Ridgewood Country Club's Composite course is a privately held, championship-caliber 18-hole layout in Paramus, NJ, built from the strongest holes across A.W. Tillinghast's three nine-hole loops — a par-71 test stretching 7,319 yards that has hosted Ryder Cups, U.S. Amateurs, and multiple PGA Tour FedEx Cup events.
Keep reading for a full breakdown of the course's design, its most memorable holes, the ongoing restoration work, and the tournament history that makes Ridgewood one of the most storied private clubs in the country.
The Architect Behind It All — A.W. Tillinghast and His Personal Connection to Ridgewood
Few golf courses carry the fingerprints of their designer quite like Ridgewood does. A.W. Tillinghast didn't just draw up the plans and move on — he lived nearby, held a club membership, and counted Ridgewood's longtime head professional, George Jacobus, among his closest friends.
Jacobus later served as president of the PGA of America for seven years, and the two men's relationship gave Tillinghast an unusually intimate stake in what he was building here.
He was also involved from the very beginning. Tillinghast helped the club identify and select the land itself, describing it as being “of unusual distinction” — high praise from a man who had seen a lot of property by that point in his career.
When work began at Ridgewood, Tillinghast was operating at the peak of his influence. He had just completed four of his most celebrated layouts: the Upper and Lower courses at Baltusrol in nearby Springfield, NJ, and the East and West courses at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, NY.
Ridgewood came immediately after that run, which explains both the ambition of the design and the care embedded in it.
His fee for the project was 10% of the $165,000 construction budget. The club hired William H. Tucker and Son to build the course — the same firm responsible for constructing the original baseball field at Yankee Stadium, which gives you a sense of the caliber of work involved.
The result is widely regarded as one of Tillinghast's most nuanced, site-sensitive designs — less showy than some of his other work, but arguably more thoughtful.
How the Composite Course Works — The Three Nines and the Championship Routing
Ridgewood's full property contains 27 holes, organized as three distinct nine-hole loops — East, Center, and West — each one starting and finishing at the clubhouse.
On any given member day, the East and West nines form the standard 18-hole round, though the Center nine can be paired with either of the other two depending on availability and preference.
The Composite is something else entirely. It's a tournament-specific configuration that doesn't exist as a fixed course — instead, it's assembled from the best holes across all three nines, designed to deliver the most demanding and interesting test the property can offer.
How the holes are drawn:
- East Nine: Holes 1–4 (Nos. 1–4) and Holes 9–11 (Nos. 5–7) — seven holes total, skipping the 8th and 9th
- Center Nine: Holes 5–8 (No. 6 and Nos. 3–5) — four holes, skipping Nos. 1, 7, 8, and 9
- West Nine: The final six holes close out the round
The logic behind this routing is as practical as it is strategic. The stronger, more interesting holes at Ridgewood sit on the outer edges of the property. The interior holes — the ones left out of the Composite — are comparatively straightforward.
Pulling from the perimeter also has a logistical payoff: green-to-tee walks stay short throughout, which keeps the round moving cleanly despite drawing from three different nines.
Championship numbers at a glance:
| Stat | Figure |
|---|---|
| Par | 71 |
| Yardage (Black Tees) | 7,319 yards |
| Course Rating | 74.9 |
| Slope | 145 |
| Avg. Green Size | ~4,800 sq ft |
Greens are a mix of Poa annua and bentgrass. The 74.9 rating and 145 slope reflect a course that genuinely challenges low-handicap players — the numbers aren't decorative.
What It Takes to Score — Playing Characteristics and Strategy
Ridgewood doesn't reward the player who simply hits it far. Distance helps, as it does anywhere, but the course is built around a different priority: keeping the ball where you can use it. Accurate driving and precise iron play matter more here than an extra 20 yards off the tee.
The tree-lined corridors throughout the property make that point for you quickly. Mature hardwoods frame nearly every hole, and the gaps between them aren't generous.
Miss the fairway and you're not just looking at a tough lie — you're often blocked out entirely, forced to punch sideways or take your medicine.
Shape requirements off the tee add another layer. The majority of holes at Ridgewood are designed around a right-to-left ball flight, meaning players who work the ball that way naturally carry a real advantage through most of the round.
