MISQ by Legendary Publishing & Media Group, LLC

THE HISTORY OF THE

MISQUAMICUT CLUB WAT CH

H I L L , â&#x20AC;&#x2030;R H O D E

ISL A N D

PUBLIS HED BY The Misquamicut Club, Inc. Copyright © 2017 The Misquamicut Club, Inc. Text copyright © by John Steinbreder and The Misquamicut Club, Inc. Any inquiries should be directed to: The Misquamicut Club, Inc. 60 Ocean View Highway Westerley, Rhode Island 02891 USA 401-348-8213 themisquamicutclub.com PROD UCED BY Legendary Publishing & Media Group, LLC. Legendarypmg.com 561-309-0229 Managing Partner: William Caler President and Creative Director: Larry Hasak Senior Designer: Susan Balle Business Manager: Melody Manolakis Copy Editors: Debbie Falcone, Bob Baal Printed in the United States. All rights reserved. This book, or any portions thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

On the Cover: The Clubhouse as photographed in 1896 Opposite: An early golf bag tag Following pages: The Clubhouse in 2016

THE MISQUAMICUT CLUB WATCH

H I L L , R H O D E

ISLAND

I N C O R P O R AT E D 1 8 9 5

THE HISTORY OF THE

MISQUAMICUT CLUB WAT CH

H I L L , R H O D E

ISLA N D

Written by

John Steinbreder P R I N C I PA L

P H OTO G R A P H Y

L . C .

PUBLISHING & MEDIA GROUP

L A M B R E C H T

Contents P R E S I D E NT’ S L E TTE R – 16 A P LA C E F OR FA MI L I E S A ND FR IEND S – 18 C H AP T E R O N E : Watch Hill and the Community – 24 Who was Ninigret? – 32

C H AP T E R TWO: The Founding – 50 The world in 1895 – 54; Frank Wesson, Jr.: An early evangelist for golf in America – 65; Red (Fish) and Green: The Club name and colors were decided on early – 67; Willie Park Jr.: Misquamicut’s first golf course architect – 68;

CH APTER THRE E : The Golf Course – 72 Tom Bendelow: The Johnny Appleseed of American golf – 80; Seth the Surveyor – 86; Then came Donald Ross – 100; Keepers of the course – 104; A history of the golf course’s design and routing – 112

CH APTER FOU R : The Clubhouse – 120 The Wine Room – 143; General Manager Phil Koretski – 145; Chef Mike – 148; Donna Bailey: Head of Member Services – 152; The Club Office – 153; The 4th of July – 154

CH APTER FIVE: The Beach Club – 162 The Raft Test – 167; Family fun and frolic – 168; Misquamicook – 176; The Big Storms – 184

Willie Anderson: The first official professional – 70

This page and opposite: The Meadows holes looking toward Watch Hill. Following pages: A historic view of Watch Hill Harbor; Watch Hill Harbor and Napatree Point as photographed in 2009; the Clubhouse and practice green from the 18th green; Lighthouse Point in the 1930s; a view of Block Island Sound from the 11th hole

CHA P T E R S IX: Golf at the Misquamicut Club – 192

CHAPTER NI NE : The Misquamicut Family

The Ladies Invitational Golf Tournament – 202; Golf Club Champions – 208;

Through the Years – 244 Introduction by Robert H. Saglio, Chairman, The History Book Committee – 245

Director of Golf Jim Corrigan – 209; Frances Canby Griscom – 210; Golf course records – 211; The Putting Course – 212; The Heminway Bowl – 214

APPEND ICES – 262 The History Book Committee – 262; Club Presidents – 263; Club Records – 264

CHA P T E R S EVE N: Tennis at the Club – 224 Tennis Club Champions – 235; Other activities – 236

ACKNOW LED G E M E NT S – 272

CHA P T E R E I GHT: The Future – 238

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

of a unique facility, a beautiful

As one reflects upon the Misquamicut Club history, the positive

setting, and a highly engaged membership is no simple task, but

efforts of many Club predecessors become self-evident. It is impossible

at its core the Club is a community of families. Its everyday vocabulary

to acknowledge each person, but please refer to our annual Club book

includes the words mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, and

that lists prior Presidents, Vice Presidents, Committee members, and

APTURING 120 PLUS YEARS

uncle. It is a beacon nestled against a complex and

the literally hundreds of other volunteers to whom

fast-moving world. When we drive down Westerly

we owe much gratitude. That volunteerism is alive and well today.

Road and enter either from Ocean View Highway

General Manager Phil Koretski, as always, rolled

or Bay Street, we have arrived home. Like so many elements that distinguish the

up his sleeves when we announced the making of

Misquamicut Club, a community effort created

this book. Bill Morton, our director of golf course

this history book, starting with our summer

operations, was a fountain of knowledge of the golf

interns (Grace Lambrecht, Katherine Johnson,

course history, and he was invaluable in piecing it

Juliette Livingston, and Jack Cooper) who began

all together. We are extremely fortunate to have a

much of the research and cataloging process;

world-renowned golf course photographer in Larry

a dedicated Book Committee, photographs

Lambrecht, who went way beyond the call of duty

covering the golf course; historical pictures and

in furnishing us with the many beautiful pictures

recent Club events; historical golf facts; general Club knowledge;

of the golf course and in scanning the many other photographs that

and of course many interviews, photographs, memorabilia, and event

are in the book. Bill Miller contributed significantly with his historical

participation by our members at large. With these resources, author

knowledge and editorial acumen. Finally, this book would never

John Steinbreder captured not only the history, but also the “feel” of

have been accomplished without the tireless devotion that the Book

our Club, and designer/publisher Larry Hasak, with assistance from

Committee Chair and our friend, Rob Saglio, put into it. It is remarkable

Susan Balle, memorialized its beauty and traditions.

how much research and clarity Rob put into the book’s making.

The book references our Club’s sense of family, of legacy, and of

Accordingly, this book is as much for our younger members, and

a deep passion for the love of our environs. In recent years especially,

future members, as it is for our long-standing members. Its intent

the Club has been managed to encourage children and grandchildren

is to illustrate in words and pictures the importance of heritage,

to become members. The result is a vibrant multi-generational Club.

traditions, camaraderie, volunteerism, and the need to protect and

Perhaps the litmus test is the number of situations where the broadest

preserve. In that vein, it would be my hope that fifty or one hundred

of age groups interact with each other, evident on the dance floors,

years from now, those members will continue to preserve this very

tennis courts, golf course, beach, and many informal social settings.

special and iconic Misquamicut Club. 

RANDOLPH G. ABOOD

Opposite: The second Clubhouse was constructed in the early 1900s.

A P L A C E F O R FA M I L I E S A N D F R I E N D S

Roger Williams is best

coal, and aluminum their primary interests). The Club also built a

known as the founder of the state of Rhode Island, he is also

place of note for itself in the greater golf world by hiring as its first

remembered as a skilled linguist who produced in the mid-1600s a

professional a sixteen-year-old Scot named Willie Anderson who went

dictionary of the language in which Native Americans in that part

on to win four U.S. Open championships, a feat equaled in later years

of the world communicated. Among the words he interpreted was

only by Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus. And it turned to

Misquamicut, which is the name the Indians gave the area that currently

some of the game’s most celebrated architects to design its golf course,

HILE PURITAN THEOLOGIAN

encompasses Westerly and Watch Hill. Williams

among them Willie Park Jr., Tom Bendelow, Seth

determined that Misquamicut translated into

Raynor, and Donald Ross.

English as “the place of the red fish,” with red

From its founding in the Gay Nineties, the

fish being salmon and the insinuation that the

Misquamicut Club took an extraordinary and

region back then was full of them.

occasionally rocky ride through the Roaring

Sadly, there is not much in the way of “red

Twenties and a pair of World Wars as well as

fish” in the waters around southwestern Rhode

a Depression and several major hurricanes.

Island any more and little to compel a person

Member resignations sometimes outstripped

to describe that part of the state in such a way.

new admissions. Tennis courts were abandoned

But for those who know the club that has called

and golf course maintenance at times deferred.

itself “Misquamicut” since it came into being in

The beach pavilion was demolished by storms

1895 and understand the overall ethos of the

and then rebuilt, while the golf course had to

association, the word has come to take on more

be restored after fairways were flooded during

germane meanings.

those same tempests and greens and tees

One of those is “history,” for the Misquamicut Club has a rich

destroyed. Then there were the day-to-day difficulties of running

one that goes back more than 120 years. It was established and

an increasingly complicated enterprise that currently employs 180

subsequently nurtured by members of some of the most prominent

people and produces annual revenues of roughly $6.5 million as it

families in America, among them the Procters of Cincinnati (of Procter

caters several months a year to some five hundred members and

& Gamble fame), the Ballantines from Newark (where they ran a

roughly one thousand of their spouses and children. The Club found

major brewing concern), the Swifts from Chicago (where they were

a way not only to survive those travails but also to thrive. And today

giants in meat packing) and the Mellons of Pittsburgh (with banking,

it is regarded as one of the finest retreats of its kind.

Above: The 2004 Men’s Golf Club Championship winner Tom Kellogg with his family on the 18th green following the match. Opposite: Spectators at the annual Home Run Derby.

T H E

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Misquamicut can also translate quite well into English as “fun,”

women they dated in their twenties and then got to know as adults

as that is something it creates for its members most every day and

once they married other individuals and produced children of their

night of every season, whether tennis clinics or golf tournaments,

own. And now their grandkids are taking tennis lessons together.

