In 1912, a couple of prominent local Jewish businessmen in northern New Jersey found the gates of nearby golf clubs closed to them. They did what self-respecting people do when they are shut out: they built their own. Mountain Ridge Country Club soon had nine holes in play on ground that never quite cooperated. A.W. Tillinghast stretched those nine to eighteen, and Herbert Strong altered them after that, but the land was too severely contoured to hold a top-class course. Very few of the early members even knew how to play. Some fourteen years after opening, the club set its sights on West Caldwell. In 1929 it acquired 250 acres to the north of its original home and engaged Donald Ross. That was not a gamble. Ross had already left his mark across the state at Deal, Englewood, Montclair and Plainfield, and the members had a good idea of what they would get from the best in the business. He gave them a course meant to endure, and it has. The routing he drew is still the routing you walk today, though the order of the nines has since been swapped. The design has a quiet logic that reveals itself slowly. The two nines start out side by side, as if they mean to keep each other company, and then they quickly part. One circles anti-clockwise and the other clockwise, so the property unfolds from two opposing angles. Each loop ends with a closing hole that rises to the finish, which means a round here twice asks you to come home uphill. The par threes are short, medium and long. Several of the par fours are the par-four-and-a-half holes Ross loved so much. And there is exactly one true three-shot par five. The greens are the heart of the place. Before he began his own work on the course, Andrew Green called them "the best Ross putting surfaces I've ever encountered." Tom Doak has said that Mountain Ridge "may be the most underrated course in golf-rich New Jersey." Both remarks point to the same thing. In a part of the state crowded with Golden Age courses, from Baltusrol to Ridgewood to Somerset Hills, Mountain Ridge was long overlooked despite its wonderfully varied property. The club decided to change that. In 1998 it brought in Ron Prichard to draw up a restoration master plan, and Ross's original field sketches became the map. They were used to locate bunkers that had been removed over the years. New back tees were added. Trees came down so air could move and long views could open across the course again. In 2011 and 2012 the fairways were significantly widened. Prichard's work on the greensites reinstated their lost corners. Many of the old master's courses have drifted far from their roots. This one still boasts many of its original design features. In 2012 the club marked its centennial by hosting the 58th U.S. Senior Amateur, which Paul Simson won. In 2021, after the 2020 event was cancelled because of the pandemic, the LPGA came for the Cognizant Founders Cup. Jin Young Ko won it, her third victory in a five-win season, and in doing so matched Annika Sorenstam's record of fourteen consecutive rounds under 70. After Prichard's work, the club turned to Andrew Green, known for his restorations at Inverness, Oak Hill and Scioto, and a comprehensive restoration began in 2022. The year 2026 marks the LPGA's second visit, for the Mizuho Americas Open. The irony is hard to miss. A club born because its founders were turned away now opens its gates to the best players in the world, on ground it chose for itself and over a routing that has never been altered.