GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT | The first course at Greenwich Country Club in this tony suburb of New York City was a nine-holer that members fashioned shortly after the club’s founding in 1892. Then in 1908, Lawrence Van Etten, a civil engineer from nearby New Rochelle, New York, who built sewer systems and the occasional golf course, expanded the track to 18 holes.
In the decades after that, Greenwich members looked to upgrade and improve their layout, which was routed across rolling hills that featured grassy meadows, stone walls and groves of maples, pines and beeches. So, they engaged the services of a succession of “name” architects, beginning with Seth Raynor and later including Donald Ross and Geoffrey Cornish. Club leaders made tweaks of their own through the years. The result was a good but not great golf course that possessed something of a hodgepodge feel.
“There had been so many guys here that you couldn’t really tell who had been here,” said club president Doug Trepp.
While members loved their course, their eyes opened...
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