Thursday night dinners at the beach, or dances under massive tents

Others talk about relationships they established with their cousins as

off the south terrace. There are dog shows in July and prize days

youngsters, riding their bicycles from the Golf Club to the Beach Club

in September and maybe the best 4th of July celebration on the

and spending hours playing in the sand and in the water, as they sit

East Coast, with an al fresco dinner for more than 1,400 by the 18th

together thirty years later at cocktail parties, sipping wine and savoring

green followed by a dazzling fireworks display. And let’s not forget

the quiet beauty of the seaside getaway that stays with them.

the clambakes, Oktober Fests, and Texas Bar-

“I love seeing my grandchildren playing

b-ques. Or the simple pleasure of sitting cross-

on the same beach I did as a young girl,” says

legged in the sand on Napatree Point with a

Edith Eglin, who first played on the beach

Southside in hand as the sparkle of the sunlight

at Misquamicut in the late 1930s. “There’s a

hitting the ocean and the warmth of a summer

connection through the generations, and more

afternoon takes your mind — and worries —

than anything else, that’s what makes it special.”

away. You can do as much or as little as you

Even the young feel that way. “I don’t live in

desire at Misquamicut, and you can always

Watch Hill full time, but it still feels like home,”

count on the fun being accessible, too, because

says Lydie Abood, a fourth-generation member

everything is just a five-minute drive away.

of the Markham family and the daughter of

But perhaps more than anything, the name

current Club President Randy Abood. “Perhaps

Misquamicut means “family,” and the Club

more than any place I have ever been.”

prides itself on some two-thirds of its members

Nicky Vogt, the twenty-something daughter

being legacies. Newer arrivals are just as

of member Peter Vogt and granddaughter of

committed to making it a singular place for their

the late Bill and Lorine Vogt, harbors similar

children and grandchildren. That is regarded as the strength of the

sentiments. “I grew up with a lot of different kids from Misquamicut,

Club, and also its essence.

and here we are all these years later, still having fun together,” she

The lunch and dinner tables at “Misquamicook” often include

says. “I love that, and I enjoy seeing people each summer who knew

three generations of the same family enjoying meals together.

my grandparents. They help me remember them through stories that

Fathers and sons team up in golf and tennis tournaments, as well as

we all share. It is also nice to be in a place that was special to my

mothers and daughters. The boards of Club Championship winners

grandparents and is still special to me.”

are filled with names of families who have been part of Misquamicut

Founded primarily by people from the Midwest, Misquamicut

for decades. Longtime members recall how the friends they danced

has been a destination club from the very beginning, a spot that

with at the Beach Club as teenagers turned out to be the men or

people came to visit and enjoy for extended periods of time. That

Above: Winners on Prize Day in 2016. Opposite: The “Watchminster” Dog Show

I N T R O D U C T I O N

had a way of deepening the connections the members felt with each

at a time when there was “an increased interest in athletics.” After

other as it also endowed the retreat with a cheerful aura. They came

several rather sleepy decades, things at Misquamicut were picking up.

to Misquamicut to relax and enjoy their summers, and to have fun

Other longtime Club members believe, however, that the Modern Era did not actually begin until two decades later. That’s when Phil

every day they were in town. Initially, the season ran from Independence Day weekend

Koretski came on board as general manager, Bill Morton started as

to Labor Day weekend, and in the early days, it was common for

superintendent, and Jim Corrigan took over as head golf professional.

men to commute to Watch Hill on weekends while their wives and

Part of that thinking is a result of how much those three individuals

children — and the staff they employed — remained in town. The first

were able to improve operations in their realms, with the Clubhouse

few decades of the 1900s were fairly vibrant times, with the stylish

putting out its own meals for parties and events for the first time instead of turning to outside caterers as course conditioning

Clubhouse that exists today being constructed at the turn

improved dramatically and participation in

of the twentieth-century and the golf course deftly upgraded by Seth Raynor in time for

the golf program soared. But their arrivals

the opening of the 1914 season, and later by

also coincided with several changes in how

Donald Ross in the early ’20s. But then came

members used the Club. Many families

the Depression and after that World War II,

started coming to Watch Hill earlier in the

and as was the case with most any entity in

summer and staying well into the fall, in

America whose well-being depended on

some cases winterizing their homes. More

discretionary spending, the Club struggled

activities were organized at the Club, and

mightily. Some members stopped coming to

members were much more inclined to entertain and socialize at the Clubhouse and the Beach

Watch Hill, and those who did visit were exceedingly careful with their money. Prosperity started to return, however, after

Club than at their homes, as had been the case with earlier generations.

Misquamicut merged with the Watch Hill Beach Club in 1945 — and

Advances in technology also made it easier for members to work

as the economy picked up through the 1950s and ’60s.

remotely from Watch Hill.

In his book written on the occasion of Misquamicut’s centennial

Taken together, those developments have combined to make

in 1995, author and past Club President George Wheeler identified

the Misquamicut Club busier and fiscally stronger than ever before.

1969 as the beginning of the so-called Modern Era, coming as it did

And in the minds of most members, better, too, for while things

after the retirement the previous year of longtime Golf Professional

have indeed become a little more hectic and a bit more refined, the

Fred Dinger and Course Superintendent Oscar Chapman — and

congeniality of the Club remains as alluring as the days when it was

the hiring of Dwight Campbell and Charlie O’Lari, respectively, to

founded, as does the gracious charm of its seaside setting.

replace them. Shortly after that, the Club installed a modern irrigation

The red fish have never really come back. But the other things

system for the golf course and constructed first a separate golf shop

that Misquamicut means — history, fun, and family — remain

and later a new tennis shop. According to Wheeler, that activity came

relevant and strong to this very day. 

Above: The sign that greets members and guests at the Club entrance. Opposite: Director of Golf Jim Corrigan handing out trophies during Prize Day 2016.

C H A P T E R

O N E

WATC H H IL L and the

C OMMUNIT Y

Above: One of the first pictures of Watch Hill’s bathing beach in the late 1890s. Opposite: A 1890 map of the Watch Hill area—the Club and golf course now sit near where the John M. Browning farm was located and the Beach Club is between Watch Hill and Napatree Beach.

W A T C H

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

EARLY TWENTY MILLENNIA AGO, the land on which Watch Hill sits today was buried under a

massive glacier. The ice sheet extended from the northernmost parts of eastern Canada to some 150 miles beyond the current Rhode Island coastline into what is now the Atlantic Ocean and was so immense that

geologists gave it a name, the Laurentide Glacier. Over time, it started to recede, and as that happened, the water and chunks of melting ice shifted and shoved massive boulders and other debris into vast landmasses. Some of those took the form of moraines that extended for dozen

Historical documents indicate that in 1660, a group of those

of miles. And as the thaw continued, the seas slowly rose, filling the

early colonists purchased the property that made up much of that

low-lying areas with water and turning the highest parts of those

region from a Pequot named Sosoa. The size of the parcel was

ridges into islands, like nearby Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard,

roughly twenty miles long and ten miles wide. Two years later, Captain Daniel Gookin

and peninsulas like the one on which Watch

built the first house in Watch Hill, and in

Hill is now found. Thousands of years later, in the middle of

1669, some of those pioneers incorporated

the seventeenth century, the first European

the town of Westerly, which at that time

settlers came to the Watch Hill area. Several

boasted thirty families.

different tribes populated the region at the

There was much to commend the

time, the most prominent of which were the

region to them, and it was described in some

Niantics and the Narragansetts, and they

writings as a place where “man can fish with

tended to move between the inland woods in

one hand and farm with the other.” There

the fall and winter and the coast in the spring

was also plenty of game to be hunted for

and summer. Bands of Pequots, who were

food and clothes in the forests that covered

most noteworthy for their war-mongering

a good portion of the region as well. The

ways, also made their home there, having

Native Americans had long ago learned

migrated from their ancestral homes along

how to take advantage of the bounties the

the Hudson River in New York State. Their occupation of what is

land and sea provided, and in time, so did the Europeans. But it was

now eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island drove a wedge

by no means an easy existence. Disease was a near constant problem,

between the mostly peace-loving Niantics, who were essentially

and so were conflicts with the Indians. In 1675, for example, a fierce

separated into two branches, the West and the East. Members of

clash that came to be known as King Philip’s War broke out, pitting

the East lived in and around Watch Hill and were led for many years

the Narragansetts and the Wampanoags, another area tribe who

in the 1600s by the sachem Ninigret. They are also the people who

were led by a chief who had adopted the name “King Philip,” against

named the area Misquamicut.

English settlers and their Native American allies. This caused

Above: This statue of Ninigret, by American artist Enid Yandell, was cast in 1911 and later donated to the town of Watch Hill. Opposite: The Landing of Roger Williams in 1636, painted by Alonzo Chappel, 1857

L E GE ND OF WATC H H I L L The poem Legend of Watch Hill, was written many years ago. Its author is unknown.

In dreamy careless mood I stroll

Before the white man’s hand had set

And day by day her eyes grew dim,

Beneath Watch Hill, and note the roar

The beacon light upon the hill,

And day by day her cheeks grew pale;

Of swelling, crested wave, that roll

With raven hair and eyes like jet,

And some times she would sing to him,

And break in foam wreaths on the shore.

A maiden sat there lone and still.

Ending the song with a plaintive wail.

With half closed eyes I idly view

Her lover’s light canoe has gone

At length the maiden, came no more,

The sails expanding in the breeze.

Beyond the isle of Manisees;

But sadly closed her eyes in death;

She comes to watch for him at dawn.

And those who tell the story o’er

She stays till blows the evening breeze.

Add, in the solemn under-breath.

And now the accents of my friends,

And every day she watches true;

That “thus the name Watch Hill was given.”

In grave tones, sound like bells that chime

But nowhere o’er the waters vast

The story told, through tears I see

At twilight, very far away.

Glides back again the swift canoe;

The lighthouse reaching high towards heaven,

Some tune we loved in olden times,

Though some so like her lover’s passed

And sunbeams smiling through a tree;

And, in the distant, hazy blue The level isle of Manisees.

A story of the long ago, That grave, sweet voice repeats to me; A story colored dark with woe, And dirge-like as the wind tossed sea.

They raise her expectations high; Hope fell again; and from a tree Came forth the mourning dove’s low cry; She sighed and gazed across the sea.

But, in the ocean’s plaintive roar, I fancy I can hear the cry Of one who died upon the shore, And one at sea, with no one nigh.

T H E

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that surrounded that neck of land.

the men and women residing in

Growth did not come easily to Watch Hill,

Westerly to flee to Newport until

and census figures from 1790 indicate that

the fighting was over. Records indicate that around

only seventeen people were residing in the

that same time, the name “Watch

village at that time. Things began to change

Hill” was first employed in writings to describe what the Niantics had

in the mid-1800s when it started to become a

long called “The Great Bluff.” Rising some seventy feet above sea

resort community. The evolution made sense,

level and overlooking what are known today as the Block Island and

given Watch Hill’s stunning seaside setting

Fisher’s Island Sounds and the Atlantic Ocean, it had served as an

and the seemingly constant ocean breezes

important lookout point by the Indians, to protect against marauding

that made the area such a congenial place to

tribes and also to alert them when schools of fish and occasional pods

escape from the oppressive heat and humidity

of whales swam close to shore. Soon, the settlers were employing

of major American cities south and west.

the bluff in similar ways, and also as a place from which they could

The first hotel in town, the Watch Hill House, opened its doors

guide ships with lights through the treacherous, rock-filled waters

in 1833. The lighthouse keeper, Jonathan Nash, built the inn, and

Above: Early advertisements for Watch Hill and Watch Hill House, and the building itself (center) after its 1833 opening. Opposite, top: Providence and Stonington Steamship Company’s Steamer Rhode Island, 1882. Bottom: The Larkin House hotel opened in 1869.

W A T C H

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his son George served as its first proprietor. Nash the younger was celebrated for the sumptuous lobster dinners he prepared his guests, charging a mere twenty-five cents for each meal. He was also known for working barefooted most of the time. Several years later, the Dickens Inn arrived, with George Nash and his brother-in-law Henry Dickens running that concern. The Narragansett House and the Bay View House soon followed, and they were owned and operated by George and his brothers, Nathan and Winslow Nash. Then, in 1868, George Nash constructed the Ocean House. The following season, the four-hundred-room Larkin House began taking in guests.

