Pine Valley Golf Club

Pine Valley Golf Club was founded in 1913 when Philadelphia hotelier George Crump bought sandy, wooded land in southern New Jersey and set out to build the world's hardest course. Aided by English architect Harry Colt and later by other designers, Crump drained marsh and pulled thousands of tree stumps to carve isolated holes through the pines, insisting that no hole parallel another and that players see only the hole they were playing. The first eleven holes opened around 1914; Crump died in 1918 with four holes unfinished, and they were completed by 1922. Pine Valley is renowned for demanding every club in the bag and punishing anything less than precise, with sandy waste areas, forced carries, and famed holes like the par-3 fifth and the short par-3 tenth. It is regularly ranked the number-one course in the world.