DONALD ROSS IS WIDELY KNOWN AS THE "PATRON SAINT" OF GOLF ARCHITECTURE FOR HIS BEAUTIFUL, DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE DESIGNS THAT HARMONIZE WITH THE SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT. He was America's first great golf course designer. Until Donald Ross transformed the profession, golf architecture was seen as an engineering job. Ross turned it into an art form.

Like the game of golf itself, Ross's roots were in Scotland. Born in Dornoch highlands in 1872, he studied golf, clubmaking, course design and greenkeeping as a teenager. He went on to use all these skills at the Royal Dornoch Golf Club, where he was a professional for seven years.Ross came to America in 1899, at the suggestion of Robert Wilson, a Harvard professor who visited Dornoch with news of America's awakening interest in golf.

Ross arrived in this country without much more than his clubs, but by 1900 he had created America's first indoor golf school and was beginning his career as a prolific golf architect. By the time of his death in 1948, Ross had designed well over 400 courses. He was also a successful tournament player, finishing in the top 10 of four U.S. Opens.

Ross designed his courses with wide fairways, crowned greens and subtle contours formed from the existing lay of the land. He didn't believe in gimmicks, but in a classic simplicity that honored the natural environment while challenging every player.

The meadows and mountains of the Adirondacks gave Ross a perfect setting to create one of his masterpieces: The Sagamore Golf Course. In this 18-hole, par-70 course, "hogback" contours rise and fall with the Adirondack terrain. White birches enliven the evergreen forest, and heather brought by Ross from Scotland highlights the course. In 1928, when Ross built The Sagamore Golf Course, it was acclaimed to be one of the best courses in the world. However, in the late 1970s The Sagamore temporarily closed and so did the course.

Fortunately, a group of investors loyal to Ross's vision bought The Sagamore Hotel and Golf Course in 1983. The Sagamore spent millions of dollars reconditioning the course and putting in a state-of-the-art irrigation system, but made no extensive changes to the original Ross design. With the help of the original blueprints, The Sagamore fully restored every detail - including signature Ross bunkers and natural hogback greens - exactly as Ross intended.

The course sits on a ridge 2-1/2 miles from the hotel and offers breathtaking views of Lake George and the Adirondack mountains. The course is tight yet allows the player to use his driver. But as Ross designs dictate, you're better off to sacrifice a little distance and keep the ball in play.

And as with most Ross courses, just hitting the green is not an automatic two putt. The undulating greens challenge even the best player. Since its reopening in 1985, The Sagamore has won the"Golf Magazine" Silver Medal and received a" Golf Digest" ranking of 5th in New York and one of the top 500 in America. It also hosted the USGA Senior Open Qualifier, the USGA Mid-Am Qualifier for the Northeast region, and held many sectional championship events and tournaments with the Northeast New York Section of the PGA.

“A splendid mountainside links designed by Donald Ross in New York's forested Adirondacks...” – "Golf Magazine"