Golf Course Review: The Suburban Club, Pikesville, Maryland

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Playing at Suburban is always a treat. Maybe I’m biased but I’m fortunate to call Suburban Club one of my Home Courses. From 2013-2015 I was the Assistant Professional at Suburban and returned in 2020 to help run their Junior Programs during the pandemic.


Suburban has a rich history. Founded in 1900, this Private club has largely flown under the radar despite being one of the first clubs founded in the country and one of the first golf courses built in Baltimore. I often get asked “where’s that?” when I tell people I’m playing Suburban.


Though listed in A.W. Tillinghast’s book as part of his portfolio, it is uncertain how much or how little involvement he really had in the design. I was able to speak with Mark Helffrich, Suburban’s Director of Golf of over 30 years who said they are still investigating the exact involvement Tillinghast had. What is known, is that R.B. Hyland built the original 9 holes in or around 1900/1901. A few years later, the club hired Tillinghast and his team to redesign the original 9 holes and expand the facility to an 18-hole championship course. Peter Lees, one of Tillinghast's shapers was said to be highly involved in building the course.

Suburban is always a treat to play, largely in part to their superintendent, Blake Murphy. Blake is one of the best supers in the region and is able to grow grass unlike anyone else I’ve met. Despite playing in mid-November after having a few touches of frost for the season, the conditions of the course were some of the best I played all year. The fairways were beautiful with barely any divots to be seen, the rough still lush and thick, bunkers manicured with proper sand, and greens firm and pure. Couple that with a classic 1900s design and a bag full of hickory golf clubs and you have yourself a perfect day.


That’s right. You didn’t misread that. After three decades as the Director of Golf, Mark Helffrich is finally retiring at the end of the year. I thought it would be nice for our final round at Suburban together, to use 100+ year-old hickories and ~50-year-old golf balls and play the course the way it was meant to be played.


If you’ve never played with hickories before, it’s very humbling. You realize very quickly how forgiving modern equipment is. You can no longer throw the ball in the air with lots of spin and let it land steeply and stick. Instead, the ball comes off flat, with very little spin. Oddly enough, irons tend to fly very straight. Woods, however, are very difficult to hit and rarely fly straight.


This means the game needs to be played differently than it would normally be played. Typically in American-style golf, you throw the ball in the air and carry it all the way to the target and use height and spin to get it to land softly. Links-style golf like what was predominantly played in the early 1900 hundreds with its UK roots is a game played on the ground. It’s about controlling trajectory and spin, landing the ball in the correct place to allow it to feed and funnel to the hole.


This is why I love playing hickories on old courses like Suburban because they were designed to be played that way. Nearly every green has an open front where you can run the ball up. And most greens are small and well-bunkered on all sides. It’s a reminder of the truth behind the definition of par. Par is defined as the score an accomplished golfer can attain on a hole. It doesn’t mean that players should get that score every time they play it though! It means you have to hit good shots to make par.

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