Locust Hill Country Club

Locust Hill was founded in 1925 as nine holes on the Locust Hill farm, six miles south-east of Rochester. In 1931 it reopened as eighteen, redesigned by Robert Trent Jones, whose own career began in this part of New York State.

Women’s professional golf is what the club is known for. The Wegmans tournament was played here every year from 1977 to 2009, and the LPGA Championship, a major, followed from 2010 to 2013. Thirty-seven consecutive years of professional golf on the same course is a rare record for any club.

What it asks of you

Par 72 over 6,615 yards, rated 72.8 with a slope of 138. Those numbers do not agree with each other in the usual way: a course of that length should not carry a slope that high, and the gap is the point. Locust Hill is short and hard.

The reasons are the fairways and the greens. The corridors are tight, so a drive that is merely adequate leaves an approach from the trees, and the greens are difficult enough that the professionals who played here for three decades never made it look easy. The tournament setup ran at about 6,365 yards, shorter still, and it held up.

What that means for a visitor is that distance off the tee buys very little here. Accuracy buys everything, and the player who takes an iron off several tees will beat the one who does not.

What players say about it

This is a private club, so the public record comes from tournament coverage, guest accounts and specialist reviews. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• The course is repeatedly described as difficult in a way its length does not predict, which is the highest compliment a short course gets.
• The tournament record gives the club a place in women’s professional golf that few private clubs anywhere can match.
• The Trent Jones routing is admired for using a modest piece of farmland well.
• Conditioning is reported as consistently good.

What comes up against

• Access is closed: private club, play by invitation.
• The tight corridors cost balls to a high handicap, and the round can be slow as a result.
• Since the LPGA left in 2013 the club has had less public attention, and recent first-hand accounts are few.
• The season is short: this is upstate New York.

Getting there and when to go

The club is in Pittsford, about fifteen minutes south-east of downtown Rochester and twenty from the airport.

The season runs roughly from May to October. June and September give the best conditions; upstate springs are wet. Play is by invitation of a member.

Green fees

Guest conditions are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, encyclopaedic entries and the club’s published history for the founding, the 1931 redesign and the architect, championship records for the Wegmans tournament and the LPGA Championship, and public course records for par, length, rating and slope. The opinion section summarises public reviews and guest accounts read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played this course, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.