The one exception worth noting is the final hole on the West nine, which reverses the ask and calls for a left-to-right shape — a useful change of pace at the finish, but one that can catch players off guard if they've been grooved into a draw all day.
The greens bring their own demands. Surfaces are a mix of Poa annua and bentgrass, and they slope in ways that make positioning on approach shots just as important as the shots themselves.
It's not enough to simply hit the green — where the ball lands relative to the hole location determines how manageable the putt will be.
The same logic applies to tee shots: the angle into the green often hinges on which part of the fairway you've found.
Fairways and tees run a blend of Poa annua, bentgrass, and ryegrass, producing consistent playing surfaces throughout.
But the real test at Ridgewood has always been less about turf and more about decision-making — how you manage shape, position, and risk from the first tee to the last green.
The Holes Worth Knowing — Signature and Notable Spots on the Composite
Several holes on the Composite have earned reputations that extend well beyond Ridgewood's membership. Here are the ones most worth understanding before you ever set foot on the property.
“The Five and Dime” — Composite 12 / Center No. 6
This is the hole Ridgewood is most known for, and it's easy to see why. At 275 yards, it's one of the most recognized short par-4s in American golf — the kind of hole that looks like a scoring opportunity on the card but plays like a trap in person.
The green sits above the fairway, perched and protected by large bunkers and steep slopes on either side.
At roughly 2,200 square feet, it's possibly the smallest putting surface in American championship golf, and its shape — long, narrow, sloped from high left to low right — punishes anything less than a precise shot.
Players have pulled everything from a six-iron to a driver on the tee, depending on hole location and wind.
The strategic tension here is real: the right side is the safe miss, but attacking the left is the only way to set up a genuine birdie look.
A drive or approach that drifts too far left and catches the slope leaves a brutally delicate downhill recovery — one of the harder short-game situations on the entire course.
Composite Hole 13 — The Par-5
Architect Gil Hanse, who has spent decades restoring Ridgewood, has called this his favorite hole on the entire property.
In his own words: “Every once in a while, you'll get a magazine or a book ask you, ‘If there was a hole that you didn't design that you wish you had, which would it be?' I've picked that hole a couple times.”
What makes it special is the layering of decisions. A cross hazard comes into play on the second shot, and the mounding runs diagonally across the hole rather than parallel to it — which changes the angles depending on where you've placed your tee shot.
Favor the boundary on your second and the green opens up. Play away from trouble and the approach tightens considerably. The green sits in a natural bowl, adding both visual drama and short-game complexity.
Hole 17 — West Nine
The 17th is a double-dogleg par-5 that requires you to think two shots ahead from the tee. Ball placement off the tee dictates your angle into the second landing zone, which in turn dictates your approach. There's no shortcut through it — the hole has to be played in sequence.
It also carries a piece of golf history. A tulip tree near the 17th tee is reportedly where Tillinghast used to sit and sketch, and it's said he worked out some of his ideas for the Baltusrol routing while relaxing on these very grounds.
“The Cemetery” Hole
The name comes from the property directly to the south of the tee — and the hole plays with the same foreboding the name implies. It's a dogleg left around a stand of tall hardwoods, with a downhill tee shot that rises back up to a green heavily defended on the low side.
The deception is in the view from the tee. The far right side looks wide open, inviting a conservative play away from the trees. But the canopy crowds in quickly on the approach, cutting off that angle and leaving players who bailed right with a much harder shot than they anticipated.
The Gil Hanse Restoration — Getting Back to Tillinghast's Original Vision
Since the mid-1990s, Ridgewood has been working with architect Gil Hanse and his collaborator Jim Wagner on a long-term restoration effort aimed at recovering what Tillinghast originally built. The scope of that work, accumulated over decades, has been substantial.
The physical changes to the course include:
- 48 new or rebuilt tees
- A fully replaced irrigation system
- A new Greens and Grounds complex
- An expanded pond on the first hole of the Center nine
- Comprehensive drainage work across the property
- All bunkers rebuilt to match Tillinghast's original specifications
- Greens restored to their original shapes and sizes
- Fairways pushed outward to the edges of the bunkers
Superintendent Todd Raisch has continued the work on the ground, introducing more fescue across the 314-acre property and maintaining the selective tree removal program that Hanse started.
