Southern Hills Country Club was established in 1936 as a private country club.  The plan was to establish a family-oriented club that would include a swimming pool, stable, horseback trails, polo field, skeet range, tennis courts, clubhouse and golf course.  Oilman Waite Phillips was approached to donate the land and he agreed to do so if the gentlemen proposing the new club could garner pledges from at least 150 Tulsans for $1,000 each.  This was a daunting challenge in the midst of the Depression.  However, the money was raised and the Clubhouse was constructed in 1936.  Perry Maxwell, who designed the Augusta National, Colonial and Prairie Dunes golf courses, was hired to design the Southern Hills golf course.

The first facilities to be opened were the swimming pool, stables and bridle paths, polo field, skeet range and tennis courts, all of which were in use by mid-1935.  A fire in 1976 destroyed the Club’s horse stables—along with many valuable horses. The stables were not rebuilt.

One of the best-known facilities at Southern Hills—in its time—was the world-class skeet range that attracted major championship events and developed some of the nation’s best shooters.

Tennis had a slow start at Southern Hills, although two clay courts were opened in 1935, and two more were added very soon afterward. The first surfaced court was added in 1950. Tennis became more popular in the early 1950’s and the construction of a tennis house in 1976 gave impetus to the program. In 1991 the board approved a major tennis project that provided three indoor courts, and later was found to have the capacity for an exercise room upstairs.

The opening day of golfing at Southern Hills was inauspicious. The front nine was not yet ready for play (too little grass), and the 29 persons who teed off on that May 23, 1936 exploration of new territory seemed not especially impressed by the back nine. The classic French Norman-style structure that would become the clubhouse, designed by prominent Tulsa architect John Forsyth, also was “not ready for play” (it would not be completed for several more months), but the pioneer golfers held a celebratory dinner on the south terrace that night, nonetheless.

Leading up to the scheduled gala opening of the Clubhouse in October 1936, Waite Phillips, who had contributed the land but so emphatically refused to provide any cash, made a last-minute gift of $25,000 (the approximate equivalent of $350,000 today) to furnish the Clubhouse. Chedford L. “Cheddy” Martin left his position as manager of Chicago’s Drake Hotel to become Southern Hills’ first general manager—at an annual salary of $4,800.

The first tournament to test the new golf course was the Oklahoma State Golf Association amateur tournament in 1939, and the following year the Trans-Mississippi Golf Association’s Amateur tournament was held on the course.  A special professional golf tournament was promoted in September 1945 to raise money to help the war-wounded. It was won by the great Sam Snead, and it gave some of the country’s best tournament players their first exposure to the Southern Hill course. In 1946 the Club was the site of its first national golf tournament—the Women’s USGA Amateur.  To date, Southern Hills has hosted 14 major championships:  3 U.S. Open Championships (1958, 1977, 2001), an unprecedented 4 PGA Championships (1970, 1982, 1994, 2007), a USGA Women’s Amateur Championship (1946), a USGA Junior Amateur Championship (1953), a USGA Senior Amateur Championship (1961), a USGA Amateur Championship (1965), a USGA Women’s Mid Amateur Championship (1987) and 2 Tour Championships (1994, 1995).  Southern Hills Country Club will host the USGA Men’s Amateur Championship in 2009.

The Championship Golf Course was modernized in the 1950’s and has undergone several major renovations since then, including installing a new irrigation system and five miles of drainage, renovating tees, renovating bunkers and regressing greens in 1999/2000 and regrassing the fairways and roughs, renovating bunkers and renovating greens in 2004/2005.  A new Golf Course Maintenance Facility was constructed in 2000.  In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the Club’s polo fields were largely unused and the decision was made to transform the polo fields into a nine-hole golf course.  That course was designed by Ben Crenshaw.

Southern Hills Country Club completed a sweeping $22 million renovation of the Clubhouse and other facilities in 2007.  This renovation included a new pool complex, new fitness facility, new indoor tennis court, new golf halfway house, new entry drive and motor court, new Ladies’ Locker Room, renovated and expanded Men’s Locker Room, new Member Lounge, renovated Men’s Grill, new Mixed Grill Patio, new Ballroom and banquet entrance, renovated and expanded main kitchen, new administrative offices and new employee locker rooms and dining room. The scale of this major makeover, the implementation of which covered seven years, can only be compared to the time, effort and capital expended in the original construction of the club, over 70 years ago.