From the club website:

Club History

“I want to tell you how enthusiastic I am about your property.” So writes Robert Trent Jones Sr. in a 1973 letter to the owner of the land. In the late 1960s the City of Manassas bought the land to the 300 foot elevation level around what is now Lake Manassas and built a dam on Broad Run to provide drinking water for the city. Jones first saw the area as he happened to fly over it when looking at another potential golf course. Jones was so taken by the beauty of this site that he decided he just had to build a magnificent golf course on this property.

Jones has been called the “father of modern golf course architecture”. He designed his own golf course architecture program at Cornell University before any such program existed, and was the first to use many modern design and construction techniques. Through a long career he built and/or remodeled over 450 courses in the US and throughout the world. He considered our course “his masterpiece”. Robert Trent Jones, Sr. died at his home in Florida on June 14, 2000, one week before his 94th birthday and a few months before the Presidents Cup was held here for the third time.

He envisioned a championship golf course along the shores of Lake Manassas which would provide a retreat in the Washington DC area dedicated to golf. It took several years to raise the financing and acquire the property. Construction of the course started in 1988, and the golf course formally opened in April 1991. “The terrain is aesthetically perfect,” Jones said. “I don’t think we could have done anything better anywhere.” With bent grass greens, tees, and fairways and blue-grass rough the course is always maintained in top condition. While the lake is the visual centerpiece with most of the back nine running adjacent to it, only on the par-three 11th hole must the player hit across a portion of the lake.

While Mr. Jones focused on building the golf course, he attracted Bobby P. Russell, formerly President of Baltusrol Golf Club and Secretary of the US Golf Association, to form the golf club. The Robert Trent Jones Golf Club was officially chartered in April 1991 with Russell, Ernest L. Ransome III, long time President of Pine Valley Golf Club, and Clay Hamner, a North Carolina developer, as Founding Trustees.

The Golf Club leased the property from the development group and constructed the clubhouse. The 65,000 square foot Georgian-style mansion formally opened in June 1992. The clubhouse has 12 guest rooms and there are several cottages on the property for overnight accommodations, but no homes are allowed on the property. In recent years a new, large practice range was built with over two acres of bent-grass hitting area to targets up to 375 yards distant. The range includes a practice facility with four heated and air-conditioned hitting bays plus a teaching bay fully instrumented with audio/video equipment for instruction. It is a source of pride in the Club that there is no tennis or swimming -- it remains a golf club only. The Club has gained a wide-spread reputation for providing an extraordinary golf experience for it Members and their guests.

Robert Trent Jones Golf Club has hosted the President’s Cup four times including the inaugural event in 1994, in addition to the 1996, 2000, and 2005 events. No other Club has hosted more international team match play competitions for the world’s best golf professionals.