That tree work, more than almost anything else, has transformed how the course looks and plays. One Golf Digest panelist put it plainly, calling the tree removal project at Ridgewood “the paradigm for how to properly improve a golf course” — noting that the course once felt defined by its trees, whereas now the eye is drawn to bunkers, topography, and green contours instead.
To guide the accuracy of the restoration, Hanse and his team used photographs taken during the 1935 Ryder Cup as reference material — a practical way to ground the work in documented evidence rather than assumption.
Hanse's own philosophy for the project says a lot about the approach. As club member Mike Policano recalled, Hanse told him: “You already have an architect in A.W. Tillinghast. I'm here to help you find him.” That framing — restorative rather than reimaginative — has shaped every decision made on the property.
The bunkering that emerged from the restoration is worth understanding on its own terms. Tillinghast's hazards at Ridgewood are distinctive: wispy fescue “eyelashes” lining the edges, narrow pointed tongues and fingers extending into play, and a wide variety of shapes and sizes throughout.
Those finger-shaped extensions create genuinely awkward lies and unusual stances that force players to improvise.
One of the most dramatic bunker complexes on the property is shared between two holes on the East nine — a sprawling, irregular hazard that reflects just how expressive Tillinghast's bunkering philosophy could be when the land allowed for it.
Tournament History, Rankings, and the Club's Broader Legacy
Ridgewood's tournament record is one of the strongest of any private club in the northeastern United States, built across nearly a century of championship golf.
Championship History
The club's biggest moment may still be the 1935 Ryder Cup, when Walter Hagen led the United States to a 9–3 victory over Great Britain. Club pro George Jacobus — Tillinghast's close friend — was instrumental in bringing the matches to Ridgewood, a detail that ties the club's personal and competitive histories together neatly.
The U.S. Amateur has come to Ridgewood twice. Jerry Pate won in 1974; Sam Bennett won in 2022, with that edition played on the Composite layout. The PGA Tour's FedEx Cup opener has visited four times, each time on the Composite:
| Year | Event | Winner |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | The Barclays | Vijay Singh |
| 2010 | The Barclays | Matt Kuchar |
| 2014 | The Barclays | Hunter Mahan |
| 2018 | Northern Trust | Bryson DeChambeau |
Senior major championships round out the competitive resume — Lee Trevino won the 1990 U.S. Senior Open here, and Tom Watson took the 2001 Senior PGA Championship. Seong Eun-jeong won the 2016 U.S. Girls' Junior at Ridgewood as well.
Three more USGA events are already on the books: the 2030 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, the 2035 U.S. Junior Amateur, and the 2042 U.S. Amateur. When those are played, Ridgewood will join a small group of clubs that have hosted eight or more USGA championships.
Beyond the Tournaments
The club's human story includes Byron Nelson, who worked as an assistant professional here in the mid-1930s and represented Ridgewood during several of his early significant victories — a formative chapter in the career of one of the game's all-time greats.
On the environmental side, Ridgewood earned Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary certification in 1996. The ongoing fescue introduction and tree management programs have supported healthier turf ecosystems across the full 314-acre property, benefits that go well beyond aesthetics.
How the Rankings See It
- Golf Digest: #139 in the Second 100 Greatest U.S. courses; #6 Best in State (New Jersey)
- Golfweek: #56 Classical courses in the U.S. (2018)
- Golf Magazine: #79 in the U.S. (2017); Center No. 6 ranked among the Top 500 Holes in the World
- Overall: Widely regarded as one of the two or three best 27-hole facilities anywhere in the world
The rankings reflect what the tournament history confirms — Ridgewood isn't just historically significant, it's a course that continues to hold up against the highest standards the game applies.
Conclusion
Ridgewood Country Club's Composite course stands as one of the most carefully considered championship layouts in American golf — a Tillinghast design that rewards intelligent play, carries a deep competitive history, and has only gotten better through decades of faithful restoration work.
Whether you're studying it as a golf architecture enthusiast or simply trying to understand what makes a private course worth this level of attention, the Composite gives you plenty to work with.
For access and membership inquiries, the club is located at 96 W. Midland Avenue, Paramus, NJ 07652, reachable at (201) 599-3900 or through rcc1890.com.
