Cape Fear Country Club Golf Course

Founded in 1896, Cape Fear Country Club is recognized as the oldest private country club in North Carolina. After relocating in its early years, the club settled at its Wilmington site, where Donald Ross designed the eighteen-hole course in the 1920s and revised it more than once thereafter. His rolling routing, elevated green sites, and strategic bunkering still define the par-72 layout, which today plays close to 7,000 yards. For decades it hosted the PGA Tour's Azalea Open, with Arnold Palmer among its champions; Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus also played there. A major restoration completed in 2019, led by architect Andrew Green, returned greens and bunkers to their Ross-inspired proportions, and during that work crews even unearthed Civil War-era artifacts from a Confederate battery once on the grounds.