Clarinda Country Club

Clarinda Country Club is a semi-private club that draws members and play from across the surrounding area. Its 18-hole layout is carved into the rolling hills along the north edge of town, and at 5,081 yards and a par of 68 it places a premium on accuracy and shot placement rather than length. The course is served by a tee-to-green irrigation system.

The club's roots reach back to the golf boom of the early 20th century, when a group of local men organized and incorporated in May of 1918, purchasing 29 rough acres just north of the cemetery — a modest parcel at a time when most nine-hole courses occupied 40 to 45 acres. A golf professional from Happy Hollow Country Club in Omaha laid out the holes on that small site. With little money for construction, members were divided into groups and assigned to rough out and build the holes themselves, with the greens proving the hardest work; some were simply shaped from black dirt. Much of this early history survives through a speech given by Dr. Eller, an early member, at an annual meeting around 1968.