Overlooked Golf Courses: Gold Canyon and others you may not know
By Bill Felber
Donald Ross Course, French Lick Springs, In., 7,000 yards, par 70
It’s coming up on 100 years since the Donald Ross Course at French Lick hosted the PGA Championship in 1924. Walter Hagen won – as he usually did in those days – defeating his most serious professional challenger, Jim Barnes, 2-up.
Whatever damage the years did to French Lick was largely ameliorated by a 2007 renovation that preserved much of what made the course interesting to begin with while restoring some classic Ross features. Notable among the former is the thick matted rough that dominates the acreage. Anyone searching after a ball that has sunk into the matting would not be surprised to fish out a relic ball from the 1920s, 40s or 60s instead.
The restorations include the 80 sand traps, whose bottoms were flattened and whose walls were steepened in keeping with the original 1917 Ross design.
In the decades since Hagen reigned there, what has kept the PGA from coming back? Probably geography. French Lick sits in a vast swath of rolling southern Indiana farmland an hour from Louisville, two hours from Indianapolis and five hours from Chicago. Given the town’s resort status, there are upscale rooms nearby…but not nearly enough in the surrounding region to support the kind of crowds that a big tournament would entail. Access is also an issue; the closest interstate, I-64 through southern Indiana, is a full half hour away.