Bedford Springs Golf Resort
Bedford, PA
1895, Spencer Oldham
1912 redesign (from 18 to 9 holes), A.W. Tillinghast
1923 redesign (from 9 to 18 holes), Donald Ross
2003 restoration, ????
2007 restoration, Ron Forse
(How's that for a pedigree?)
'07 Greens Fees:
Hotel Guest $125 Wknd, $105 Wkdy
Non-Guest $135 Wknd, $115 Wkdy
15:00 Twilight rates $90 Wknd, $70 Wkdy
Room rates range from ~$250 per night and up
Golf or Spa packages from $265 PP PN
Figure you'll drop ~$900-$1000 minimum on a standard weekend with golf, massages, dining, and a few cocktails.
T&L Golf Review, 2007: As part of a more than $110 million refurbishment of this historic Western Pennsylvania resort, architect Ron Forse was charged with restoring its vintage course. He's carefully preserved serpentine and doughnut-shaped bunkers created in 1895 by Spencer Oldham, the original designer, as well as A. W. Tillinghast's "Tiny Tim" par-three fourteenth from a 1912 revision, complete with its field of chocolate-drop mounds short and left of the green. The routing, the greens and most of the bunkers are the work of Donald Ross, who redesigned the course in 1923.
Architect: Ron Forse. Yardage: 6,800. Par: 72. Greens Fee: $125. Tee Times: 814-623-8100
Golf Magazine Review: November 05, 2008
Bedford Springs Old Course: A grand revival in Pennsylvania
by Charlie Hanger
"I parred the Volcano. I have very little to brag about from my trip around the Old Course at Pennsylvania's Bedford Springs Resort, but at least I have that. After pulling a hybrid well left of the green, I hit a beautiful chip and, for once, didn't choke the 5-foot par putt.
I'd been curious to see the Old Course since Sports Illustrated's Pittsburgh natives, writer Gary Van Sickle and photographer Fred Vuich, told the tale of the resort's grand history and revival (see below). My wife and I booked a long weekend with our 19-month-old son and visited last weekend.
The Volcano, shown at right, is a Donald Ross-designed, 217-yard par 3 with an elevated green surrounded by bunkers. It's a seriously intimidating tee shot that I yanked far enough left to avoid the most punishing trap and set up the par-saving chip. Of the many challenges the course presents, this was the only one I was able to meet. But it sure was fun trying. My favorite hole was No. 6, known as Ross's Cathedral, a tree-lined, 361-yard par 4 with an elevated tee and green. For me, the greens were the most challenging aspect of the course. They were slick with tricky breaks, and I had as many 3-putts as 2-putts.
The resort and spa facilities are also very impressive, especially the grand old indoor pool, which is spring-fed and constantly 82 degrees. Located in south-central Pennsylvania, Bedford Springs is just a 90-minute drive from Pittsburgh, two hours from Washington and Baltimore, and three hours from Philadelphia and Cleveland. The drive from New York is longer, four and a half hours (five-plus if you have an infant in the car), but well worth the trip."
Best Bar Nearby, Off-Resort: Fat Guy likes the Jean Bonnet Tavern (www.jeanbonnettavern.com), circa 1762. A popular Colonial bar & restaurant with native stone walls, massive fireplaces, and chestnut beams. They also have nice bistro tables on an outdoor porch, a good selection of draft and bottled microbrews, and a very reasonable wine list. Entree's run $16-$34, and sandwiches are $6.50-$10. Local lore tells of consistent paranormal activity at the bar over the years, everything from ghosts seated at the bar to patrons being touched on the arm by unseen hands to doors opening and closing on their own to unexplained figures appearing in photographs taken at the bar. They also have B&B rooms available.
Where To Grub, Off-Resort:
Fat Guy Recommends: 3 miles back up Rt. 30 to the West (near the PA Turnpike Bedford exit) is a carnivore's paradise. Hoss' Steak & Sea House serves up some good quality, downhome food. Most steaks are under $15 with all the salad, apps, fixins and dessert you can eat included, but they don't serve alcohol. Order the oustanding Italian marinated chicken and tasty steak tips. OR, Ed's Steak House has been there forever and has an old-school Americana charm. Ed's also serves breakfast. OR, check out The Arena, which has been famous for their prime rib for over 30 years, and features seafood as well. A good spot for Sunday brunch. Take your pick, you can't go wrong.
