The restoration of Baltusrol Golf Club’s Lower Course has been completed by Gil Hanse. The renowned A.W. Tillinghast course opened in 1922 as part of Baltusrol’s historic “Dual Courses” initiative, the first simultaneous design and build of 36 holes in America. Both the Lower and Upper courses have been the site of numerous championships in professional and amateur golf.

The Lower Course will re-open in May of 2021 after being closed in 2020 for the restoration work. It will host its next major championship, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, in 2023. The PGA Championship will return to the Lower in 2029 for the third time. Following the success of the Lower Course restoration, the Upper Course is slated for a similar project with Hanse starting in 2024.

In 2018, Baltusrol retained Gil Hanse to help the club prepare its next long-range master plan that started with the restoration of the Lower Course. With the Lower having been modified over the years, most notably by Robert Trent Jones and the USGA prior to the 1954 U.S. Open, the Club wanted to return it to the purity of the Tillinghast design. Trent Jones lengthened the Lower and added multiple bunkers during his “modernization” period, creating a more difficult test of golf that would stand up better to the rigors of the national championship. In the decades that followed, the introduction of additional rough and the gradual shifts in fairway lines and green size from ever-changing maintenance practices had diminished many of Tillinghast’s design features and shot values. Rees Jones applied some restoration efforts to the Lower starting in 1991, including an overhaul of the bunkers in 2008, but the Hanse project is the most comprehensive restoration ever undertaken on the Lower.