Y THE LATE 1880 s ,

Watch Hill boasted six major hotels as

well as a nondenominational chapel that had been erected for

been salvaged after they had been left behind by a traveling carnival.

summer services on a lot across from the Ocean House that George

Access to the retreat was not a problem, as trains running between

Nash had donated to the community. The town also featured a

New York and Boston made regular stops in Stonington, from where

carousel by Watch Hill Cove using â&#x20AC;&#x153;wooden flying horsesâ&#x20AC;? that had

travelers caught a trolley to Watch Hill. Alternatively, visitors availed

WHO WA S NI NI GR E T ? When the first European settlers came to western Rhode Island in

some documents as selling parts of that territory in the early 1660s

the mid-1600s, one of the Native American leaders of that region was

to European settlers and using the proceeds to finance his fights with

Ninigret, a sachem from the East Niantic tribe. Roger Williams, the

rival tribes.

English religious dissenter who is credited with founding the Ocean

Ninigret frequently changed alliances in the wars that broke out

State, described him as “a chiefe souldier” and “a noble instrument.”

among different Indian tribes as well as between Native Americans and

One historian of that period lauds Ninigret as “an able politician and

European settlers. He helped the English as well as the Narragansetts in

a flexible and resourceful leader who saw in the European presence

their battle against the Pequots in 1637. Then, in 1675, he decided not to

a means to accomplish his own agenda,” while others have described

take up arms in what was known as King Philip’s War, which pitted the

him as a heroic figure and one of the most influential Indians of

Narragansetts and Wampanoags, who were led by a chief who had

that era in southern New England. Praise for the man is not

adopted the name “King Philip,” against English colonizers and

universal, however, and some chroniclers of that time assert

their Native American allies. Ninigret’s reticence to join that

that Ninigret was, in fact, a feckless fellow and little more

battle is generally attributed to his believing that the best

than a legend in his own mind.

way to take care of his people was to stay neutral.

Such discrepancies are understandable given that

King Philip’s War ended in 1676, with the English

records of those times centuries ago are spare and

routing King Philip and his cadres. Some historical accounts

sketchy. But it is generally acknowledged that the sachem

of that conflict give Ninigret credit for not leading the East

was born in 1610, that his given name was Janemo, that

Niantics to slaughter and applaud his sensible diplomacy,

his tribe was closely allied with the Narragansetts and often

while others criticize his actions as being traitorous.

in conflict with the Pequots and the Mohegans, and that he

Ninigret died the year after that conflict, in 1677, and was

was cousin to a pair of celebrated Narragansett chiefs, Canonicus and

eventually laid to rest at Indian Burying Hill near Charlestown. A cast

Miantonomo. It is believed that when Miantonomo died in the summer

bronze statue depicting the sachem, on one knee and holding a black

in 1643, Janemo decided to change his name, something that often

fish in each hand, is located today in Watch Hill. The piece, which has

happened when a Native American leader had a vision or faced a

the chieftain clad in moccasins and a breechcloth and wearing a two-

great challenge. From that point on, he was Ninigret.

feather headdress, was fashioned by American artist Enid Yandell in

Accountings of that period indicate that Ninigret lived for a time on

Paris in 1911, and she used as a model an Indian member of the troupe

the spot in Watch Hill where the Ocean House stands today, and that

that toured Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Five years later,

his tribe, the East Niantics, populated an area between the Pawcatuck

Mrs. Clement A. Griscom of Watch Hill donated the statue to the town

River and the present-day town of Weekapaug. He is also cited in

in memory of her husband. 

Above: An engraved brass Peace Medal was presented by Colonial Secretary Edward Rawson at Council in 1676 to the chiefs of the loyal tribes who aided the colonists during King Philip’s War. Opposite: A painting of Sachem Ninigret from the early 1700s

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101 lots, most of which the owners sold to their friends back home.

themselves of a steamship service that ran between those villages. As a result, Watch Hill fairly bustled in the post-Civil War

Not long after that, a separate syndicate from the Queen City led by

summers. And no one was really surprised when people started

two of the founders of the Misquamicut Club, William P. Anderson

calling it the “Queen of the Atlantic Resorts.”

and William A. Procter, bought and then subdivided a portion of

While the hotels provided plenty of beds to visitors and lots

Potter Farm. Then, another Cincinnatian — whose name was Robert

of comfort, some summer residents believed people might prefer

Burnet and whose father Jacob had been a member of the group who

the more private and casual confines of their own homes—and

had originally developed the Everett property — acquired another

the ability to stay in Watch Hill for entire seasons — to the hotels.

portion of Potter Farm and established his own subdivision. Those,

So, they began buying up farmland and creating subdivisions. The

too, catered to fellow Cincinnatians as well as to equally well-heeled

first significant one occurred in 1886, when a trio of Cincinnati

folks from the Midwest, chiefly St. Louis and Chicago, as well as

businessman purchased the 130-acre Everett spread and split it into

Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Hartford, Providence, and New York.

Above: The new Westerley Railroad Station at the turn of the twentieth century. Opposite, top: The Watch Hill-Westerley trolley in the 1890s along Bay Street. Bottom: A Pierce Great-Arrow touring car in Watch Hill

HE REAL ESTATE VENTURES

spurred an era of building

in Watch Hill, and by the turn of the twentieth-century the

village boasted 250 so-called “cottages,” which in most cases were actually quite large and fashionable homes constructed in a variety of architectural styles. Many of the abodes were sided with wood shingles, and several even bore names. Their presence, as well as

that of the people who owned them, cemented Watch Hill’s status as a stylish summer retreat, as did the creation of the Misquamicut An article from the June 29, 1895, Watch Hill Life newspaper.

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Club in 1895, which was founded largely so the families that moved

As prosperous as it had become, Watch Hill nonetheless had to

into those new homes had a place for recreation when they were

endure some difficult times at the beginning of the twentieth century.

in town. And in time, the Club became a center of social activities,

A devastating fire in 1916 destroyed three of the town’s biggest

staging elegant dinners and dances, as well as golf and tennis

hotels, and America’s entrance into World War I the following April

competitions, and allowing guests from area hotels to join in the fun.

certainly put a damper on summer activities for a spell. People all

The founding of the Watch Hill Yacht Club in 1913 only added to

over the country started cutting back on their spending and travel.

the sense of gaiety.

And there was a certain somberness to those years, evidenced in part by the Club not serving wine or holding dinner dances during some

Those who summered in the village were for the most part a

of the conflict.

wealthy bunch. But according to various newspaper reports, theirs was a more “staid and family-oriented community” when compared

to other upper crust enclaves, such as nearby Newport, with one writer describing Watch Hill as an “Andorra of Victoriana on the New England shore.”

HERE WAS CONCERN

that the start of the Prohibition Era

in 1920 would have a similarly negative effect on people’s

inclination to eat, drink, and be merry. But the end of World War I

Above: Miss Joan Rhoades (left) rides in the Second Annual Horse Show of The Watch Hill Riding and Polo Club (right) in 1929. Opposite: Watch Hill was home to all kinds of entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century, including palm reading (above). Bottom: Seaside Topics founder Charles F. Hammond (on the left under the Bathing Beach sign), in the early 1900s. Following pages: Watch Hill Yacht Club, circa 1925; the Yacht Club in 2016

AUGUST 15, 1929 J U NE 2 8 , 1 9 1 3

JU LY 2 8, 1 9 39

J U LY 3 0, 1954

J U N E 1 4, 1 928

J U LY 2 5 , 1 896

SEP TEMBER 11, 1959

JU LY 31 , 1 9 0 1

AUGU ST 1 5 , 1 9 2 9

J U LY 1 1 , 1 9 29

AUGUST 15, 1 9 2 9

Above and opposite: Newspaper clippings over the years from Watch Hill Life and Seaside Topics

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had lightened the mood to some degree. Reports also indicate that

But then came the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the Great

Watch Hill residents did not let the new laws banning the sale and

Depression, and the economic travails those events ushered in did

consumption of alcohol get too much in the way

much to deaden the sense of fun and frolic that

of their having a good time. In fact, there was so

had existed the previous decade. The Hurricane of

much revelry during that period that one resident

1938 also had a particularly brutal impact on the

described the community as being “a lot of shingled

community, killing fifteen people and destroying

houses surrounded by gin.”

dozens of homes. So did another town fire that year.

That gin, and whatever else people in Watch

Then came World War II. “There was gas rationing,

Hill were making in their bathtubs, seemed to

which made it difficult to make the trip to and from

sustain summer residents quite happily through the

Watch Hill, and food rationing, too,” says longtime

Roaring Twenties. And the community appeared to

Misquamicut Club member Edith Eglin, who first

be as popular a destination as ever, especially with the growth of

started coming to Watch Hill in 1938. “Things were tight financially

automobiles that made it easier to travel to and from there.

due to the Depression and also the War, and people were not coming

Above: Turn-of-the-century Watch Hill, looking east from Bay Street. Opposite, clockwise from upper left: George W. Hoxie drives along Bay Street while his son, Porter, rides in the rear of the delivery truck; the original Watch Hill Chapel; the beach at Watch Hill, circa 1930

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up as much as they once did. And those that did visit were not spending

Heminway and his wife Jane, and were often seen at the Club and

very much money. You could really see that in some of the homes in

around the town.

town, which by the mid-1940s looked like they were falling apart.”

In those post-war years, women and children typically traveled to Watch Hill for the season in late June, once school had let out. “As

were certainly a much more prosperous

for the men, they usually came up on weekends,” says Bill Miller, a

time for the cottage colony, as the economy began a very

Pittsburgh native and one-time president of the Misquamicut Club

sustained boom shortly after the fighting ended. Summer residents

who has been summering in Watch Hill since the early 1950s. “My

who only months and years before were dealing with rationed gas and

father used to take a train from Pittsburgh after work on Fridays,

food were now employing maids, nannies, and cooks for the season

riding overnight in a Pullman car and then making the same trip back

and throwing lavish cocktail parties and dinners. The town also started

on Sunday evenings. That went on through July and August, and then

once again to enjoy visits by celebrities like David Niven and Clark

most everyone left after Labor Day weekend.” From that point on

Gable, who often stayed at the cottage of Misquamicut member Jack

until the next summer, the place felt more or less abandoned.

HE POST-WAR YEARS

Above, left: Actor Clark Gable was a frequent guest at the Misquamicut Club. Right: Crooner Bing Crosby, pictured with Club member Jane Heminway, visited as well. Opposite: Two women riding the Flying Horse Carousel in Watch Hill, circa 1950. Dating from about 1876, it is the oldest carousel of its type, in which the horses are suspended from a center frame, and may be the oldest extant carousel in the United States. It is one of two intact examples of the work of the Charles W.F. Dare Company of New York City, one of the major carousel manufacturers of its time.

