# Dornick Hills Golf and Country Club: A Course Profile

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/dornick-hills-golf-and-country-club-profile/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Course Profiles / Oklahoma


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Perry Maxwell is buried on his own golf course. The family cemetery sits on the ridge north of the 7th fairway at Dornick Hills in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and the course around that ridge is where Maxwell started: his first design, built in 1913 on a former dairy farm he owned, by a banker who had never designed a course before.

A banker. On his own farm. That is the origin story of one of the most important design careers in American golf, and the course is still there, par 70 at 6,453 yards, private, and ranked third in Oklahoma by GOLF.com for 2024-25.

The name explains the work. Dornick is a Gaelic word for small rocks, and thousands of them were removed to build the course. Thousands of rocks, cleared by hand era labor, on a dairy farm in Carter County, so that nine holes could open in 1913. The second nine followed in 1923. Maxwell did not inherit a golf landscape. He cleared one.

## Firsts, stacked up

The list of firsts at Dornick Hills is longer than a course this size has any right to claim. It was Oklahoma's first golf course with Bermuda grass greens. It was the first Oklahoma club affiliated with the USGA, on July 20, 1914. Either fact would anchor a profile. Together they describe a club that was dragging a young golf state into the national game, one decision at a time, while its designer was still learning his trade in public.

The signature hole is called the Cliff Hole, played over natural rock outcroppings. After removing thousands of small rocks to make the course playable, Maxwell left the big rock in the argument, which is exactly the instinct that separates designers from landscapers. In [our Ardmore town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-ardmore-ok/) and in [the full Oklahoma state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-oklahoma/), Dornick Hills places on that instinct and on what it started, not on championship bulk.

Tournament golf found it anyway. The club hosted the Ardmore Open from 1952 to 1954, and the LPGA played its Ardmore Open here in 1954. A small private club in southern Oklahoma held tour level events in the 1950s because the course was worth traveling to. That was forty years after a banker cleared rocks off his dairy farm. The timeline still does not quite make sense, which is why it is worth printing.

Tom Doak's Renaissance Golf Design renovated the course in recent years. Hiring Doak's firm to work on Maxwell's first course is a statement about what the club thinks it owns. Renovation money at old clubs often goes to length and cosmetics. Here it went to the design lineage itself, to keeping a 1913 routing legible under modern conditions.

## The honest case against, and for

The concession: at 6,453 yards and par 70, Dornick Hills will not test a modern professional, and its tournament era ended in 1954. If your standard for a great course starts with championship length, this one fails before the conversation starts. Access narrows it further. The club is private, in Ardmore, and estimates for private membership at historic clubs run well into six figures as an estimate tier, not a published figure.

But that standard misses what is actually here. This is the first work of a major architect, built by his own hand on his own land, still occupied by his grave above the 7th fairway. Golf architecture has a family tree, and most of its roots are paved over, redesigned past recognition, or open only in old photographs. This root is playable, renovated by a firm that understands the lineage, on the original farm.

There is a scale argument worth making too. A 6,453 yard course asks its questions quickly and close together. You are not walking a mile between decisions. For members playing weekly golf across decades, that density is a feature: the Cliff Hole, the ridge, the familiar greens, the same tests in different wind. Big championship courses impress visitors. Compact old courses hold members. Dornick Hills has held Ardmore golfers since 1913, through a century when most American clubs either died or rebuilt themselves beyond recognition.

Stand on that ridge by the cemetery and look down the 7th. The designer is right there, and so is everything he learned clearing rocks below you. Courses rarely explain themselves that clearly.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.