RUMFORD, RHODE ISLAND | For a little state, Rhode Island is certainly playing a big role in competitive golf this month.
First comes the Northeast Amateur, a 72-hole stroke-play tourney being contested this week on the Donald Ross-designed Wannamoisett Country Club here, just east of Providence. Future PGA Tour stars Ben Crenshaw, Hal Sutton, David Duval, Dustin Johnson and Luke Donald made their competitive golf bones by winning this event, which was first contested in 1962. Past victors also include amateur icons Vinny Giles and Jay Sigel.
Then, there is the U.S. Senior Open, which is being staged June 27-30 at the Newport Country Club, one of five founding clubs of the United States Golf Association and the site of the first U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in 1895 as well as the 1995 U.S. Amateur that Tiger Woods won and the 2006 U.S. Women’s Open, captured by another GOAT in Annika Sörenstam.
Those are a couple of big-time events, and it is quite fitting they are being held on two of the finest and most historic layouts in New England, if not the entire United States.
Compact is a good way to begin a description of Wannamoisett, which is routed in and around a 100-acre parcel of well-contoured land replete with specimen hardwoods. The first tee is just off the clubhouse and pro shop, and the walks from greens to tees are short. The course is tucked in a residential area, and the modest homes surrounding are so close to the club that it is not unusual to hear a dog bark or a screen door slam during a round.
Challenging is another, for the par-69 track is a demanding one, with only one par-5 (No. 17) and four 3-pars. The rest of the holes are par-4s, and they put a premium on accurate approaches, most of which require long irons or hybrids for elite amateurs and recreational players alike. And the fun – or perhaps more accurately the trouble – really begins once one starts dealing with the subtle undulations of those slick putting surfaces, to say nothing of the closely cropped chipping areas that put great demands on the short game and the way in which a player wields a wedge, putter or a bump-and-run short iron.
Then, there is the rough, which tends to be thick and deep this time of year. And on several holes, Ross devilishly deceives players with cross bunkers that appear to be just off the greens but actually are 50-60 yards away.
“It’s a shot-maker’s golf course and will also test your putting skills,” said Ben Tuthill, the Northeast’s tournament chairman and a longtime Wannamoisett member. “There’s not a weak hole out here, and every one of them can bite.”
“It never gets old.” – Ben Tuthill
Tuthill goes on to describe the golf course, which opened in 1914 and played host to the 1931 PGA Championship, as “very demanding yet very fair” and one challenging the top amateur golfers in the game (especially when it is stretched out to roughly 6,900 yards for the tournament) while also remaining a fun place for members (most of whom play it at 6,100 yards or so).
“It never gets old,” he said.
Some of that timelessness is a result of the club bringing in architect Andrew Green in 2021 to renovate Ross’ masterpiece.
“One of the most important things Andrew did was restore many of the greens to their original sizes and shapes, using Ross’ notes and drawings as his guide,” Tuthill said. “Many of the greens had gotten smaller and more circular over the years. He also expanded the run-off areas from greens to tees in some places.”
In addition, Green led an effort to revamp the bunkering, a process involving moving some of those hazards down the fairways so they were back in play for the biggest hitters. The club also continued a tree-removal program that has enhanced air flow and conditioning on the course while still maintaining its bucolic feel.
As for Newport, few clubs or courses in America possess as rich and robust a history.
It all began in 1890 when a group of men led by summer resident Theodore Havemeyer rented 40 acres of farmland near Brenton Point, just southwest of the seaside city that in the late 19th century was a playground for the very well-to-do, and laid out a primitive nine-hole track. Havemeyer had learned about golf while vacationing in France the previous winter, and it took him and his friends just a few days to build the course, one of the first in the New World. Fences and stone walls crossed the property at several places, and although they frequently interfered with play, there was nothing the players could do about them because the lease did not allow for any alterations of the grounds.
Three years later, members of that group founded the Newport Country Club, with Havemeyer being named the first president. The Board of Governors elected 57 charter members at a meeting that spring and decided to lease the nearby Bateman Hotel for use as a clubhouse.