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To be sure, the Watch Hill of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s still had

availability on the real estate market of a number of classic Watch

the feel of a quiet, New England seaside village. There was a fish

Hill cottages, which the families that had owned them for a couple of

market on Bay Street, a gas station and garage, as well as a couple

generations could no longer afford. As the newcomers moved in and

of grocery stores and a beauty parlor, and everyone seemed to know

started to make extensive changes and upgrades to their summer

each other’s name. It was easy to rent reasonably priced houses and

homes, the enclave began to acquire a somewhat fancier feel.

apartments for the summer. But there was also a sense of opulence

But even as that happened, Watch Hill retained the many things

and elegance to the place where people summered in cottages

that made it a summer paradise: the vast beaches, the cooling breezes,

that boasted a dozen bedrooms or more and at least that many

the towering hedges and bleached gravel driveways, the views of

bathrooms—and from which children were driven to and from their

the Atlantic Ocean, and the quiet streets on which youngsters still

tennis lessons at the Club by family chauffeurs.

ride their bikes. There are only two hotels in town these days, the Ocean House and the Watch Hill Inn, and that keeps tourism at

however, with the Arab oil

a manageable level, as does a lack of parking for outside vehicles.

embargo in 1973 and the recession that took hold around

“In many ways, the town has changed as little as any place possibly

that same time. Suddenly, staffing a summer home no longer made

could over such a long period of time,” says Peter Vogt, whose family

economic sense. Nor did the frequent hosting of parties. Then, in

started coming here in the late 1940s.

HINGS BEGAN TO CHANGE,

Watch Hill is still an Eden all these years later. Just a slightly

the 1980s and ’90s, baby boomers started to discover Watch Hill, and

different one. 

its easy pace and lack of airs appealed to them. So did the sudden

Above: Sunset over Watch Hill Harbor. Opposite: An aerial photo of Watch Hill Lighthouse with the Beach Club and harbor in the background

C H A P T E R

T W O

The

FOUNDI NG

Above: William P. Anderson, founding member of the Misquamicut Club. Opposite: The original corn crib Clubhouse in 1895

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

S THE COTTAGE COLONY at Watch Hill grew in the late 1800s, residents began to look for different

ways to spend their leisure time. To be sure, East Beach remained a popular place to gather, and swimming and boating in the Atlantic continued to be favorite recreations. But people started to be

drawn to other sports. Such as golf, which well-to-do Americans had recently discovered in the British Isles and who were beginning to build rudimentary courses in the States. As a result, some of the men who were developing property in Watch Hill, Cincinnatians William P. Anderson and William A. Procter chief among them, saw the royal and ancient game as yet one more thing to commend the community as a summer retreat — and another inducement to get people to buy a lot and construct a house there. Though records are sketchy, it appears a crude course was

clear how many holes the layout contained or exactly where it was

laid out in town in 1893. No information exists as to who actually

located. But we do know that it began attracting players, no doubt

instigated its construction or oversaw its design. And it is not at all

drawn by the novelty of what to most Americans was a very new

Above: William A. Procter, founding member of Misquamicut, in the 1880s. Opposite: The July 6, 1895, edition of Watch Hill Life featured an article describing the opening of the Misquamicut Club.

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The world in 1895 THOUGH HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS INDICATE that golf was being

and eastern Europe. Their numbers grew so high that Congress

played on a nine-hole layout near the ocean in Watch Hill, Rhode

authorized the construction of several screening centers, the most

Island, in the early 1890s, it was not until the summer of 1895 that the

active and famous of which was Ellis Island in New York Harbor.

Misquamicut Club officially came into being. That is when a group of

By 1895, thousands of men, women, and children were entering the

fifteen men resolved to incorporate under that appellation and then

United States each day through that way station.

create a Constitution and By-Laws to govern operations. The move

At the same time, another migration of a very different sort was

came at a time when the royal and ancient game was just beginning

taking place, as more and more Americans were moving west to start

to take hold in America — and just six weeks before a fledging group

new lives and seek their fortunes in the more open lands that lay beyond the Mississippi River.

that would come to be known as the United States Golf Association

The automobile as a mode of transportation was just starting

staged the first U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open championships, at the

to take off in 1895, and there were several developments that

Newport Country Club, some forty miles away.

year that hastened that trend. Rudolf Diesel received patents

The establishment of those tournaments was a big deal in the

in Germany for what came to be known as the Diesel

American sports world and a significant athletic milestone in a year that had many of them. After all, 1895 is also

engine, for example, and George B. Selden was

when William G. Morgan invented the game of volleyball

granted the first U.S. patent for a four-wheeled

(though he initially called it “mintonette”). That year,

automobile that utilized a two-stroke engine. In addition, a German physicist named Wilhelm

the first professional football game was played in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, with a team from the Latrobe YMCA shutting

Rontgen discovered a type of radiation known as X-rays in

out a squad from the Jeannette Athletic Club, 12-0. And though

1895. The London School of Economics held its first classes

gaming is not universally regarded as a sport, it is worth noting that

that year, and Oscar Hammerstein opened the Olympia, the

a San Francisco mechanic named Charles Fey built the first slot

first theater ever built in the Times Square district of New

machines in 1895, and then began putting them in local saloons.

York City. Then, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris in

Grover Cleveland, a Democrat from New York, was president

late November 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will and

of the United States in 1895, with Adlai Stevenson of Illinois

testament, decreeing that his estate be used to establish

serving as his VP, and theirs were not easy jobs. The Panic of 1893,

the Nobel Prize after his death.

which saw hundreds of banks fail and the national unemployment

Nobel did not pass away that year, but Frederick

rate approach 20 percent, led to what at that point was the worst

Douglass, the former slave and American author and civil

economic depression in American history. In addition, conflicts

rights advocate, did. The German Communist philosopher

between workers and the companies that employed them led to a

Frederick Engels also died then, and so did Louis Pasteur,

series of significant labor strikes across the country. The financial

the famed microbiologist and chemist from France.

travails also led to serious debates in political and financial circles

With regards to births, those in 1895 included future FBI director J. Edgar Hoover; baseball great Babe Ruth; actors Rudolph Valentino

over currency reform and abandonment of the gold standard.

and Buster Keaton; and Jack Dempsey, who would one day reign as

Even with those ills, immigration to the United States soared, with the largest groups of newcomers traveling from southern, central,

the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. 

Wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Opposite: Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in Jack vulputate velit Opposite, esse molestie consequat, illumleft: dolore autem vel eumDouglass; iriure dolor in hendrerit ieu. movie Following pages: DuisCleveland autem veleum iriure dolor in Above:Boxer Dempsey. clockwise fromvel upper Ellisduis Island; Frederick Rudolph Valentino poster; Grover Inauguration music; nostrud modo consequahendrerit in velit esse consequat, vel illum dolore duis hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore duis hendrerit ieuis autem. Horace Rawlins, winner of the first U.S. Open Championship in 1895

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and different sport. Two years later, a group of summer residents

of New Yorkers, Sherman W. Knevals and Dudley Phelps, as vice

that included Anderson and Procter decided to establish a formal

president and secretary, respectively. Another man from the Big

club featuring golf as its primary amenity. Around the same time,

Apple, Frank B. Wesson Jr., served as Captain of Golf, while Robert

they created an entity called the Misquamicut

F. Ballantine, the president of the Newark, New

Land Company that was designed to finance the

Jersey-based brewery that his father Peter had

creation and expansion of the fledging association.

built into one of the largest in the U.S., sat on the

According to reports in the June 29, 1895,

Club’s original Board of Governors.

edition of the local newspaper Watch Hill Life,

the Misquamicut Golf Club formally opened on the afternoon of July 4 that year with a round of golf followed by an afternoon tea. By that point, Misquamicut

boasted

forty

members,

NOTHER MEMBER OF THAT BODY

was

Procter, who was the son of one of the

founders of Procter & Gamble and that company’s

with

first president. A quiet and modest man who

Anderson serving as the first president. A veteran

happily operated in the background, he had first

of the Civil War who had made a fortune in the

come to Watch Hill at the behest of his friend

cottonseed oil business, he had served on the staffs

Anderson and soon became one of the major

of Union Generals Terrill, Burnside, and Wright

financiers of real estate development in town. In

and was wounded in the Battles of Seven Pines

time, Procter built a summer home at 235 Watch

and Shiloh. Anderson was also an early head of the

Hill Road, which occupied the highest point of

Watch Hill Improvement Society and was such a fixture in town that

the Potter Cove subdivision. An avid golfer, he gave Misquamicut

he was often times referred to as “the mayor.”

members a corn crib that had been standing on his property, and

As for the other officers of the new Club, they included a pair

they quickly converted that into their first Clubhouse. And he played

Above, top: The names of Club founders William Procter and Robert F. Ballantine were familiar to many Americans thanks to their familial ties to national brands Procter & Gamble and Ballantine Brewery. Inset: A vintage Fourth of July postcard from the era in which the Club was founded. Opposite: Meeting notes of the Governing Committee dated July 13, 1895

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a significant role in helping the Club through its early years. But

dollars a year, indicating that the original Watch Hill layout had been

things changed for Procter with the passing of his beloved wife

abandoned or at least made over. According to other reports, Park was

Charlotte in 1903, and he appears to have been so distraught by her

also available to give golf lessons, at the rate of one dollar per session. A week later, Watch Hill Life proclaimed the opening of

death that he committed suicide four years later. Newspaper accounts from 1895 indicate that the “grounds and

Misquamicut to have been “the most brilliant out-of-door gathering”

clubhouse (of Misquamicut) are not far from the

ever to be held in that community and stated that the Club’s

beach” and noted that Willie Park Jr., a professional

“entry into the social life at Watch Hill is a marked innovation.” It

golfer from Scotland and a two-time British Open

also asserted that it was “a good sign for the future of social life”

champion, had designed a new nine-hole course

there. In addition, the periodical revealed that tickets for one-week

on land leased from farmer John Browning for fifty

memberships cost five dollars, with those lasting a month going for

Previous pages: A photo of the original Clubhouse in 1896, shows caddies and members, including future U.S. president William Howard Taft (beside the bicycle). Above: The newly painted Clubhouse that same year. Inset: Caddies Day 1896 newspaper clipping. Opposite: Caddies on the Clubhouse deck

Above and opposite: The Articles of Incorporation of the Misquamicut Club

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fifteen dollars. As for caddies, they were available for a fee of fifteen

to giving lessons to members and their guests during the upcoming

cents an hour, and there was a time when some of them camped out

season and making and repairing their golf clubs, Anderson was

in tents during the season on land abutting the golf course.

tasked with building a second

Club leaders organized the first annual meeting on August 24

nine holes on land abutting the

that summer, resolving to eventually incorporate and also produce

Browning spread. Around the same

a proper Constitution and set of bylaws. A few weeks later, they

time, Club leaders also decided to

renewed the lease for its land from the farmer Browning.

revamp their Clubhouse.