History-rich Bedford Springs Resort and its pedigreed Old course are once again the jewel of the Alleghenies
By Gary Van SickleSenior Writer, Sports Illustrated
Published: Golf.com May 15, 2008
Eighty-five years after legendary golf architect Donald Ross built the Volcano — a.k.a. the 4th hole of the Old course at Bedford Springs Resort in sleepy Bedford, Pa. — the 217-yard par-3 still kicks butt.
The last time I visited the resort, I played the Volcano from the tips simply to get the full effect. You're faced with an intimidating uphill shot to a green that's perched atop a steeply sloped hill. (It's like hitting to the top of a volcano, hence the name.)
On the left, a bunker is cut into the base of the hill. You're dead if you go in there. I can't imagine how players escaped that trap in 1923, when Ross redesigned the Old course — almost five decades before the invention of the 60-degree wedge.
Then there's the green, which is no bargain either. A sharp slope splits the putting surface into front and back tiers, so good luck finding the correct level with a long club. Clearly the Volcano is a big-boy hole.
My first attempt began promisingly. There was a stiff breeze in my face, and the pin was all the way back, so I'm not too proud to admit that I choked down on a driver, which I hit pretty solidly. My ball landed on the lower tier and kicked into the back fringe. Not bad. I was paired with Ron Leporati, the head pro at the Old course, and he played a superlative driver to 15 feet.
The hole was cut precariously just above the crest of the slope leading to the top tier, so I applied the touch of a surgeon on my downhill putt, which trickled to a stop two feet above the cup. Hmm, make that the touch of a sturgeon. Ron did a double take when my ball suddenly unstopped (there's no other way to describe it) and shamelessly rolled 25 feet onto the lower tier.
Ron made his par. Put me down for a double bogey.
I got a rematch with the Volcano the next day, playing in fog so thick that I couldn't see the green from the tee. But I was on a roll, having blindly birdied two of the first three holes. My good fortune ran out at the Volcano, where I snap-hooked a three-wood into the rough below the green. I pitched onto the back of the green, then blew my downhill putt eight feet past and missed the comebacker.
Another double.
The Volcano is without a doubt the meanest par-3 without a water hazard you'll ever screw up. And it has always been thus.
"Since 1923 the Volcano has been the hole people talk about," says Ron Forse of Forse Design, who along with Jim Nagle and Frontier Construction resurrected the Old course last year. "Supposedly a retired doctor used to sit at the hole and watch players go through, rewarding them with cash if they made a birdie."
Forse has a passion for the game's history, and before working on the Old course, he had updated Ross classics such as Salem (Mass.) and Wannamoisett (Rumford, R.I.) country clubs, as well as A.W. Tillinghast gems Newport (R.I.), Brooklawn (Fairfield, Conn.) and Sunnehanna (Johnstown, Pa.).
Forse was a good choice for a step-into-the- past project like the Old course, because to understand the course's significance, you first have to understand how deep into our heritage the resort reaches.
History runs thicker than honey in Bedford, which is nestled in the Allegheny Mountains of south-central Pennsylvania. Fort Bedford, captured in 1769 from the British in a sunrise raid by James Smith and his Black Boys (so named for their painted faces), still stands on the banks of the serene Juniata River.
President George Washington, commanding 12,000 militiamen, came to town in 1794 and stayed two nights at the Espy House (also still standing) while putting down the Whiskey Rebellion.
In 1806 Dr. John Anderson built a small stone hotel in Bedford to take advantage of the alleged restorative powers of the many mineral springs in the area. As the reputation of the springs grew, so did Anderson's hotel, and by the middle of the 19th century Bedford Springs Resort was one of the world's most renowned spas, its finely decorated hallways running longer than a filibuster.
For more than a century the posh resort was the place to summer. The U.S. Supreme Court sat on the grand veranda one hot August day in 1855 to deliberate over the Dred Scott case, one of the few times the justices ever met in session outside Washington, D.C. Three years later President James Buchanan received the first transatlantic telegram, from Queen Victoria, while staying at Bedford Springs, which he annually turned into his summer White House. Six other sitting U.S. presidents were guests at the resort.
By the mid-1900s, however, the popularity of sprawling summer resorts and mineral springs had waned, and in 1986 Bedford Springs Resort was closed and abandoned, although the golf course remained open.
Enter, in 1998, Bedford Resort Partners, Ltd., with a bold restoration plan. At $90 million, the partners' proposal was no mere face-lift. It was a total reinvention (with a price tag that eventually rose to $120 million). The project took almost two years to complete, and when the hotel grandly reopened last July, it featured long white balconies, timeless decor and a rare 39-star (circa 1865) American flag behind the front desk.
