Broadmoor Country Club

Broadmoor began in 1922 as a club for Indianapolis's Jewish community, organised by businessmen shut out of the city's existing country clubs. One hundred and twenty-five members put in $1,000 each toward the Fox farm, a 160-acre tract on the northwest side along Michigan Road that the Fox family had held since an 1834 deed. Albert M. Rosenthal, the first president, and the other officers filed articles of incorporation on June 6, 1922. On September 10, 1923 members formed the Broadmoor Realty Company, which raised $250,000 to build the clubhouse and course.

The Donald Ross Society dates Ross's design to 1921, and the Tufts Archives hold material on it. According to the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, his layout set holes in a semicircle near the clubhouse and was watered from a 400-foot well. The encyclopedia describes the course he built as open and nearly treeless, on sandy soil, with thick rough exposed to the wind and a creeping bent grass that set it apart from other city courses. When the course was announced in June 1924, the Sunday Star said the land had been a rolling collection of grass and hay fields about a century earlier. It formally opened for play on July 4, 1924. The rest of the facilities opened that November, and the English manor-style clubhouse opened in January 1925.

Holes to Know

From the Black tees the course is 6,904 yards and par 72: 35 on the front nine and 37 on the back. There are four par 3s and four par 5s, and the round closes with back-to-back par 5s at the 17th and 18th.

The 158-yard 4th from the Black tees is the shortest par 3. Golf Club Atlas singled out the stream running diagonally along the right of its green, where a ball landing on the right edge is kicked into the water. Today that side is lined with trees, and both greenside bunkers sit on the left.

The 391-yard 13th from the Black tees opens with a carry over a winding creek and bends left at about 240 yards around six bunkers on the inside of the turn. Golf Club Atlas described its green as wider than deep with both sides higher than the middle, so the best line from the tee depends on the hole location.

The 423-yard 14th from the Black tees, second on the stroke index, bends left past five inside bunkers. The same stream as the 4th then crosses the hole short of a long, narrow green that Golf Club Atlas measured at six feet of fall from back to front and 25 feet across at the front.

The 163-yard 15th from the Black tees runs beside the 14th, across low ground to a two-tier green ringed by five bunkers.

The 567-yard 17th from the Black tees is the longest hole on the course. It runs between tree lines, turns left near the green and finishes at a green guarded by four bunkers, with a finger of putting surface off the back right.

Ross's Design Here

Golf Club Atlas, in Ran Morrissett's profile from about 2002, called Broadmoor Ross's most heavily bunkered inland course that its authors knew, and counted 135 of Ross's 138 bunkers still in play. The profile argued that the bunkering hides how flat the property is: a "topped shot" bunker 100 yards off the 2nd tee and a nest of bunkers off the 3rd tee keep the golfer from ever seeing a long, level fairway. On the dogleg-right 5th, Ross put a bunker complex on the inside of the corner, which leaves the player to choose a line to match his length, while the green stays open in front for a running approach.

The site's main natural features are a stream and a crest of rolling ground on the back nine, and Ross used both. The stream runs diagonally beside the 4th green and crosses the 14th. On the par-5 12th, Golf Club Atlas noted a seven-foot dip in the fairway at about 240 yards and a built-up, sloping green. The 12th through the 15th, the profile wrote, cross the most rolling terrain on the property.

Writers keep returning to the greens. Golf Club Atlas named the 3rd, the two-tier 15th and the 17th as unusual even among Ross's greens. In a 2013 Golf Club Atlas thread, players ranked the set the best in Indiana, pointing to the dip at the back of the 13th, the back-to-front slope of the 14th, the hard-to-reach back tier of the 15th and the interior contours of the 16th. Recent reviewers single out the false front and upper back-right tier of the 3rd, a back-right finger on the 17th green and a turtleback green at the 18th. The club says the routing, green sites, and green contours and surrounds are essentially untouched.

Historical Significance

Broadmoor was known as "the Jewish club" into the 1970s. It opened its membership to non-Jewish members when numbers fell, and it kept its Jewish ties, including closing for the High Holy Days.

The course hosted the first six GTE North Classics on the Senior PGA Tour (now the Champions Tour), from 1988 to 1993. Gary Player won in 1988 and 1989, Mike Hill in 1990, George Archer in 1991, Raymond Floyd in 1992 and Bob Murphy in 1993, after which the event moved to Brickyard Crossing. Broadmoor has also hosted the Indiana Amateur and U.S. Open qualifying for men and women, and the Indiana Women's Amateur in 2025. At the 126th Indiana Amateur, from June 29 to July 1, 2026, Matt Vogt beat Cole Bradley in a playoff after setting the championship's 54-hole record of 17 under par.

Tom Doak wrote on Golf Club Atlas in 2013 that Pete Dye told him he took a surveyor's transit to Broadmoor to measure the slopes of Ross's greens when he started Crooked Stick, because they were the best set around. Daniel Wexler called the course "long underrated on the national level", with "profuse bunkering and a very low degree of alteration". The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis records that Golfweek ranked Broadmoor 79th on its first list of Top 100 Classic Courses in 1997 and 89th in 1998, before it dropped off in 1999, and that Golfweek placed it among Indiana's top ten private courses in 2023. GOLF Magazine ranked it eighth in Indiana in 2022-23 and sixth in 2024-25.