Misquamicut formally incorporated on February 5, 1896, and a

Those were all ambitious steps

little more than a month later, it hired its first official golf professional,

for such a young organization, and

a sixteen-year-old Scottish lad named Willie Anderson, who had just

much was done in a very short time,

immigrated to the U.S. through Ellis Island, New York. In addition

with the Land Company buying

Above: A golfer tees off just steps away from the original Clubhouse in an 1898 photo. Inset: A clipping from the July 1, 1896, edition of Watch Hill Life details the opening season of the Misquamicut Club.

C H A P T E R

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Frank Wesson Jr.: An early evangelist for golf in America IN LOOKING BACK at the United States in the 1890s, it is important

earliest advocates in America believed that any deviation from how

to recognize what a golf backwater it truly was. The first courses in

it was enjoyed in its ancestral home might well doom its prospects of

the country were just starting to be constructed, and they were for

long-term success in the States. When notable new associations such

the most part crude designs laid out in fallow fields, with rusted tin

as Misquamicut took that step, organizers of other clubs followed suit.

cans serving as “cups.” Most people at the time had no idea how to

A Mrs. Frank B. Wesson Jr. is frequently mentioned in accounts

swing a cleek or a mashie properly and did not understand the rules

from turn-of-the-century periodicals as well, with reports lauding

of the game. So they relied on a knowledgeable few when it came

her strong performances in handicap tournaments and the early

to building new courses and creating the first

leadership roles she assumed at Misquamicut.

clubs in the New World — and to playing their

She sat on the Entertainment Committee,

maiden rounds. Oftentimes, those individuals

for example, and frequently presided over

were immigrant professionals from the British

afternoon teas.

Isles who were well versed in all things golf.

As for her husband, he was reported to

But every now and then, an American lent a

have led the revamping of the Misquamicut

hand as well.

golf course by Scottish architect Tom Bendelow

Frank Wesson Jr. seems to have been just

at the turn of the twentieth century. And

such an individual. A member of the family

articles in the Watch Hill paper indicate that

that founded the Smith & Wesson firearms

Wesson was still playing golf and still serving

company in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1852 and

as Captain when that project was completed in

a resident of New York City, he was serving as

1901. He kept that job through the following

the president of the long-gone Westchester

season and is mentioned in minutes as having

Golf Club around the time that Misquamicut

attended Misquamicut’s annual meeting in

was born. That indicates he possessed some

the fall of 1903. But then his name vanishes

solid comprehension of the sport, as did

from accounts of Club activities. By the start

his being made a founding Governor of

of the next golf season, he had been replaced

Misquamicut and its first Captain of Golf. Club

as Captain by S. M. Hamill and was no longer

records and local Rhode Island newspaper

on the Board. There was no mention in those

reports indicate that Wesson was quite active

same documents of Wesson having passed

in the building of the original courses in Watch Hill and overseeing

away. Perhaps he simply resigned from the Club or stopped visiting

the club’s fledging golf program. He likely had a lot to do with the

Watch Hill in the summers. Maybe he had to give up the game. Wesson’s contributions to the growth of golf at Misquamicut as

hiring of Willie Anderson as Misquamicut’s first head professional. Equally as significant was the role he took in ensuring that the

well as its development in the States cannot be overstated. It was

Rules of Golf as promulgated by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of

thanks to men like him that golf was able to take root in America. He

St Andrews, Scotland, governed play at Misquamicut, for the game’s

was one of the game’s earliest and more successful evangelists.  65

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property for expansion of the golf course and Club and then leasing

As for the Clubhouse, a writer from Watch Hill Life described

it to members. Misquamicut operated in that capacity until 1913, by

how it “had been painted white, which with the moss green roof

which time it consisted of 133 members and was in good enough fiscal

makes a most pleasing effect.” It went on to relate that the “veranda

shape to buy out the Land Company and stand on its own two feet.

on the east overlooking the ocean has been extended to twice its

Work on both the golf course and Clubhouse was completed

original width and is protected by a green and white awning. A door

in time for the opening of the 1896 summer season. Once again,

has also been cut through on this side, making access to the veranda

that occasion fell on Independence Day, and local reporters lauded

much easier. An ell has been built on the west side containing 32

the new 18-hole layout for its “rugged, boulder-topped hillocks”

lockers and a convenient repair bench. At a short distance to the rear

and gaping valleys as well as for the ways the ocean often came into

is a pleasant shelter awning for caddies.”

view — and how the sound of the surf could be heard across the

A lot had changed in the year since the Club’s actual founding.

course. Another founding member, John H. Congdon of Providence,

And as a result of those developments, Misquamicut was off to a very

won that day’s golf tournament with a score of 110.

strong start. 

Early treasurer’s accounts

RE D (FIS H) A ND GR E E N: THE C L U B N A M E AND COL OR S WE R E DE C I DE D O N E A R LY Founders of the Misquamicut Golf Club, as it was initially known,

profile Baltusrol had achieved by hosting sixteen major amateur and

moved quickly when it came to selecting a name for their nascent

professional championships in its first century of operation.

association as well as an emblem and colors, and they

Baltusrol’s connection with Gorham, a well-regarded

identified them all in the Club Constitution at the time of its

silver maker and frequent caterer to First Ladies and men

formal establishment in 1895.

and women of the highest social standings, has led some

The name Misqaumicut comes from a Native American

to speculate that the company also created the Misquamicut

word used centuries ago to describe the present-day Watch Hill

emblem. But there is nothing to substantiate whether that was

and Westerley area. It translates roughly into “the place of the

indeed the case, and no indication that a winged golf ball

red fish,” and speaks not only to the ways that salmon

insignia even came out of Gorham’s Providence offices,

once filled local waters but also to the important

as it had also established an outpost in New York by

economic role they once played in the region.

the mid-1890s. And that is likely where DuFais would

With regards to the emblem and colors, those

have gone for help with the Baltusrol design.

were laid out in Article XIII of that document, which

With regards to the Misquamicut Golf Club

read: “the colors of the club shall be red and

colors, records indicate that early members

green and the emblem shall be a white golf ball

possessed and often donned jackets that boasted

with gold wings.” Unfortunately, there are no

the red and green. In fact, an article in the Watch

explanations accompanying that item as to why

Hill Life newspaper from the summer of 1896

either of those was picked.

describes how “linksters of the day would ride their

Interestingly, the Baltusrol Golf Club of

bicycles to the club while attired in red coats with

Springfield, New Jersey, adopted a similar

brass buttons and green collars.” Decades later,

logo (pictured at right, below jacket) a year later, with

there are still Misquamicut members who wear their

bylaws indicating that its insignia “shall be a red golf ball

Club jackets to special affairs.

with golden wings.” According to minutes from an 1896

Fifty years after its founding, leaders at Misquamicut

board meeting, one of Baltusrol’s founding members, John DuFais,

modified the association’s appellation after they had merged with the

submitted designs of that emblem for the club board to consider from

Watch Hill Beach Club, dropping the word “golf” to reflect the fact

the Gorham Company of Providence, Rhode Island, and also Unger

that the retreat from that point forward was about more than just the

Brothers of Newark, New Jersey. And it appears those companies

royal and ancient game. Its new name was The Misquamicut Club, and

then produced silver jewelry in that form, with the Baltusrol leaders

while that remains the formal designation, members often distinguish

authorizing DuFais to purchase a dozen such pieces. There is no

between the two, with one called simply “the Beach Club,” and the

evidence he ever did; however, the club did adopt the logo, and it came

place where the Clubhouse and golf course are located identified as

to be one of the most recognizable in golf, in large part due to the high

“the Golf Club.” 

Willie Park Jr.: Misquamicut’s first golf course architect the greatest selection of clubs in the world.

THE DESIGNER OF THE ORIGINAL NINE-HOLE COURSE at Misquamicut, Willie Park Jr., was a member of one of the most famous golf families in

Those shops came to fruition just as the game of golf was starting to take

Scotland. His father, Willie Sr. was a celebrated player who not only held

hold in America — and the flow of immigrant professionals from Scotland

his own in challenge matches against the likes of Old Tom Morris, Allan

had begun. A couple of other Musselburgh natives, Willie Dunn Jr. and

Robertson, and Willie Dunn Sr., but who also won four Open Championships,

Willie Campbell, were already in the States, playing matches and serving

including the inaugural one at Prestwick in 1860. In addition, Willie Sr. was

fledging golf clubs as professionals and course designers. So, in 1895, Willie

known as a masterful club and ball maker in his hometown of Musselburgh,

Park Jr. set out on the trail they had previously blazed. Once in the U.S.,

just outside Edinburgh.

he played in a series of exhibition matches against his mates from the Old

Willie Park Jr. was born in that village, on February 4, 1864, and began

Country and also found time to open a branch of William Park & Son in New

caddying on the links there as a young boy. By the time he was sixteen years

York City. In addition, Park began taking on jobs to design golf courses, and

old, Willie Jr. was playing well enough to enter his first Open — and to finish

one of his first assignments was Misquamicut. Newspaper reports indicate

sixteenth, just one stroke behind his father and five shots ahead of another

that in addition to creating that layout, he gave lessons to members at the

family member who had also won an Open, his uncle Mungo Park. That

rate of one dollar per session. Remarkably, Park also found time during that

year, young Willie also took his first club job at Rhyton in northeast England,

period to write what is regarded as the first instructional book by a playing

where he served as head professional and keeper of the green.

professional. Called The Game of Golf, it was published in 1896.

In time, Willie Jr. returned to Musselburgh to help his father in his

Park stayed in the States for three years, returning to the British Isles

growing equipment manufacturing concern, Wm. Park & Son. The timing

in 1898 and diving headlong into course design. Easily his most acclaimed

was just right, as club and ball making were transitioning from the artisan

effort during that time was the Old Course at the Sunningdale Golf Club

era to one of mass production. And his father’s company was well regarded

outside London, though he also received hearty praise for his work at

for the gear it produced.

Huntercombe in Oxfordshire. In later years, the noted golf writer and

Though he immersed himself deeply in the family business, Willie Jr. kept

broadcaster Henry Longhurst joined that association, and so did James Bond

up with his playing, and in 1887, he captured his first Open Championship,

author Ian Fleming, who included it in his book, Goldfinger, with Bond

at Prestwick. Two years later, Park took his second Open, on his home course

telling his nemesis at the start of their fabled golf match that he plays off a

at Musselburg.

nine handicap at Huntercombe.

