Course Comparisons / Kansas
Kansas City Country Club vs. Mission Hills Country Club: The Mission Hills Choice
The two clubs share a town, a developer's fingerprints, and a century of Kansas City history, and they are not remotely the same institution. Kansas City Country Club claims to be the third oldest country club west of the Mississippi. Mission Hills Country Club was founded in 1914 by J. C. Nichols to help sell houses. One is a Tillinghast with Tom Watson in its family tree and a civil rights era reckoning in its past. The other is a Tom Bendelow course along Brush Creek that began life as a real estate amenity and grew into a club in its own right. A golfer choosing between invitations in Mission Hills, Kansas is really choosing between two definitions of what a country club is for.
Kansas City Country Club: Tillinghast, Watson, and a hard history
The club was founded on May 1, 1896, and spent its first thirty years at what is now Loose Park in Kansas City, Missouri, on a handshake lease of one dollar a year. In 1925 and 1926 it moved a mile west to Mission Hills, taking over a site that held a Tom Bendelow layout, and hired A. W. Tillinghast to design the new course. A $2,500 receipt for Tillinghast's services survives, which may be the best bargain in the club's archives. The course today plays par 70 at 6,822 yards with a rating of 74.4 and a slope of 137, and an Andrew Green renovation finished in 2026 restored Tillinghast's intent, flipping the 10th and 18th holes and installing new irrigation.
Tom Watson learned the game here from club pro Stan Thirsk and holds the professional course record of 60. The club hosted the first Trans-Mississippi Amateur. But the defining story is 1990, when Watson resigned after the club rejected H&R Block founder Henry Bloch for membership. The club changed its policy, admitted Bloch, and Watson rejoined, but the club permanently lost its PGA Tour stop. A history that includes its greatest player resigning on principle, and the institution changing because of it, is not a footnote. It is central to what this club is. Our profile of Kansas City Country Club tells that story in full.
Mission Hills Country Club: Nichols's other invention
Mission Hills Country Club was founded on June 30, 1914, largely through J. C. Nichols, who built the club to sell homes in his planned Mission Hills community. The original club covered 121 acres in Kansas and 7 acres in Missouri, with the clubhouse on the Missouri side because of laxer liquor laws there, a detail that tells you plenty about 1914. Tom Bendelow designed the original 18 hole course along Brush Creek, and Keith Foster remodeled it for 2007. It plays par 70 at 6,310 yards with a rating of 71.2 and a slope of 128, a friendlier test than its neighbor in every number. The current clubhouse sits on the Kansas side; the Missouri clubhouse was sold in the 1950s and now houses the Carriage Club. Nichols also established the adjoining Community Golf Club, which later became Indian Hills Country Club, so the man's golf footprint covers half the neighborhood.
Both clubs are private, both sit in Johnson County's most established suburb, and both appear in our Mission Hills town ranking and the Kansas state ranking. Neither publishes the cost of belonging, and estimates for clubs of this standing in the Kansas City market should be treated as estimates and nothing more.
The concession to Mission Hills Country Club: at 6,310 yards and a 128 slope, it is the course more members will enjoy more often, and a Foster remodeled Bendelow along Brush Creek asks for golf rather than survival. Kansas City Country Club at a 74.4 rating will beat up a 15 handicapper in a way its neighbor politely will not. If your golf is social and weekly, the friendlier course has a real case.
For the golf and the history together, though, Kansas City Country Club wins this comparison clearly. A restored Tillinghast, a course record of 60 held by the greatest player Kansas ever produced, and an institutional past the club had to confront and change. Play Mission Hills when you want a good round in a beautiful old neighborhood. Play Kansas City when you want the round to mean something beyond the score.