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Preserving Mill Creek’s Donald Ross-designed courses

Society awards fourth donation to MetroParks

Donald Ross designed more than 400 golf courses, including two 18-hole courses at Mill Creek Park and one at the Youngstown Country Club.

BOARDMAN — Donald Ross designed more than 400 golf courses during his life. Mill Creek MetroPark’s two courses are the only municipally owned courses with two 18-hole Ross-designed links in the United States.

“There are a couple of other municipal Donald Ross courses, but I don’t think there is another 36-hole facility,” Mark Larson of the Donald Ross Society said.

The society was founded in 1989 to bring awareness to Ross’ legacy of designing golf courses and promoting their preservation and restoration.

Larson, who is from Hubbard, came to the Mill Creek Golf Course in Boardman last week to present a $15,000 check to Brian Tolnar, PGA golf and recreation director for Mill Creek MetroParks.

It was the fourth check — totaling $50,000 — that the Donald Ross Society Foundation has given to the courses since 2019. The money will be placed into the courses’ endowment fund and used to make capital improvements. The foundation is a charitable organization funded by golf events organized by the Donald Ross Society and from individuals.

“There is not another golf course in the United States that has received as much money or as many checks as we have given to Mill Creek Park. That’s how highly we think of what’s been done here,” Larson said.

The courses opened to the public in 1928, according to the parks’ website.

A second Donald Ross-designed course in Mahoning County is the Youngstown Country Club, a private, member-owned club, also offering 18 holes of championship golf. This course, however, was designed by Walter Travis and redesigned by Ross. It is one of the oldest courses in Ohio. Some of Ross’ other Ohio courses are Inverness in Toledo, Scioto in Columbus and Manakiki in Willoughby Hills.

TIMELESS

“Ross was at the forefront of golf course architecture and design,” Larson said. “His golf courses are timeless. They are playing them 100 years after he built them and still getting the same joy out of the game.”

The society is based in Pinehurst, N.C., where Ross lived until his death in 1948.

“His impact was not just on the courses he built, but he was so well respected. A lot of architects who came after him learned from him,” Larson said. Ross came to the United States from Scotland in 1899 after he apprenticed with “Old Tom Morris” at the Old Course at St. Andrews Links, where the game was first played 600 years ago.

Many Donald Ross golf courses are among the most private, exclusive courses in the United States. “But everybody in the public has the chance to experience a Donald Ross course here in Youngstown. Not a lot of towns can say that,” Larson said.

CHALLENGING

Ross had a “genius for routings, with very little walking required from one green to the next tee,” according to a biography on the Donald Ross Foundation website. He commonly would route his short par-4s on uphill ground. Other trademarks included greens that invited run-up shots but with deep trouble over the green.

“Every hole is a test,” Larson said. “As you played the course, the wind direction would change. The idea where there is a 15-mile-per-hour wind, now you have to play that in your shot, but the wind will change on every hole. Sometimes it’s into the wind. Sometimes it’s a cross wind. He would do those sorts of things,” he said.

“When he built a course, he would always try to build it for two types of players. Every hole is played out so that a great golfer could play it one way, but he always designed the holes so that average golfers had a route for them to play that hole,” Larson said.

“He was always giving you options. So you look at most of the holes here at Mill Creek Park, and you can actually run the ball onto the green. He gave you an option on how you wanted to approach the greens,” he said.

“Some of the courses he designed are on really small lots, but they don’t feel small because of the way he routed the holes together that they never felt cramped.”

The Mill Creek South Course has been selected by Golfweek as one of America’s 30 best municipal courses.

Tolnar said there is no specific project planned for use of the Ross Society funds.

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