To be sure, Park was playing well at the end of the 1880s. But the club

Not surprisingly, Park’s design business dried up during the First

business continued to grow, from a small operation based in a professional’s

World War. So, he decided to return to the States, in 1916. He had done a

workshop to a factory in which some eighty people labored. His older brother

great deal to help grow the game during his first visit to America, through

Frank handled much of the day-to-day operations, and that gave Willie Jr.

his exhibition matches, the lessons that he gave, and the layouts that he

the ability to play competitively on occasion and also to design clubs, which

constructed, and he was pleased to be back. He spent the next three years

was his true passion. During that time, he received patents for a number of

building golf courses in the U.S. and Canada, and he produced some gems,

pieces, including a lofter, a driving cleek, and a mashie to make playing out

among them the wonderful, links-style track at Maidstone, in Easthampton,

of long grass easier. Park also developed innovative new patterns for gutta

Long Island, and the parklands beauty at the Woodway Country Club in

percha balls and assisted in 1894 in the opening of a trio of retail branches

Darien, Connecticut. But when the war ended, Park went back home, in 1919. Six years later,

of the family business in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Manchester and London,

he was dead, at the age of 61. 

England. It wasn’t long before the London outlet was credited with having 69

WIL L I E A NDE R S ON: THE F I R ST OF F I C I A L P R OF E S S I O N A L Perhaps no word better describes golf professional Willie Anderson than

Reddie. Reddie went on to work as the head greeenkeeper and golf

precocious. Raised in the hamlet of North Berwick in the East Lothian region

professional at the St. Andrews Golf Club outside New York City, while

of Scotland, he was only eleven years old when he was first licensed as

Anderson enjoyed a second season in Watch Hill. That year, Anderson

a caddie on the esteemed West Links there, toting clubs across the

also took time to compete in his first U.S. Open, which was played

very grounds that his father Tom nurtured as the head greenkeeper. By

at the Chicago Golf Club. Just seventeen years old, he managed to

the age of fourteen, Willie was an apprentice club maker in the nearby

finish second in what was then a thirty-six-hole event, losing in a

village of Gullane. Two years later, the sixteen-year-old left his home for

playoff to Joe Lloyd, who was representing the Essex Country Club in

the port of Glasgow, where he boarded a combination sail and steam

Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.

ship called the S.S. Pomeranian bound for New York City. He assumed

Anderson left Misquamicut after the 1897 season and went

his first job as head golf professional that spring, at the Misquamicut

on to hold head professional positions at a number of top American

Club. Five years later, Anderson won his first U.S. Open, and

clubs, among them Baltusrol in Springfield, New Jersey;

by the time he was twenty-six, he had captured four national

Apawamis in Westchester County, New York; Onwentsia

championships, including a remarkable three in a row from

outside Chicago; the St. Louis Country Club; and the

1903 through 1905. Only Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, and Jack

Philadelphia Cricket Club. It was common for professionals

Nicklaus have ever won as many.

in those days to change jobs frequently, and Anderson toiled at

Willie Anderson’s arrival at Ellis Island in late March of 1896

ten different retreats over a fourteen-year stretch of time. As for

came after a rather harrowing crossing of the Atlantic Ocean that

his replacement as head professional in Misquamicut, it turned out

saw nearly a third of the vessel’s ninety-seven passengers die from

to be none other than his old friend, Harry Reddie.

what was known in that era as “ship fever.” Then he made his way

Shortly after he left Rhode Island, Anderson went on a

to Watch Hill to begin work at the newly formed Misquamicut

competitive run that has never been equaled in championship

Club. It is not entirely clear how he came to secure that position,

golf. He started with his triumph in the 1901 U.S. Open at the

but given that the young Scot left for Rhode Island almost

Myopia Hunt Club north of Boston and followed that with

immediately after his arrival in New York, it seems likely that his

victories in the National Championship in 1903 (in another

hiring had been arranged before he actually traveled to the States. Once

play-off, at Baltusrol), 1904 (at the Glen View Club in Chicago), and

Anderson settled into his new position, he laid out a second nine, giving

1905 (on a return to Myopia). He was the first two-time Open winner in

the Club a full eighteen-hole course. He also began giving lessons and

tournament history and remains to this day the only man who won that

overseeing the maintenance of the golf grounds as he made sure there

title three years in a row.

was a proper contingent of caddies available for Misquamicut members.

Sadly, Anderson did not have a lot of time to savor his major

After his first season at Misquamicut, Anderson returned to

championship triumphs, and he died just five years after his last one,

Scotland for the winter. But he came back the following summer, this

at the age of thirty-one. He lies in rest today at the Ivy Hill Cemetery

time traveling with a school chum from North Berwick named Harry

in Philadelphia. 

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S IS THE CASE WITH MANY OF AMERICA’S best and most venerable golf courses, the

layout at Misquamicut has many fathers. First, there was Willie Park Jr., a native of Musselburgh, Scotland, the winner of two British Opens, and the man who in 1895 built the Club’s first nine holes.

His countryman, Willie Anderson, constructed a second nine holes the following summer, when he was only sixteen years old and before he won any of his four U.S. Open championships. Then in 1901, another Scottish immigrant professional, by the name of Tom Bendelow, came to town, fashioning a new eighteen-hole layout amongst the dunes, rock outcroppings, dells, and marshland of that oceanside locale. It was just over a dozen years later when Seth Raynor arrived in Watch Hill. A civil engineer by training and a design associate of the architect and amateur golf champion Charles Blair Macdonald, Raynor and his crew of eight built several new holes at Misquamicut in time for the start of the 1914 season and modified some others. And finally, in 1922, Donald Ross, the noted golf professional from Dornoch, Scotland, via Pinehurst, North Carolina, created the course that more or less exists today, incorporating parts of Bendelow’s and Raynor’s work as he also integrated his own designs. To some observers, that may seem a rather complex genealogy for a golf course, and it does not even take into consideration the input of several other architects of note in later years, from Geoffrey Cornish and Ron Forse in the 1980s and ’90s respectively to Bruce Hepner, who began overseeing a bunker restoration program in 2015. But what has resulted from all those efforts is one of the most highly regarded golf courses in the country, a par-69, occasionally windswept beauty that measures 6,226 yards from the back tees and boasts firm and wide fairways, true-rolling greens, and breathtaking views. It is as celebrated in the greater golf community for its impressive lineage and superb setting, as well as the ways it tests the skills of low and high handicappers alike. And it is beloved by Misquamicut members and their guests for the challenges its varied terrain and deft design present as well as for the pure fun it provides The par-3 12th hole — water, water everywhere…

during a round and how it seems to play differently each day. It is, in golfer’s parlance, a gem. But it is a gem with many iterations, and the first golf course at Misquamicut was located in an entirely different place from the layout today, on a parcel of land southwest of the current Clubhouse that is situated between Browning and Massachaug Roads, with part of the course lying on the southern side of Ocean View Highway. That is also where the converted corn crib that served as Misquamicut’s first Clubhouse stood. The opening hole, dubbed The Dune and measuring 178 yards, ran due east of that structure, while the second headed to the northwest to a green situated on the other side of Ocean View. From there, the course circled the land between Browning and Massachaug Roads in a counterclockwise direction. It formally opened on Independence Day in the summer of 1895, and the holes bore descriptive and in some cases unusual names. Like The Horse Shoe, The Beast and The Imp, and each of the tees boasted signboards spelling out the individual appellations. The longest hole was the 446-yard fifth, and a good part of that is played today as No. 2 (and is the only one that has been a part of the course from the very beginning). As for the finisher in 1895, it was a 135-yarder known as The Harbor that ran north to south, with a green right by the Highway and the Atlantic acting as a rather spectacular backdrop.

N 1896, THE CLUB ASKED

the teenage Scot Willie Anderson

to design an additional nine holes as Misquamicut’s first formal

golf professional. Maps of that layout, which was completed by the official start of that season in early July, show that the first six holes were more or less as Park had designed them, though some measured slightly longer than the originals. Anderson then added nine new holes on land it had leased to the northwest, numbering them 7-15, and they crossed stonewalls on a couple of occasions.

An article from the August 7, 1895, Watch Hill Life newspaper details the original nine-hole layout.

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Then the 16th, 17th, and 18th finished the round much as Nos. 7, 8,

There are stark similarities and dramatic differences in the

and 9 of Park’s course had, but again with modifications that made

course that Bendelow built at the start of the twentieth century and

each one slightly greater in length.

what currently exists. The opening hole still heads west today from

Four years later, Club leaders decided they needed to make

the west side of the Clubhouse, for example, and the 18th hole runs

significant changes to their course. One reason for that was the

uphill from a tee on the north side of Ocean View to a green by the

recent introduction to golf of the new wound, rubber-core ball that

Clubhouse. It also looks as if the modern 10th and 11th holes, both

traveled significantly farther than the old

of which boast teeing areas that provide

gutta perchas that had been in use for

sweeping panoramas of the golf course as

many years — and which had made the

well as the Atlantic Ocean beyond, are laid

shortish Misquamicut course more or less

out where Bendelow put his 11th and 12th.

obsolete as far as length was concerned.

But there were only six Meadows holes

Another had to do with the acquisition of

in 1901, not the seven that are routed in

additional property by the Misquamicut

that area today. And Bendelow’s design

Land Company that gave the Club a place

had those running more clockwise than

east of Browning Road to build a new

counterclockwise, with the fairways of

Clubhouse and also add some golf holes.

Nos. 13 and 17 crossing.

Enter Tom Bendelow, an Aberdonian

While Misquamicut members seemed

who would work on more than seven

pleased with the Bendelow layout, there

hundred golf courses in a career that

was a sense that it could be enhanced. So in

ended with his death in 1936. He began

August of 1913, the Governing Committee

laying out holes at Misquamicut in the

approved a plan for Seth Raynor to make

summer of 1901, keeping the old fifth

further modifications to the golf course.

hole Park had initially designed and then

Part of what fueled that hiring was the

crafting another eleven on land north of

Club finally feeling a sense of financial

Ocean View Highway. As for the remaining

security, with its total members numbering

six, he laid them out south of that road on leased, low-lying property

133 at the time and its having been able to buy all the property it had

pocked by a pair of marsh ponds and full of beach plum and swamp

been leasing from the Misquamicut Land Company as well as a new,

rose mallow, which later came to be called the Meadows holes.

thirteen-acre parcel just north of the Clubhouse.

According to newspaper reports, Golf Captain Frank Wesson also

supervised that season the installation of a crude irrigation system with underground pipes that enabled the Club to water its tees and greens and some of the fairways.

T WAS ON THAT LAND THAT RAYNOR

and his crew did most

of their work. They eliminated what had been Holes Nos. 2 and

3 in the Bendelow design and made the fourth in that layout what is

Above: A 1914 Watch Hill Life article detailing the Seth Raynor rerouting. Opposite: A course map from a September 4, 1897, Watch Hill Life supplement depicts Willie Anderson’s routing.