Changes Since Ross

Planting in the 1940s and 1950s turned the open course into parkland. The club says a few bunkers were lost as trees went in and corridors narrowed in the 1960s and 1970s. Golf Club Atlas's profile of about 2002 complained that hundreds of hardwoods blocked recovery shots from Ross's fairway bunkers, including trees between the 10th green and its fairway bunkers and trees smothering the approach to the 6th green.

After the course slipped off Golfweek's classic list, the club hired Tom Doak's Renaissance Golf Design in 1999 for a master plan. The plan called for a new irrigation system, fairway and green restoration, some bunker work and tree removal. In the first phase, carried out with Bruce Hepner, Renaissance recaptured the lost outer edges of the greens, recontoured the fairway mowing lines and moved a few bunkers. Doak wrote in 2013 that the club had cut "quite a few trees, but only a fraction" of what the firm recommended.

In 2020 the club brought Hepner back to finish the plan. By 2022 he had rebuilt and repositioned all 135 bunkers, working from old aerial photographs, improved their drainage, adjusted the fairway and green edges, added short grass and teeing ground, and thinned almost 300 trees. Some bunkers were removed in the process.

Uncertainties

• Opening year: the club's own course page and Visit Indy say the course opened in 1922, the year the club was founded. The club's history page, quoting the June 29, 1924 Sunday Star, and the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis give a formal opening on July 4, 1924, which is followed here.

• Acreage: the 1924 newspaper and the Encyclopedia say 160 acres; Golf Club Atlas describes a 200-acre block. The 160-acre figure is followed.

• Opening of membership: the club dates it to the mid-1970s; the Encyclopedia puts it in 1980, when the club faced possible closure.

Sources & Notes

1. Emily Reuben and Jyoti A. Verderame, "Broadmoor Country Club," Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 2023, https://indyencyclopedia.org/broadmoor-country-club/ : founding, incorporation, 160 acres, Realty Co., July 4, 1924 opening, routing and well, creeping bent, tree planting, membership in 1980, events, Golfweek rankings, Doak 1999, Hepner 2020-22.

2. Broadmoor Country Club, "Broadmoor History," https://www.broadmoorcc.com/discover-broadmoor/broadmoor-history : Fox farm, 1922 and 1924 newspaper quotations, 160 acres, July 4, 1924 opening, membership opened mid-1970s.

3. Broadmoor Country Club, "Our Course History," https://www.broadmoorcc.com/golf/our-course-history : features intact, bunkers lost in the 1960s-70s, Renaissance master plan, Hepner project scope, Donald Ross Society membership.

4. Broadmoor Country Club, "Guest Information" and "Membership Overview," https://www.broadmoorcc.com/golf/guest-information and https://www.broadmoorcc.com/discover-broadmoor/membership-overview : practice facilities, caddies, carts, amenities.

5. Donald Ross Society, Directory of Courses (Jan 2026), https://rosssociety.org/resources/Documents/Ross%20Course%20List/Final%20Ross%20Directory%20of%20Courses%20Jan%202026%20website.pdf : new 18-hole design dated 1921; Tufts Archives information.

6. Ran Morrissett, "Broadmoor Country Club," Golf Club Atlas, c. 2002, https://golfclubatlas.com/countries/broadmoor-in/ : 135 of 138 bunkers, flat site, holes 2-5 and 12-17, trees.

7. Golf Club Atlas forum, "Broadmoor CC (Indianapolis) Greens. Best in state?", April 30, 2013, https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,55580.0.html : Tom Doak on Pete Dye and on tree removal; Renaissance work on green edges and mowing lines; green descriptions.

8. Top100GolfCourses, "Broadmoor Country Club," https://www.top100golfcourses.com/golf-course/broadmoor : Daniel Wexler quotations; reader reviews (2021, 2026) at /reviews/29794, /reviews/47241, /reviews/48904 for present-day greens and use of old aerial photos.

9. Wikipedia, "Comfort Classic," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_Classic : GTE North Classic winners 1988-93.

10. Indiana Golf, "Vogt Sets 54-Hole Record, Wins 126th Indiana State Amateur in Playoff," July 2026, https://indianagolf.org/vogt-sets-54-hole-record-wins-126th-indiana-state-amateur-in-playoff/ : 2026 Indiana Amateur result.

11. The Reporter, "Brown finishes as runner-up at Indiana Women's Amateur," https://readthereporter.com/?p=152140 : Indiana Women's Amateur at Broadmoor (2025).

12. GOLF Magazine, Indiana rankings 2022-23 and 2024-25, https://golf.com/travel/10-best-golf-courses-indiana-2022-2023/ and https://golf.com/travel/best-golf-courses-indiana-2024-25/ : 8th and 6th.

13. Greens Visited course tour (OpenStreetMap geometry and USDA NAIP aerials) and club scorecard: hole lengths, pars and present-day hazards.