How Bulle Rock got its Name

Many players on our course wonder where we got our name, Bulle Rock.

The name goes back to the 1730s when James Samuel Patton brought to this continent Bulle Rock, a stud horse that would become known in history as the "father of all thoroughbred horses" in America.

Some years later, Patton's granddaughter, Cassandra Durbin, received a male colt from the same bloodline as part of her dowry when she married Richard Sappington, owner of Blenheim Stud Farm in Northern Maryland, the site where our course is now located. Cassandra's colt was named in honor of her grandfather's stud, Bulle Rock.

And so when Blenheim Stud Farm became a golf club, the legendary horse's name seemed a perfect choice for a legendary course. And thus our slogan as well: "Named for a Thoroughbred, Designed by a Legend, your Country Club for a Day"

Meet Pete Dye, the Legendary Designer of Bulle Rock

The 18-hole, world-class championship course at Bulle Rock was laid out by renowned designer Pete Dye.

Reportedly, it took awhile for Pete Dye to find his true calling in life. Born in 1925 in Urbana, Ohio, he majored in business at Rollins College in Florida, where he met his wife, Alice O'Neal, the lead golfer on the women's team at the school. The two married in 1950, and Pete worked for several years in insurance before turning to golf course design together with his wife in the late 1950s. Both Pete and his wife are excellent golfers. While he is a member and past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, Alice was the first woman inducted into the society.

In 1963, they took a month-long trip to visit the classical venues in Scotland, which had an immediate impact on his designs. There he found bunkers, railroad ties shoring up bunkers, small greens and sprawling waste areas strewn with sand. His designs began to separate themselves from other architects as they became bolder and more uninhibited with the use of mounding, bumps and hollows. Dye still integrates classic links course elements into a variety of settings.

Known for the design of courses that are very difficult and often very long, Dye is also a hands-on designer more likely to be found on a bulldozer than at a drafting board. He spent 79 days at Bulle Rock during its construction.

Having now created some 75 golf courses mostly in the United States, he is well known for such spectacular layouts as Harbour Town Golf Links at Sea Pines Plantation in South Carolina, the Stadium Course at PGA West in La Quinta, California, the Crooked Stick golf course in Carmel, Indiana, Teeth of the Dog in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic and Whistling Straits, the home of the PGA Championship in Kohler, Wisconsin.