Blessed with three full layouts and located in pleasant surroundings on the fringes of Allentown, the Saucon Valley Country Club is a well-known, popular country club with decent golf facilities but nothing that reaches any great heights. The Old Course is the best known layout, a Herbert Strong original it was recently extended by Tom Fazio without any great imagination, he basically pushed back tees everywhere he could, narrowed fairways and flashed blinding white sand up the faces of the re-built bunkers. None of the work was done with any great flair or creativity.

Although long, strong and mostly well built, the Old Course lacks great holes and an imaginative routing, the back nine is a little better than the front with some more substantial undulations and nice enough green complexes. There probably wasn’t much in the original Strong layout to preserve, but there is little to recommend now.

The Grace Course is much flatter and less interesting but the double dogleg and double creek-crossing par five 10th is a nice holes. The Weyhill Course, on the other hand, is a little better, incorporating a dramatic rock quarry into back nine holes like the spectacular all-quarry par three 14th and the steeply uphill approach into the quarry roof on the 15th. The rest is good too, but across the club the golf is only of moderate quality and it’s the green grass and clubhouse amenities that are most likely to impress.