Rancocas at Rancocas Golf Club

Rancocas Golf Club sits in Willingboro, New Jersey, a course designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. during his prolific mid-century period when he reshaped American golf architecture with an emphasis on strategic design and championship-caliber challenge. Jones brought his characteristic approach to this layout in the suburban Philadelphia region, where the relatively flat terrain of the New Jersey coastal plain required thoughtful routing and artificial contouring to create interest and variety.

The course reflects Jones's design principles from that era: generous fairways that reward accuracy off the tee, large bunkers positioned to frame landing areas and greenside approaches, and sizable putting surfaces with subtle internal contours. Water features likely come into play on several holes, a common element in Jones's work on flatter sites where natural elevation change is limited. The architect's philosophy emphasized making courses challenging for skilled players while remaining playable for members of varying abilities, typically achieved through multiple tee positions and strategic rather than penal hazards.

Rancocas operates as a private club serving the greater Burlington County area, part of the dense network of golf facilities in the corridor between Philadelphia and the New Jersey shore. The course provides a representative example of Jones's work during the postwar expansion of American golf, when his firm designed or redesigned hundreds of courses nationwide. The layout offers members a test shaped by one of the twentieth century's most influential architects, whose design vocabulary became a template for modern American course construction.