The River Club will be celebrating its 110th birthday with a makeover.
The Garden City golf course will be closed this summer as it undergoes an extensive 18-month redesign, member Mark Johnson told the Idaho Statesman in January.
The private club previously sold one of its holes (the 10th, a 23-acre par 5 along State Street) to a developer to help finance its $15 million renovation into a “state-of-the-art par-68 gem,” said Johnson, a Garden City resident.
The course plans to open for play in late spring 2027, 110 years after golfers first teed it up at one of Idaho’s oldest courses.
Spearheaded by architect Brian Curley, The River Club remodel flips the course’s two nines. What will be the front routes through residential neighborhoods on the north side of the property, while the back will snake along the Boise River. The new opening holes needed few structural changes, club spokesman Stephen Reynolds said in a press release, and the heavy shaping is already done. Crews are still working in view of the road to install irrigation and build bunkers, Reynolds said.
The 18-month renovation of The River Club includes all new greens and bunkers. Courtesy of The River Club
The biggest overhaul was reserved for the closing stretch, whose design “bears little resemblance to the original holes,” Reynolds said. Where the old course sat below the river, protected by a levy and dense forest, Curley raised the land roughly 10 feet and cleared the banks. The new 13th and 18th greens back up to the river, looking down on a gentle bend toward Westmoreland Park.
“As the only course in the market with true river frontage, those holes really reinforce the identity of The River Club, a name the club recently adopted to reflect its renewed connection to the river,” Curley said in a statement. “In a region where most courses occupy inland valley land, direct riverfront golf is a rarity.”
Pebble Beach ties make project personal
What’s now called The River Club was first laid out in 1917 by H. Chandler Egan, a renowned amateur player and key early architect in the popularization of golf in the Pacific Northwest. His most famous work is at one of the world’s best known courses: Egan helped Alister MacKenzie renovate California’s Pebble Beach Golf Links ahead of the 1929 U.S. Amateur.
Pebble Beach is Curley’s home turf. Though his career has taken him all over the globe — he’s particularly active in China, where he’s built dozens of golf courses — Curley grew up on the Monterey Peninsula, in the town of Pebble Beach. That link drew Curley to the project and drove him to respect “the character” — small greens, sharp bunkering — of what he called Egan’s “modest layout.”
Architect Brian Curley raised the elevation of The River Club’s 13th and 18th greens to foster better views of the Boise River. Courtesy of The River Club
“I’m very proud of what we are accomplishing at The River Club,” Curley said. “This project transforms what had been a relatively modest layout into a much more dramatic and memorable golf experience for the membership.”
Crews are expected to plant grass on the course in late April, and the course will take about a year to grow in.
“It’s gonna be pretty special,” Johnson said.