In 1894, the group purchased a nearby farm and asked their head golf professional, William F. Davis, to construct a new nine-holer as well as a six-hole layout for beginners. Club leaders also hired architect Whitney Warren to design a clubhouse for them. Built on one of the highest points on the new property and overlooking Brenton Point and the Atlantic Ocean beyond, the Beaux Arts edifice featured two main wings running north and south and a piazza extending to the east. When it opened the following spring, a reporter for The New York Times averred it “stood supreme for magnificence among golf clubs, not only in America but in the world.”
Current club president Barclay Douglas Jr. describes the structure as “a diamond,” adding that “where it sits on the property is the perfect setting.”
“It can blow pretty hard out here, but there is more to it than just that. It is also a matter of determining how many clubs you have to go up or down when you hit a shot.” – Eric Mills
By the time that structure came online, Newport had joined four other clubs in founding the United States Golf Association, with Havemeyer named its first president. In October 1895, Newport hosted the inaugural U.S. Amateur (won by Charles Blair Macdonald) and the day after, the first U.S. Open, which was won by Englishman Horace Rawlins, who was working for the club at the time as an assistant professional. That championship was a 36-hole stroke-play event entailing four trips around the club’s nine-hole track.
Interestingly, those tournaments had been scheduled to take place in September but were postponed for a month to make way for a more established Newport sports spectacle, the America’s Cup yacht races.
In 1897, Davis added nine holes to the layout to give it a full 18. Then in 1923, the club engaged A.W. Tillinghast to make a significant expansion. He designed and then built seven new holes on a piece of property members had purchased west of Harrison Avenue as he also remodeled the original course east of Harrison, transforming 18 holes into 11. The layout remained more or less untouched for decades aside from the lengthening of a few holes and the felling of some trees. In the late 1990s, Ron Forse developed and began implementing a master plan that, among other things, led to the restoration of many old bunkers and the addition of several new ones.
The course today feels and plays like a classic links. There are few trees and no irrigation, which means the fescue fairways can become as hard as asphalt in summer. The terrain has its share of humps, bumps and hills. And as one has come to expect in a Tilly track, lots of bunkers. Not surprisingly, wind frequently comes into play on a track from which the Atlantic can be seen from two-thirds of the 18 holes.
Two looks at Newport Country Club’s seventh show the types of bunkers players come to expect at an A.W. Tillinghast track. (Courtesy USGA)
“It is generally pretty calm early in the morning,” said the 72-year-old Douglas, who has run the club for more than half his life (an astonishing 37 years in a world with a habit of changing leaders as often and as impulsively as a banana republic). “But it will start to pick up between 10 and 11 a.m.”
As the senior championship director for this month’s U.S. Senior Open and someone who has spent months on the property, Eric Mills knows of what Douglas speaks. “It can blow pretty hard out here, but there is more to it than just that,” he said. “It is also a matter of determining how many clubs you have to go up or down when you hit a shot.”
Another feature enhancing the Old World feel is a strong caddie program.
For members, par at Newport is 72, and the track will tip out at 6,600 yards. “It’s a fun course from the forward and middle tees,” said Douglas, adding that golfers complete roughly 13,000 rounds a year there. “But for those playing from the markers we are using for the Senior Open, which stretch it out to just under 7,100, it will be plenty challenging, especially when you consider that they will be playing it as a par 70.”
The USGA has also flipped the nines at Newport for this championship. “There are a couple of reasons for that, and they all make good sense,” Douglas said. “For one thing, the last four holes as members play them are par-4s, and they have a lot of bottlenecks. And while the 18th hole has a really nice amphitheater for, say, our member-guests and club championships, it does not have nearly the same amount of room for hospitality and spectators that our ninth hole does.
“Another factor is the variety of the final holes of what would be the members’ front nine, which consist of a par-4, a par-5, a 3-par and then another par-4,” Mills said.
Switching does nothing to change the overall feel of Newport, which is all about golf and does not offer swimming or tennis to its members, and serves only the occasional dinner in its clubhouse. Like Wannamoisett, it is a gem. Together they make little Rhode Island a true heavyweight when it comes to great golf and great golf competitions.