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Tom Bendelow: The Johnny Appleseed of American golf BORN IN ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND, in the fall of 1868, Tom Bendelow

relocated to the Windy City, to run Spalding’s western operations.

started playing golf when he was five years old, on the famed

By that time, Bendelow had also become one of the most sought-

Balgownie Links of what was then known as the Aberdeen Golf

after architects in what was becoming an increasingly golf-crazed

Club — and which today carries the Royal designation. He was one of

country. His Scottish roots appealed to Americans who pined for people

nine children, and he quickly came to fancy the sport. But Bendelow

from the Old Country to lay out their courses, the assumption being

decided to make his living outside of the game and instead learned

that anyone who came from that part of the world — and spoke with

the craft of typesetting.

a brogue — was inherently knowledgeable about the game. Bendelow

That was the area in which he looked for work when he immigrated

was certainly that. He also possessed a “designer’s eye” and was quite

to the United States in 1892, newly married and only twenty-four

good at using a so-called “naturalist’s approach” and discerning what

years old. He soon landed a job setting type for the New York Herald.

would and would not work on a particular piece of property.

One day, he spied a “Help Wanted” advertisement in the paper that

So, as Bendelow presided over Spalding’s operations in the

was soliciting a private golf instructor for the family of a wealthy Long

American West, he also developed a successful design business,

Island industrialist, Charles Pratt. Intrigued, Bendelow applied for

with the Misquamicut Club being among his earliest clients. While

the position, and when Pratt offered him the job, he began a new

some company CEOs might have resisted such moonlighting, A. G.

career as a golf instructor. At the same time, Bendelow entered the

Spalding was fine with what Bendelow was doing, as the sporting

world of course architecture, as his new boss also asked the Scot to lay

goods magnate felt that the building of new golf courses only served

out a six-hole track on the eight-hundred-acre Pratt estate.

to further interest and participation in golf. And that helped Spalding

Though records are sketchy, it appears that for a spell, Bendelow

sell more golf equipment.

continued to toil at the Herald while he also worked for Pratt. But after

But things changed when Spalding died in 1915, and Bendelow

a while, the Scotsman gave up the newspaper business to concentrate

left the company soon after. He quickly hooked up with an up-and-

fully on golf. He stayed in the employ of the Pratts for several years

coming concern led by Thomas E. Wilson — the precursor to what

and then took a job in the golf department of A. G. Spalding’s sporting

is now Wilson Sporting Goods. After four years there, Bendelow

goods store in New York City. Then, in the spring of 1898, Bendelow

decided to concentrate fully on golf course design, creating such

became head professional at the municipal Van Courtlandt Park golf

classics as Medinah No. 3 outside Chicago, which has hosted three

course, which was located in the Bronx and is regarded today as the

U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, and one Ryder Cup; and the

oldest public layout in America. Bendelow not only served golfers

original course at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, where the great

there as a teacher but also redesigned the original nine-hole course

Bobby Jones first played golf.

and then expanded it to eighteen holes. He also formalized one of the

By the time Bendelow died in 1936, at the age of sixty-seven, he

first caddie programs in America.

had worked on more than seven hundred layouts. Long before he

Bendelow was not adverse to toting a bag himself on occasion, and

passed, some industry insiders had taken to calling him the Johnny

he was on Harry Vardon’s bag when the British great won the 1900 U.S.

Appleseed of American Golf, for all he had done to nurture the sport

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An aerial view of the Misquamicut Club (in the foreground) and Watch Hill, in 1934

Barrier Beach between Napatree and Sandy Points, underwater after the 1938 Hurricane Fort Road

Browning Road

Clubhouse

Causeway across Maschaug Pond to the original Beach Club and Shooting Range Ocean View Highway

Watch Hill Road

New tennis courts

Old tennis courts

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Seth the surveyor ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE THINGS about course designer Seth

contributions. Among his better-known efforts as an independent are

Raynor is that he never even played the game until after the fourth

the Mountain Lake Club and Everglades Club in Florida; the Blind

layout he helped produce, at the St. Louis Country Club, or ever

Brook Club in Westchester County, New York; Shoreacres just north

ventured to the British Isles to see how the sport existed in its ancestral

of Chicago; the Yeamans Hall Country Club outside Charleston,

home. In fact, the Long Islander knew or cared little about golf when

South Carolina; and the Fishers Island Club, just off the Connecticut

he graduated from Princeton University in 1898 with a degree in

coast. Raynor was also slated to design the course at Cypress Point in

civil engineering and then set up a surveying and landscape design

California, but fell ill in the winter of 1926 and died before he had a

business in Southampton, New York. But a decade later, Raynor met

chance to get started on that project. Weakened by excessive travel and

Charles Blair Macdonald, the noted architect, amateur champion,

overwork, he succumbed to pneumonia at the age of fifty-one.

and golf advocate who was building a course there that would serve

Even after he went out on his own, Raynor never deviated from the

as the centerpiece for a club he came to call the National Golf Links

British Isles design tenets that he learned from his mentor Macdonald,

of America. The mustachioed Macdonald was a big thinker, and his

and those influences were always evident in his work. Double Plateau

notion was for the National to show America what traditional links

holes with L-shaped, three-tiered greens, for example. And Redans

golf was all about.A one-time student at St. Andrews University in

just like the famous par-3 15th at North Berwick in East Lothian,

Scotland, he had not only lived in that town for a spell and worked in

with semi-blind tee shots to canted greens running from front to back

the golf shop of the iconic player, course designer, and club maker Old

and right to left and guarded by bunkers right and left. Raynor was

Tom Morris, but had also toured the best links layouts in the British

also fond of featuring a short par 3 on each of his courses, inspired

Isles to discern their designs and the things that made them great.

by the fifth at what is now Royal West Norfolk in England, and a 4 or

When it came time to build the National, he looked for someone local

5 par, depending on the layout, created with the Road Hole on the

who could work off of the surveyor’s maps he had brought back from

Old Course at St. Andrews in mind — and with a sinister, “gathering”

the British Isles and help him fashion renditions of those great Old

pot bunker placed just in front of the green to swallow up imperfect

World holes. A quick search brought him to Raynor, and the result

approach shots. There is also his infamous Bottle hole, modeled after

of their first collaboration remains a triumph. All these years, the

the 12th of the Old Course at Sunningdale in Berkshire, England,

National stands as one of the finest courses ever constructed.

with a series of bunkers running diagonally across the middle of the

Macdonald appreciated Raynor’s assistance, and they continued

fairway that forces golfers to hit their tee shots slightly left or right if

working together with extraordinary results at Shinnecock Hills, the

they want to avoid the hazard.

Creek Club, and the Piping Rock Club on Long Island, as well as

Raynor was little more than an obscurity for much of the

on the Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda, the Sleepy Hollow Country

twentieth century, in part because his career in golf lasted less than

Club outside New York City, and the Yale University Golf Course

two decades and also as a result of his being overshadowed his entire

in Connecticut. Macdonald also encouraged his friend to hang out

working life by the much bigger personality of Macdonald. But then

his own shingle, and among the first projects Raynor accepted as an

Seth the Surveyor started to get his due, for his collaborations with

independent was the one to remodel parts of the Misquamicut Club

Macdonald and also for his individual designs. One example of how

course, in 1913.

highly regarded Raynor has become is found in the 2016 rankings by

In time, Raynor came to be considered one of the game’s greatest

Golfweek of the finest courses built in America prior to 1960. Raynor

designers, and he flourished during a period that is regarded today as

had a major hand in laying out fourteen of the top one hundred, and

the Golden Era of golf course architecture, in no small part to his stellar

twenty of the best two hundred classic layouts in the country.  87

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presently the second hole. Raynor then shortened the current third and created four new holes in Nos. 4-7. It also appears that Raynor modified the eighth green, which like No. 7 was a shortish par 3.

OT LONG AFTER RAYNOR LEFT MISQUAMICUT,

the Club

received a rather extensive plan from Walter Travis to reverse

the nines and make other alterations. A native Australian who bought Old Crow whiskey by the keg and always seemed to have a cigar in his mouth, Travis was also an extraordinary golfer, having

Misquamicut show that in 1917, it paid Travis five hundred dollars

won the 1900 U.S. Amateur and then the 1904 British Amateur. In

for his plan but never engaged him to do the work, probably because

addition, he had laid out a first-rate course at the Ekwanok Country

of the financial concerns that affected most golf and country clubs

Club in Manchester, Vermont, and transformed a nascent Garden

during World War I and the thinking that there were more important

City Golf Club layout into one of the best in the land. Ledgers from

ways to spend Club money at that time.

Above: Walter Travis (right) submitted this original drawing for the course routing in late 1916. Opposite: A February 1923 property survey of the Misquamicut Club

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Records indicate that a year later, Donald Ross received funds

has long tended, says no one is exactly sure of all the changes Ross

of roughly half that amount for unspecified services. Given that his

made. But a story in Seaside Topics around the time the restored

fee was dispersed around the time that Misquamicut purchased the

layout opened for business provides a pretty good sense of what he

so-called Orchard property on the northernmost position of the golf

did with a crew that included his brother Aneas.

course — and then built what today is the sixth green and seventh

For starters, Ross lengthened the golf course to roughly six

tee — one can sensibly surmise that it was Ross who suggested those

thousand yards in an effort to toughen it a bit and also to ease

changes as a sort of design consultant to the Club.

congestion. He seems to have concentrated his efforts on the Meadows, adding four new tees and greens and several bunkers

ISQUAMICUT ACQUIRED OTHER PROPERTY

from area

farmers and individual Club members in the teens and

early 1920s. That included the land where the Meadows holes were routed, which it had previously leased. And by 1922, the Club owned roughly one hundred acres on each side of Ocean View Highway. That year, Ross returned to Misquamicut to complete an extensive revamping of the golf course, a project that was undertaken largely due to those property purchases and the opportunities for expanding the layout they presented. Bill Morton, the current director of golf course operations and a keen recorder of the history of the track he Above, top: A 1966 photo shows the dike at the 11th hole that was designed to prevent flooding from storm surges. Bottom: The Cart House behind the 18th hole was constructed in 2013.