"I like to call the hotel a retro rebuild," says Keith Evans, managing partner of the development group. "We were shooting for 1905 style with modern functionality. We wanted to embrace history."
The new resort pays homage to its past by surrounding you with it, which leads us back to the golf. When the Old course closed for reconstruction, in November 2005, the following summer was the first in 111 years that the game was not played at the resort. Spencer Oldham built the original layout in 1895. It was 6,000 yards long and included a 605-yard par-5, pretty daunting in the age of hickory shafts.
"That's a monstrously long hole given the equipment of that era," Forse says. "A 6,000- yard course was huge in those days."
Maybe it was too daunting. By 1912, when Tillinghast worked on the course, it had been scaled back to nine holes. Did Tilly do that, or had the course already been reduced? The answer is lost to history. What is known is that Tillinghast's changes included the creation of the Tiny Tim par-3 (now the 14th hole), which he diagrammed in his book Gleanings from the Wayside: My Recollections As a Golf Architect.
"It's a neat little drop shot from a precipice over a lagoon and a creek," says Forse. "It's simply fun."
To the left of the green Tillinghast sculpted the Alps, a group of modest (by today's supersized standards) mounds meant to penalize wayward shots. The hole is 135 yards from the back tee. Ross rerouted the course in 1923 and restored it to 18 holes. It has remained largely unchanged since. That's right — the existing course is a combo of Ross and Tillinghast holes, with only slight tinkering.
Go ahead, pinch yourself.
Like the hotel, we had to pick a period for the course and went for 1923," Forse says. "We didn't put in 18 holes exactly as they were, although we maintained the Ross routing. We ended up, in a sense, with a living golf museum."
The Ross-Tillinghast quirks are delicious. There are five par-5s, four of which (at 589, 611, 615 and 593 yards) aren't reachable in two. Those are long holes for a course that is only 6,785 yards from the tips. There are also five par-3s, and these are the holes that give the course its unique character. Gulley, the 10th, is only 124 yards across a valley to a shallow heart-shaped green with a steep tier in the middle.
The 17th epitomizes the what's-new-is-old theme. The original 17th was long lost, but Forse and Nagle found a hint of it in the background of an old photograph.
Forse designed an entirely new Redan-style hole — an angled green guarded by a large bunker — on that spot. Ronnie, as the hole is called, holds its own with Tiny Tim, the Volcano and Gulley.
"The name wasn't my doing," Forse says. "The owner thought Ronnie sounded Scottish, like bonnie or something."
My second-favorite hole — I think you know what's No. 1 — is the 6th, labeled Ross's Cathedral. This short (361 yards) par-4 requires a drive over a creek to a fairway flanked by bunkers. From there, it's uphill to the green. The hole is beautifully framed by hardwood trees.
On the fun scale, the Old course is a 10. Busy as I have been describing my misadventures, I haven't told you what happened on the 2nd hole during my first round. Leporati launched a bullet of a five-wood shot that landed just short of this par-3 green, 205 yards from the tee.
"Give him a bounce!" I yelled. His ball bounded onto the putting surface and began running toward the pin in the back of the green.
"Anybody ever make a hole in one here?" I asked, finishing my question a split second before his ball disappeared into the cup.
"It went in!" Ron shouted. He flipped his club into the air and held up his arms in disbelief. "That's my first one!" I high-fived him, and in a moment of exuberance he hugged me. We whooped it up for several more moments, then Ron said sheepishly, "Sorry about the hug, man."
Not at all. I've witnessed a dozen aces, but none ever felt this big — at a resort that spans 200 years in a town where "George Washington slept here" is no idle boast.
When the valet brought my car around to the front of the hotel after the round, I imagined that long-ago day when a fancy sedan pulled up to the entrance and a charismatic man wearing a fur coat stepped out and asked a young bellman for directions to Cumberland, Md. Satisfied with the answer, the fellow theatrically flipped a coin to the bellman. "Someday," the stranger said, "you can tell your grandkids you got a $20 gold piece from John Dillinger."
Then Public Enemy No. 1 climbed into the sedan and drove away.
At that moment I understood what Forse had told me earlier.
"This place puts you back in time," he said. "Instead of simply looking at history, you're in it."
The morning fog had burned away. I squinted into the sun for a last glance at the restored resort before I, too, drove away.
I wondered why I had goose bumps."
