West Lafayette Golf and Country Club

About the course

Understand the course before making an access claim.

Hugh Nicol, considered one of the 19th century's best professional basball players, was the first full-time Athletic Director at Purdue University (1906-1916). In 1909, he asked William V. Stuart, one of Lafayette, Indiana's well-known attorneys, why Lafayette didn't have a golf course. After that conversation, Mr. Stuart met with a number of local movers and shakers at the Lafayette Club on Colubia Street. They planned a "new family-friendly club complete with golf course and other recreations on land once known as Reynolds Pasture," and on November 9, 1909, the Country Club of Lafayette, Indiana was incorporated. The golf course has evolved through the years, but is essentially as it was when Thomas Bendelow of Chicago “laid out the golf links” in 1910. It originally didn’t have sand bunkers because the course was felt “to be as difficult as the members require.” It is a narrow and relatively short course, but historically considered challenging and worthy of tournament play.