Green Lakes at Green Lakes Golf Course

Green Lakes Golf Course sits within Green Lakes State Park near Fayetteville in central New York, about ten miles east of Syracuse. Robert Trent Jones Sr. designed the course in 1936 as one of his earliest independent commissions, completed shortly after his work on Peachtree Golf Club. The layout occupies rolling, wooded terrain characteristic of the glacially-formed landscape that gives the park its name, with the course itself winding through dense stands of hardwoods and conifers separate from the park's distinctive meromictic lakes.

Jones routed the course across varied elevation changes, incorporating natural ridges and valleys into a design that reflects his emerging philosophy of strategic, muscular golf. The layout features the architect's characteristic bunkering style and green complexes that reward precise approach play, though the scale remains more modest than his later championship designs. Several holes play along or across pronounced slopes, and the tree-lined corridors demand accuracy from the tee.

As a public facility operated by New York State Parks, Green Lakes serves both daily-fee players and a dedicated membership base. The course has remained a popular regional venue for nearly ninety years, offering accessible Jones design work in a distinctive natural setting. The routing and fundamental character have endured largely intact since the original construction, providing a window into the architect's formative period before he became one of the most prolific course designers of the mid-twentieth century.