy” maintenance, and presenting green sites—especially the compact, tiered Ross targets—with restored perimeters and internal contour. The resort’s current hole-by-hole materials attribute each hole to its historic designer and explain where 2007 interventions replicated lost details (for example, the center ridge at “Tiny Tim” inserted to match Tillinghast’s published drawing, or the eighteenth rebuilt from a clubhouse mural). As played today, the routing, hole identities, and central hazards correspond to the 1923 Ross course with conserved Tillinghast and Oldham elements. Inevitably, some ground forms are reconstructions rather than untouched survivors; the project’s authors are transparent about those choices. The net result is a high-integrity representation of Ross’s Bedford Springs sequence that acknowledges, rather than erases, what came before. The hotel’s and resort’s histories consistently state the chronology—Oldham (1895), Tillinghast (1912, nine-hole revision), Ross (1923, return to 18). Multiple independent summaries and the restoration architect’s own interviews support the May 1923 opening of the Ross course and his approach of using/reworking existing holes where advantageous. The resort’s published “Old Course Map” and golf brochure provide unusually specific, hole-level attributions and design notes post-restoration; these are secondary sources, but they draw on archival imagery and are corroborated by independent coverage. Sources & Notes Omni Hotels Blog, “100+ Years of Bedford Golf” (July 25, 2017). Ross’s 1923 re-expansion to 18; retention of three Oldham and four Tillinghast holes (including “Tiny Tim”). Historic Hotels of America – Omni Bedford Springs Resort, Golf page. Chronology Oldham (1895), Tillinghast (1912), Ross (1923); Ross restoring the course to 18. Forse Design / Ron Forse, interview (GolfClubAtlas, Feb. 4, 2021). May 1923 opening of Ross’s 18; explanation of floodplain issues and scope of the 2007 project. Omni Bedford Springs, “Old Course – History Map” (PDF, 2024). Hole-by-hole attributions and descriptions (e.g., #4 “Volcano,” #10 “Gulley,” #16 “Hole o’ Cross,” #14 “Tiny Tim,” #15 “Bunker Hill”); notes on 2007 reconstructions (17 and 18), design lineage across the card. Omni Bedford Springs, golf brochure (PDF, 2024). Restored “to the way in which Donald Ross last designed it in 1923”; recent ratings mentions. Golf Course Industry, “A river runs through it” (2008). Trade feature on the 2007 restoration; overview of Oldham/Tillinghast/Ross layers and floodplain work. LandStudies, “Bedford Springs Resort Stream & Floodplain Restoration” (2020). Technical summary of Shober’s Run stabilization/naturalization that underpins the golf restoration. Top100GolfCourses – Bedford Springs (editorial profile). Summary of Ross’s 1923 work “using existing holes” and opening date. Omni Bedford Springs Resort – general property history. Resort’s historical overview noting Oldham/Tillinghast/Ross sequence.