Davenport Country Club

Davenport Country Club architect Charles Alison might have been the most traveled architect of his era. He began working with Harry S. Colt around 1908, then officially partnered with him after World War I designing courses in the U.K. and throughout Europe. He handled all the design and oversight work for their North American courses in the 1920s, worked extensively in Japan in the 1930s and continued to build courses in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. His design at Davenport, which opened in 1924, is among his finest American work alongside Milwaukee Country Club (ranked 97th on America's 100 Greatest Courses), Kirtland near Cleveland and Burning Tree outside Washington D.C. The course sits on a beautiful, ruptured piece of land near the Mississippi River with holes bisected by streams and Alison's calling cards, large, open-faced bunkers. Designers Ron Forse and Jim Nagle have kept the course true to its original details.