Sycamore Hills Golf Club

Founded July 1987 — 11836 Covington Road

A club built for championships: Sycamore Hills was a different kind of founding: not a circle of members pooling dues, but a single fortune building the club it wanted. The club's own clubhouse history dates its founding to July 1987, and its federal social-club ruling is dated December of that year. Club & Resort Business identifies the founder as Jim Kelley, a Fort Wayne automobile dealer, who with his son Tom turned his interest in golf into three local courses, Sycamore Hills the plum of the portfolio, built around the clubhouse core of a former estate — in the club's words, "the former estate of a prominent Fort Wayne family." The land itself is older than the city around it: Nicklaus Design records that the ground was first deeded by Andrew Jackson in 1835, rolling, treed, and cut by the Aboite River. Jack Nicklaus made it a Signature course, and on July 2, 1989, Nicklaus and Tom Kelley played the inaugural round.

The record since: The club was built to be ranked and to host, and it was both. Golf Digest placed Sycamore Hills 69th in its 2011–2012 list of America's 100 Greatest Courses. Its championship ledger runs: the USGA Women's State Team Championship in 2009; the Junior PGA Championship in 2010, 2011, and 2012; the U.S. Girls' Junior Championship in 2013; and, from 2013 to 2015, the Hotel Fitness Championship, the Web.com Tour Finals event that brought nationally televised professional golf back to Fort Wayne for the first time since the Elks' course hosted the old Fort Wayne Open — the purse then decided, in part, who held a PGA Tour card. The Mid-American Conference played its men's championship there in 2018.

Which Fort Wayne: Sycamore Hills also requires a word about jurisdiction, because it was not, at its founding, in Fort Wayne at all. The club stands in Aboite Township, in the county's southwest corner, and in 1987 its Covington Road ground lay outside the city limits, in unincorporated Allen County. Fort Wayne's Southwest annexation — an ordinance passed in 1996 with its effect postponed a decade, and upheld by the Indiana Supreme Court in 2002 — took effect on January 1, 2006, bringing some 12.9 square miles of Aboite Township into the city; county property records today list the Sycamore Hills development's municipality as the City of Fort Wayne, though its schools remain Southwest Allen County's. The club is included in this record on that footing: founded as a county club for a Fort Wayne membership, and a Fort Wayne club, by annexation, since 2006.

Sources:

1. Sycamore Hills Golf Club, "History of the Clubhouse" (club banquet and wedding books, 2025–2026) — founded July 1987; the inaugural round, July 2, 1989; the former estate; the championships hosted.
2. Club & Resort Business, "Living Large at Sycamore Hills GC" (28 September 2021) — Jim Kelley as founder; Tom Kelley; the three-course portfolio.
3. IRS exempt-organization listing for Sycamore Hills Golf Club Inc, 11836 Covington Rd (via Tax Exempt World) — social-club ruling dated December 1987.
4. Nicklaus Design and nicklaus.com (2012–2013) — the 1835 Andrew Jackson deed; the course's opening in 1989; Golf Digest's ranking, 69th in America's 100 Greatest, 2011–2012; the Hotel Fitness Championship as the first Web.com Tour Finals event.
5. PGA of America / Mid-American Conference championship materials (2018) — the club's hosted-championship list, including the 2009 USGA Women's State Team and 2013 U.S. Girls' Junior.
6. City of Fort Wayne, Southwest Extended annexation record, and City of Fort Wayne v. Certain Southwest Annexation Area Landowners (Ind. 2002) — the 1996 ordinance, effect January 1, 2006; Allen County property records listing the Sycamore Hills parcels' municipality as Fort Wayne City, Aboite Township.