Congressional Country Club -Blue

Detailed description of Congressional Country Club -Blue

Congressional Country Club is a Private, 36 hole golf facility located in Bethesda, Maryland. The facility has two 18 hole championship golf courses. They are The Congressional Blue Course and The Congressional Gold Course.

Congressional opened in 1924 as a nine hole course. The nine (which is the present day Blue Course front nine) was designed by Devereux Emmet. Emmet expanded the course to 18 holes in the early 1930s, but that nine later was split off in 1957 to form part of the club's Gold Course. The current back nine of the Blue Course was created by Robert Trent Jones in 1957. In 2007, Rees Jones, long involved with renovations at the Blue Course, undertook a dramatic transformation of the par 3 # 18 hole, reversing the alignment of green and tee and allowing this 218-yard hole to play as the 10th hole, not as the finisher.

The old #17 now plays as hole #18, a par 4 that has been stretched, to 523 yards. The Blue's 18th has water on three sides of the green and the front open.

The Congressional Country Club has hosted two U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship, and is an annual stop on the PGA Tour, with the AT&T National, hosted by Tiger Woods. The tournament was first played in 2007 and is held in early July. Congressional hosted the Kemper Open from 1980-86, until its move to nearby TPC at Avenel in 1987. Congressional will host its third U.S. Open in June 2011.

The Blue Course has hosted all of the significant golf tournaments contested at Congressional. The course is often considered among the best 100 courses in the United States; Golf Digest ranked it 89th in its 2006 listing of the 100 Greatest Golf Courses. In 2007, Golf Digest ranked it 86th in America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses. The Blue Course has been redesigned by Robert Trent Jones in 1957 and Rees Jones twice, in 1989 and 2007. The course measures 7,250 yards from the back tees. It is a par 72 (but plays as a par 70 for all PGA tour events with holes 6 and 11 being played as par 4's) with a course and slope rating of 75.4/142.