Chatham Hills vs The Bridgewater Club for Golf Living

Chatham Hills offers one 18-hole championship course plus a 9-hole executive par-3 (27 holes total), widely described as one of Pete Dye's final designs before his 2020 death. The Bridgewater Club offers two full 18-hole Pete Dye courses (36 holes total) across its 750-acre footprint, giving it roughly a third more golf real estate than Chatham Hills and reinforcing its position as Indiana's largest private country club.

Chatham Hills has one consistent membership structure community-wide: Social Membership is a separate purchase, but its initiation fee is waived for any Chatham Hills lot buyer, with a 90-day window to also join the Premier Golf Membership at a reduced rate. The Bridgewater Club is structurally more complex: the club and the Bridgewater Master Association (HOA) are legally separate entities, and whether a specific home's Social Membership is included/deeded or must be purchased separately depends on the phase -- documented directly in this research as varying between sections like Grassy Branch (membership included) and the community's broader older-phase inventory (membership purchased separately). A Bridgewater Club buyer has real homework to do that a Chatham Hills buyer does not.

Chatham Hills is a single-developer (Henke Development) master plan built out on 800 acres of former farmland, with the club branded directly into the community's own identity. The Bridgewater Club spans a comparable 750 acres but has grown across multiple phases and builders over a longer development timeline, with governance split between the club and a separate Master Association -- a structure that gives Bridgewater a wider range of housing product (single-family estates, villas, townhomes, and empty-nester homes) but also the per-phase membership variation described above.

Neither community is a clear winner -- they suit different buyer priorities. A buyer who wants membership terms to be simple and consistent across the entire community, with a clear resident incentive (a waived initiation fee), has more of that at Chatham Hills. A buyer who wants Indiana's largest private country club, more golf (36 holes vs 27), and a wider range of housing product and price points -- and who is willing to do the extra diligence of confirming membership-inclusion terms for a specific phase -- has more of that at The Bridgewater Club. Both require independently confirming current membership fees directly with the club, since neither publishes a full current fee schedule.