Born in 1876, Albert Warren (A.W.) Tillinghast is the sixth golf course architect to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Other members include Donald Ross (1977), Robert Trent Jones (1987), Allister MacKenzie (2005), Charles Blair Macdonald (2007) and Pete Dye (2008). Similar to these prominent architects, Tillinghast’s brilliance and creativity is found in some of the greatest golf courses in the United States.
The Philadelphia native, who drew his inspiration from his time spent with Old Tom Morris in St Andrews, especially left his mark in the Northeast. In the New York metropolitan area alone, the man they called “Tilly” left his mark on a few modern day games, including Baltusrol Golf Club, Bethpage Black, Quaker Ridge, Scarsdale, Sleepy Hollow Country Club, Somerset and Winged Foot.
During a career in which his fingerprints touched as many as 260 golf courses in the United States, A.W. Tillinghast has had his designs attached to 50 Major Championships held at 24 different venues.
Of those championships, many of them staged a PGA Championship. Locations and tournament winners of note include Medinah (Tiger Woods 2006), Baltusrol (Phil Mickelson 2005) and Winged Foot (Davis Love III 1997).
But it wasn’t just the PGA of America that chose to hold their annual championships at Tillinghast-designed courses. The United States Golf Association (USGA) hosted the U.S. Open 11 times at iconic Tillinghast locations including Bethpage State Park, Interlachen, Inverness and Colonial.
If Major Championships mean everything in golf, it is no wonder that Tillinghast had a truly Hall of Fame career.
