Two Nines, 77 Years Apart: Ebensburg Country Club, PA

Ebensburg Country Club sits on a bluff in the Cambria County hills, about an hour east of Pittsburgh, and the layout you play today is really two courses stitched together with a 77-year gap in the middle. The front nine was built in 1923 by a group of local golf enthusiasts who started meeting the year before with one shared idea: get a course on that bluff. The back nine did not arrive until June of 2000, when architect Ed Beidel finally delivered the matching half the club had been waiting on for three quarters of a century.

The 1923 original

The first nine opened just outside the town of Ebensburg in 1923, carved into rolling terrain on the western edge of the Allegheny Front. It is the kind of land that pre-war designers tended to leave alone, and the routing reflects that. Fairways move with the ground rather than across it, greens sit where natural shoulders allowed them to be built, and the scale is human. By the late 1990s the front nine had aged into a quiet, well-walked piece of central Pennsylvania golf history. What it lacked was a partner.

Ed Beidel's back nine

Beidel made his first site visit in the spring of 1997 to look at a 115-acre parcel the club hoped to use for the addition. The land had a 150-foot change in elevation, an unnamed tributary cutting through it, 11 acres of wetlands, and a mature stand of hardwoods in the lowest corner. The club's construction budget came in around $900,000, which is modest for a nine-hole build, so Beidel routed holes to capitalize on what was already there instead of pushing earth. Total earthworks ended up at roughly 40,000 cubic yards, and only 0.15 acres of wetlands were disturbed.

The new nine opened in June 2000, and the membership doubled within a year. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection held its inaugural golf outing on the course that same year, which is the sort of endorsement an architect can put in a portfolio. The project was later written up by Dr. Michael Hurdzan in the USGA publication Building a Practical Golf Facility as a case study in how to add holes without burning through a budget.

Playing the full 18

From the Blue tees the course measures 6,513 yards, par 71, with a course rating of 72.7 and a slope of 139. That slope number is the headline. A slope of 139 from under 6,600 yards tells you the course leans on shot shape, angles, and the elevation changes rather than length. White tees play 6,177 yards, Black goes 5,718, Green is 5,232, and Red plays 4,653, each with multiple rating sets so groups of mixed handicaps can find a sensible matchup.

The rolling fairways and scenic mountain views are the headline features in the club's own description, and they are accurate. The back nine routes through the hardwoods Beidel preserved on purpose, with holes that bend around the tributary and the wetland edges. Bunkering is sparing because the existing site features do most of the strategic work. It is a layout that asks you to think about where to leave the ball more than it asks you to overpower it.

About the architect

Ed Beidel graduated from Penn State in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture and has been an ASGCA member since 1988. He served on the ASGCA Board of Governors from 2009 to 2011. His other Pennsylvania work includes Five Ponds Golf Club in Warminster, which won the 2018 PA Golf Owners Association Course of the Year, and The Highlands of Donegal Golf Course in Mount Joy. Beidel learned the game caddying at Fox Chapel, Pittsburgh Field Club, and Oakmont, which is a reasonable trio of mentors for someone who would later make his name on practical, walkable designs.

What you get on the day

The course is open to the public. Walking is allowed, the pro shop is staffed, and a driving range sits on property for warm-up. Greens fees are posted on the club's website, and tee times can be booked direct. The address on file is on Loretto Road in Cambria Township, with the clubhouse area centered around 408 Manor Drive in Ebensburg proper.

If you want the full breakdown before you go, including the per-hole yardage, handicap rankings, and tee comparison, the complete scorecard for Ebensburg Country Club is on Stymie.