From the website: Golf at Bedford Springs Resort spans a history of over 100 years. The resort is home to one of the oldest golf courses in North America, laid out in 1895 by Spencer Oldham. In 1923, Donald Ross created a course that was both challenging and yet one with the natural landscape, and upon its opening, was hailed as one of the best in Pennsylvania. The new course is something of a golf architectural museum—encompassing three distinct eras of golf course design that occurred from the 1890’s to the 1920’s.
The restored course preserves the historic holes and features designed by each of these famous golf architects. The Bedford Springs layout is a true masterpiece with a wide range of classic historic features not easily found today. These include five par fives and five par threes. Small greens, “serpentine” and “doughnut” bunkers, the “Volcano Hole” and “Tiny Tim”, a Tillinghast designed Par Three that has come to be known as one of the most celebrated holes in all of golf architecture, offer players an unparalleled golf experience.
1895 – Spencer Oldham designs the original 18-hole, 6,000-yard course
Features including chocolate drops, geometric S-curve and donut bunkers remain today.
1912 - A.W. Tillinghast Redesigns Course
The redesign changes the course from 18 holes to 9 holes, and Tillinghast designs “Tiny Tim,” one of the most famous holes in all of golf architecture.
1923 – Donald Ross Redesigns Course
In 1923, the most prolific year for golf course construction in the 20th Century, Ross redesigned and expanded the course back to its 18 hole layout. He created a masterpiece of classic “springs course” architecture and his influence is still seen throughout the course with its small greens.
1984 – Bedford Springs Resort and Donald Ross Golf Course Designated a National Historic District, recognized as one of the best remaining examples of springs resort architecture.
Summer 2007 – The Newly Restored & Expanded Bedford Springs Old Course Reopens
A 30,000 square foot destination spa on site features natural mineral springs, massage, hydrotherapy, couples' treatments, and the famed "Bedford Cure."
Resort History: Few properties can boast the historic significance of Bedford Springs Resort, located in South-Central Pennsylvania’s scenic Cumberland Valley. For more than two hundred years, the seven mineral springs now located on the resort’s property served as an important gathering place. Eventually, the resort would be the site of many important moments in American history. It hosted a long list of celebrities, wealthy clientele, corporate magnates and dignitaries from around the world during its more than two centuries of operation. To date, the resort has hosted 10 presidents, seven of whom visited during their presidency.
The Bedford Springs
The Native Americans first used the mineral springs for their curative properties, and in the late 1700’s they shared the powers of the springs with a doctor named John Anderson. In 1796, Dr. Anderson purchased the 2,200-acre property on which the resort now stands. He built a home on the property and as word spread of these unique waters, visitors arrived from around the globe to experience them. He housed the guests in tents and offered custom prescriptions for guests based upon their needs.
The Original Hotel
As more and more guests came west to ‘take the waters,’ Dr. Anderson decided to build a hotel. The Stone Inn was built in 1804 from stone quarried atop the mountain located adjacent to The Springs, and carried down the mountain by oxen. Guests making the trek to the hotel encountered a rugged journey. They often arrived by train in Cumberland, and then made the 21-mile trip through the Cumberland Valley to Bedford Springs.
Historic Firsts for Bedford Springs
Bedford Springs Resort was truly an American original. As its wealthy clientele flocked to the resort, it gained a reputation as a luxury destination, proclaimed as the Most Popular Resort in the United States. Bedford Springs became home to one of the first golf courses in America, originally designed by Spencer Oldham. The course would later be redesigned by A.W. Tillinghast, and then the renowned Donald Ross. In 1905, the resort was home to one of the nation's first indoor pools—fed by the property’s spring waters. With its alluring surroundings and high-profile guest list, Bedford Springs’ role in history was already in the making.
In 1984, the resort was designated a National Historic Landmark, and it closed its doors two years later. In 2004, the resort embarked upon an unprecedented restoration and expansion effort designed to return it to its original splendor. In 2007, Bedford Springs Resort will once again come to be known as one of the finest historic destination luxury resorts in the United States. Bedford Springs Resort promises to be the perfect blend of the past and the future.
Other Area Tracks To Play: A brochure I picked up on golf in Bedford County listed these area gems as places to hit (listed in proximity to the town of Bedford), but I've never played any of them: Bedford Elks (6364, 114, 68.0); Down River (between Everett and Breezewood on Rt. 30, 6900, 128, 72.0); up Rt.99N you'll find King Valley (6092, 68.6, 119); and Iron Masters (6449, 72.5, 129). For more info, call 800-765-3331.