The Country Club began on the shores of Lake Erie in the 1800s, and its members took to golf soon after the club was established. But Cleveland kept growing, and the city pressed in on the land the club had first called home. So the members went looking for new ground, and they found it out in Shaker Heights. It was a large property full of distinct features, far more interesting than the ground they had left behind. It was land on which a golf course could truly be laid out. They gave it to William Flynn, the Philadelphia architect. He routed the front nine across the gentler part of the property and saved some drama for the inward nine. That choice still shapes the round. The opening holes ease you into the place and let you settle. Then the second nine comes, and the property reveals what it was saving. The most memorable moment of that reveal comes at the 15th tee. Flynn called the view a "sighting gap," and the phrase fits. The landing area is blind, so the player stands on the tee facing a view unlike any other on the course. The shot is dramatic and a little unnerving. You aim at an idea of where the ground will receive the ball and swing on faith. Gil Hanse put the feeling simply: "When you see something and think 'Wow, I've never seen that before,' that gets you excited." The 15th tee is that kind of place. Courses age the way people do, slowly and then all at once. Like many courses, the Country Club lost some of its character over the years, until it felt tired and in need of some care. In the early 2020s the club brought in Hanse and Jim Wagner to restore and renovate it. They expanded the greens and the corridors, and they put character back into the bunkering. The result is a design that properly highlights its remarkable landscape. The best part of that work is a homecoming nearly a century late. Flynn had planned for the 18th green to sit where it sits today, but that green was never built. Plans for the clubhouse forced him to shorten the closing hole, and it stayed that way for nearly a hundred years. Hanse and Wagner went back to Flynn's plan and extended the 18th to match it, removing the short-game area in the process. The closing hole now follows the plan its architect drew, and there is something moving about a design finally being completed so long after it was first imagined. One more thing gives this corner of Ohio its own peculiar charm. The Country Club in Pepper Pike sits right beside Pepper Pike Club, an entirely different country club and another Flynn original. Two of his courses share a border. A visitor would do well to double-check the GPS on the way in and make sure of the address. Pull into the right one, though, play through the gentle front nine, and the land will take care of the rest.