Once again, it’s the historic Baltimore Country Club’s moment to shine in the national spotlight, this time as host of the United States Golf Association’s 2026 U.S. Senior Amateur Championship.
The opening rounds begin on Saturday, Aug. 29 and will finish up with the championship round on Thursday, Sept. 3.
“We are extremely excited to be back at Baltimore Country Club,” USGA championship director Rob Doone said. “The USGA has a long history with BCC and we look forward to providing a great challenge for the nation’s top senior amateurs.”
The USGA also tapped BCC and its storied East Course as the site for the 131st U.S. Women’s Amateur Golf Championship in 2031. And for good measure, the Western Golf Association (WGA) has named BCC the site for its 2028 Western Amateur Championship.
Getting back to hosting championships
So how did this flurry of tournaments come about? The last national tournaments held at BCC were the 1988 U.S. Women’s Open and the Senior Players Championships from 2007-2009.
BCC president Frank Cannon said discussions with the USGA began a few years ago under former club president Thomas Carroll, who renewed interest and efforts to bring in national tournaments, resulting in the awarding of the USSA in 2023.
“We had a lot of proof of concepts that the course could produce a high-caliber tournament,” Cannon explained. “The East Course at Five Farms was designed by A.W. Tillinghast and opened in 1926. [It] was created for championships like this one.”
A renovation in 2015 by Keith Foster restored the course to Tillinghast’s original design.
Doone noted that while qualifying for the USSA is still underway, preparations of the course are moving along on schedule. BCC golf pro Nick Cannon (no relation to Frank) and director of agronomy Drew Barnett are helping to work on “everything from tee boxes, yardages and hole locations to height of the fairways, rough and condition of the greens,” according to Doone.
Nick Cannon, who came to BCC in 2020, welcomes the challenge of preparing for championship golf.
“This club has a rich golf tradition and it’s good to see us getting back to hosting tournaments,” Cannon said.
One thing that has everyone concerned is the weather.
“That’s the thing we can’t control,” Barnett said. “We just prepare for whatever conditions come about.”
In the meantime, Barnett is looking to have the rough at a tournament level of 3 to 3.5 inches and keep the greens as firm as possible.
“Approach shots to the elevated greens will be a challenge,” Barnett said. “If you come up short, the ball will roll back to the fairway. Firmness will depend again on the wind and the temperatures. This is a big-boy course designed for championship golf.”
BCC’s unmatched legacy
Baltimore Country Club is no stranger to hosting national and international competitions. It’s a legacy that took hold one year after opening in 1899 when the club hosted the fifth-ever U.S. Open at its newly opened Roland Park course.
Two years after moving to its Five Farms campus in Lutherville, BCC was the setting for the 1928 PGA Championship. In 1932, the club welcomed the U.S. Amateur Championship and in 1965 the biennial Walker Cup competition, which pitted the top American amateurs against the best of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the only Walker Cup that ended in a tie.
And now the tradition continues with an elite field of 156 senior amateurs ready to take on the demanding challenges of BCC’s East Course.
So how do you get to play in the USSA?
To enter, players must be 55 or older by Aug. 29 and have a handicap index not exceeding 7.4.
To qualify, players first compete in an 18-hole stroke play qualifier held at various regional sites. There are 50 such sites and the top three finishers at each site get to move on to the USSA Championship competition. Exempt players (such as past champions or high-ranking amateurs) bypass this stage.
The championship proper begins with 36 holes of stroke play across two days. Then the top 64 players are seeded based on their 36-hole stroke play scores. The tournament shifts to single elimination match play for the next four days, culminating in an 18-hole head-to-head final match.
The players competing in this tournament are amateurs, for sure, but they are anything but amateurish. These are skilled players of a certain age not playing for any big payday, but for prestige, recognition and to celebrate the competitive spirit of amateur golf.
One local player looking to qualify is Calvert Hall golf coach Drew Forrester, who said he has played the East Course “hundreds of times.”
Forrester, who qualified as a USSA alternate in 2019, called the BCC 6,564-yard, par-70 track “one of the top five courses in the state for difficulty.”
Forrester noted that there are typically limited birdie opportunities with only two par-5s and overall, “there are really no easy holes. Any bad shot will be costly. Players have to hit fairways and position themselves for shots into the greens. It will be a true test of skill, especially for senior players.”
Forrester gave special praise to the BCC membership for wanting to hold the event and dealing with all the logistics.
“Members are effectively giving up their golf course for weeks in the summer,” Forrester said. “For that they should be commended.”
Things to know if you plan to go
Baltimore Country Club’s Five Farms campus is located at 11500 Mays Chapel Road, Lutherville, Md. Admission is free of charge all seven days of competition. Spectators are encouraged to attend. Parking is free. Volunteer opportunities and registration details are available. 2025 USSA Champion Mike McCoy will be defending his title. He is the first player in USGA history to win a U.S. Senior Amateur and U.S. Mid-Amateur.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of BCC
Originally published June 24, 2026
