Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club

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More About Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club

This Portland public golf course is subtle and cunning, featuring a variety of distinct and equally memorable holes framed by lush stands of trees, dramatic mountain vistas and ragged wetlands.

With the goal of creating not only a magnificent private club but also a superb locale for major golf championships, partners Marvin French, Gaylord Davis and Barney Hyde set about soliciting support from local residents and businesses and collaborating on the master plan for this ambitious undertaking. With financial support from Japanese businessman and golf enthusiast Shigeru Ito and his daughter, Kumiko Rodewald, groundbreaking on Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club began in 1990; and the rest, as they say, is history.

Just one month after opening in 1992, Pumpkin Ridge received the unprecedented honor of being named the host site for the United States Golf Association’s (USGA) 1996 U.S. Amateur Championship. “We created Pumpkin Ridge for the game, and the USGA epitomizes the game,” said Marvin French. A slew of accolades and golf championships have followed. In its inaugural year, Golf Digest named Ghost Creek the “Best New Public Course in the U.S.” and Witch Hollow the ”#2 Best New Private Course in the U.S.”

Four years later, in 1996, Tiger Woods brought notoriety to Witch Hollow when he won his unprecedented third consecutive U.S. Amateur Championship. Many golf observers consider the 36-hole final, between Tiger Woods and Steve Scott, to be the greatest match-play confrontation in the last half of the 20th century. Another spectacular record-book finish came during the 1997 U.S. Women’s Open Championship, where crowds of more than 110,000 packed the gallery as Alison Nicholas defeated the favored Nancy Lopez.