Gillette Ridge

Bloomfield, Connecticut

ArchitectsEd Seay

Arnold Palmer

Bloomfield, Connecticut

Rankings

Address1360 Hall Blvd, Bloomfield, CT 06002, USA

Located on the Cigna headquarters campus (formerly known as Connecticut General Life Insurance), the course at Gillette Ridge Golf Club is a public golf facility that Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay fashioned in 2004. The course hosted the LPGA Futures Tour Cigna Golf Classic from 2005 to 2008 then the PGA Tour Travelers Championship Qualifier from 2010 to 2012.

Unfortunately, the course closed and fell into a state of disrepair shortly after these professional events were staged at the club. After eighteen months of uncertainty, it reopened again in the summer of 2017 with new greens, refurbished bunkers and additional forward tees.

Gillette Ridge had a reputation as a tough track catering for the better player but the owners’ new goal was to keep the course challenging while improving it to accommodate all levels of player without ever compromising the original design intent.

The par five 2nd is the signature hole here: starting from a tee box that affords views of the 165-foot-tall Heublein Tower in the distance, it plays downhill to a peninsula green which is protected by a pond on the right side of the putting surface.