A. W. Tillinghast was the principal architect of Roanoke Country Club's acclaimed 27-hole course. Born in 1874, he took up the game with a passion early in life. Yet Tillinghast would merit nothing more than a footnote in golf history had he not become a golf course architect.

His first commission came in the form of an invitation from a wealthy friend to lay out Shawnee-on-the-Delaware in 1909. He was very much a hands-on architect who liked to make his designs "in the dirt." relying on the inspiration of the moment to fashion the details of each hole as it emerged from the landscape. In 1918 Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, NJ hired him to construct a second course. Tillinghast's work at Baltusrol placed him securely in the first rank of American golf architects.

Throughout the 1920's he was a whirlwind of activity, building or remodeling golf courses all over the country. Some of his more notable courses included Winged Foot, Ridgewood, Quaker Ridge, Five Farms East, Newport and the Bethpage Black. In recent years the extent of his legacy to American golf has come to be better understood and appreciated, for it is abundantly clear that Tillinghast had a genius for building golf courses that endure.