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Then came Donald Ross A NATIVE OF DORNOCH, SCOTLAND, Donald Ross had been

it into a much improved, eighteen-hole track measuring just under

living and working in the United States for just over two decades

six thousand yards.

when he took a job in the early 1920s to revamp the golf course at

Shortly after his arrival in America, Ross met the soda fountain

Misquamicut. And by the time he began work on that project, he had

tycoon James Walker Tufts and then agreed to take a winter position

already established himself as one of the finest architects in the game.

at the health retreat called Pinehurst that Tufts was developing in

The son of a hard-drinking stonemason, Ross was born on

the North Carolina sand hills. Ross first went to the Tar Heel state

November 23, 1872. He started caddying as a young boy on the

in 1900, and Pinehurst remained a part of his life until his death

links of Dornoch, where golf had been played since the early 1600s.

in the spring of 1948 at the age of seventy-five, serving as the head

He also learned the sport there, on a six-hole layout the club had

professional and green keeper at the resort and building its No. 1, No.

created primarily so its loopers would have a place to tee it without

2, No. 4, and No. 5 courses as well as such nearby gems as Mid Pines

interfering with golfers on the main course. As a young teenager,

and Pine Needles.

Ross started vocational training as a woodworker but still managed

Today, Ross is regarded as perhaps the most prolific course

to remain close to golf. He continued to play regularly, and one of his

designer the game has ever known, and he is credited with design

regular tasks was building boxes for the Dornoch Golf Club that held

work on more than four hundred layouts in thirty states in the U.S.

the sand on each hole that golfers mixed with water to fashion tees for

as well as at places in Canada and Cuba. Those tracks in and around

their drives. Eventually, Ross became a carpenter by trade as well as

Pinehurst are among his most celebrated efforts, and he has earned

a member of Dornoch, and it wasn’t long before he was crafting and

particular praise for other masterpieces, such as Seminole Golf

repairing clubs for his fellow members.

Club in Juno Beach, Florida; East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta; Scioto

In 1893, the twenty-year-old Ross moved to the Scottish burg of

Country Club in Columbus, Ohio; and the North and South courses

St. Andrews to apprentice for Old Tom Morris, the notable player,

at Oakland Hills Country Club outside Detroit. One reason so many

club and ball maker, and course designer who had paid several visits

of his layouts receive such acclaim is they serve as excellent places

to Dornoch in previous years to lay out its Championship Course.

for members to play their regular games. But they also stand out for

After a year with Old Tom, Ross moved to Carnoustie, in the spring

the ways they stand up as tournament venues, and more than one

of 1894, to take a similar position with the noted golf professional and

hundred major championships have been contested on Donald Ross

club maker Robert Simpson.

courses over the years.

Two years with those masters gave Ross an advanced degree in

While his design work is what attracted most of the attention,

several facets of golf, and no one was at all surprised when the good

Ross deserves credit for also becoming a proficient player. In fact, he

people at Dornoch induced its native son to return home and assume

was good enough to have competed in seven U.S. Opens and a pair

the jobs of head professional and green keeper at his old club.

of British Opens — and to have recorded top-ten finishes in three of those tourneys. Ross also won three North and South Opens and two

Ross stayed in Dornoch for four seasons, and then in the spring

Massachusetts Opens.

of 1899, he relocated to the Boston area to begin work as the head professional at the Oakley Country Club. The course was a rather

But it was in the world of golf course architecture that Donald

uninspired eleven-holer, and one of his first jobs was to use many of

Ross made his greatest contributions to the game. And the layout at

the design principles he had learned in the Old Country to transform

Misquamicut is just one of many examples of his genius. 

101

T H E

H I S T O R Y

O F

T H E

M I S Q U A M I C U T

C L U B

there as he also reversed the direction in which the holes played, to

the surprise of white-tailed deer scampering across a clearing, or the

counterclockwise. For a time, Ross planned to relocate the present

sound of surf breaking on the beach. The scent of salt in the summer

11th green to the other side of the salt pond, and according to that

air is also an allure, and there is no way to spoil a good walk — or

newspaper report, he believed that move would make that hole one

ride — there.

of the finest in America, “for the high tee

As one might expect, much work has

overlooking the ocean, the second shot

been done on the layout over the years. In

with a wood or long-iron over the water

1961, for example, the Club built a mile-

and finally the green just back of the

long dike some six-to-eight feet high and

sand-dunes near the breakers.” But for

three times as wide between Maschaug and

some reason, he never implemented that

Little Maschaug ponds and the lower course

change. Still, his work was highly praised

to keep salt water from running across the

when it was completed, with the course

Meadows holes and ruining the turf. That

routing being more or less what it is today.

same decade, Misquamicut constructed a

OLFERS

HAVE

NEVER

STOPPED

lauding what Bendelow, Raynor,

and Ross did at Misquamicut, and all these years later, the layout is continually cited for the ways it makes brilliant use of two very disparate pieces of property. The first ten holes are routed on rugged land formed when the glaciers receded thousands of years ago and are ringed by stone walls that farmers built as they prepared their grounds for planting. Holes are both long and short, and fairways wide and welcoming, and there is a sense of ease

MISQUAMICUT CLUB OSPREYS Photographs show that in 1950 the osprey nest by the 12th green had a mating pair. With the exception of a period after Hurricane Bob, the nest has been in use for seventy-three years. Two years after Hurricane Bob, the Club rebuilt the nest, and the following year the nest was occupied. Fledgling ospreys spend the first year of their lives where they migrate for winter and return as a mating pair. The Audubon Society of Rhode Island monitors twenty-eight osprey nests around the State. It is estimated that the offspring of the Misquamicut Club nest can be genetically linked to all twenty-eight nests.

and conviviality to a round at Misquamicut,

massive reservoir for irrigation purposes between the seventh hole and the driving range. Geoffrey Cornish came in during the 1980s to renovate parts of the course, and Ron Forse was on the scene after that, primarily to improve drainage on the lower portion of the layout. In 2006, the Club installed a modern and muchneeded irrigation system as it initiated yet another restoration project designed to bring back the course’s Ross-like contours. Then, in 2012, it added a new chipping area. Nine years later, architect Bruce Hepner began a several year effort to revamp the course bunkers.

in part because the par-69 track tends to play faster than most and

Those were worthy efforts, and they have allowed Club members

is accommodating to players of all ages and abilities. The setting

to keep their layout well maintained and playing as its esteemed early

contributes to that aura as well, whether it is the sight of fishing boats

architects intended as they also ensured that Misquamciut remains

churning in the waters beyond the Meadows holes during a round,

to this day one of the finest courses in the country. 

Opposite: The finishing hole is well protected by deep bunkers.

102

Hole E I G H T E E N

Keepers of the course BI L L M O RT O N

Kline, George Wheeler, and Charlie Delamater and talking about the

Though he had played some golf as a teenager, Bill Morton was not

job,” says Morton. “We had a good conversation, and a week later they

thinking about a career in the game when he was earning his BS in plant

offered me the job. I accepted, and then in January the following year, I

sciences from Cornell University in the late 1970s. Rather, his emphasis

moved my family up to Watch Hill.”

was ornamental horticulture, which is the study of growing, arranging,

Morton’s family at the time consisted of his wife Sylvie, a French

and tending decorative flowers and plants, and he looked to applying his

citizen he had met when she was working the front desk at Piping Rock,

skills in that realm after graduation. To a park or a public garden, perhaps.

and their nine-month old son, Gregory. Upon their arrival at Misquamicut,

Or maybe even an estate. But shortly after receiving

they moved into the superintendent’s house just off of

his degree, the native of the Syracuse, New York, area

the third green. Two years later, the Mortons welcomed

took a job at the Piping Rock Club, a tony retreat on

a daughter, by the name of Kimberly.

the North Shore of Long Island that featured grass

For the next eighteen years, Morton took care of

tennis courts, a polo field, skeet and trap fields, and an

the golf course at Misquamicut. He became a certified

eighteen-hole golf course. Morton soon found himself

golf course superintendent in 1995 and sat for several

taking care of all athletic fields of play.

years on the United States Golf Association’s Green

“I had spent some time during school working for

Section Committee. Then, in 2007, he assumed the role

a landscaping company, and I liked that,” he recalls.

as director of golf course operations at Misquamicut,

“But then I found that I really enjoyed working with

and for the next two years served as president of the

turf and providing the members of Piping Rock and

New England Regional Turfgrass Foundation.

their guests with proper playing surfaces, no matter

“I have always loved taking care of this property,” he

what the sport. And the idea of working at one place

says. “When I first came to Misquamicut, the irrigation

and constantly tinkering and tinkering to make it

system was ancient, we did not have much of a budget,

better was more appealing than moving from place to

and I spent about 80 percent of my time outside, and 20

place all the time, which is what I would have done as

percent in my office. Now, we have a modern irrigation system, a much bigger budget, and the percentages of where I spend my

a landscaper.” Morton had only been at Piping Rock for a couple of years when the

time have completely reversed. There just seems to be so much more

assistant golf course superintendent left, and he happily filled that job

desk work to do these days, as it relates to things like documentation and

when it became available. He served the club in that position for the next

permitting, and I am now inside about 80 percent of the time.” That ratio is not ideal in Morton’s mind, but it does not keep him

five years. Then, at the end of the summer season in 1988, he traveled to

from enjoying his duties overseeing the care and maintenance of the golf

Misquamicut to interview for the head superintendent’s job. “I went there over Labor Day weekend and remember sitting at a

course, even in the face of dry spells, any number of turf diseases, and

table on the lawn behind the Clubhouse with Jack Heminway, Patton

disasters like Hurricane Sandy. He has become especially keen on the

104

history of the layout and the different forms it has taken over the years

remember him teeing it up in a local fireman’s league on Tuesday nights,”

and has made an effort in the process to document what has happened

he says. “He also enjoyed hitting those plastic golf balls around our yard,

since golfers first started to play Willie Park Jr.’s original nine-hole layout

and it was something we would occasionally do together.”

in 1895.

Bozek’s knowledge of the game improved considerably when he came

As for his life away from the golf course, Morton enjoys traveling

back to Misquamicut for that second season in the bag room, and then

and has developed an interest in wine that led to his building a cellar

joined the golf course maintenance crew the following summer. “One of

that now includes some 150 bottles, most of which comes from vineyards

my jobs that year was to get the golf flags from the greens every night,

in Bordeaux. Morton has also allowed himself the luxury of a vintage

and I’d get in a few holes as I went around the course,” he says. “I loved

automobile, in the form of a 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera.

being out there.”

As pleasurable as those pursuits may be, they do not mean nearly as

After graduating from Westerly High School, Bozek moved to

much to Morton as his continued stewardship of the Misquamicut layout.

Orlando, Florida, for a year to attend the Golf Academy of America. “I

“I love that I have been at the Club for as long as I

had decided that I wanted to be a golf pro, a teaching

have,” he says. “It is what I have wanted to do since I

pro, and that was a place where I could learn to do

was in college, working at one place and being able to

that,” he recalls. “But after a while, I realized that was

tinker with it until we get it right.”

not the life for me.” So he returned to Misquamicut and asked Course Superintendent Bill Morton for his old job. Morton

DEA N B O Z E K

consented, and for the next several years, Bozek

Dean Bozek had just wrapped up his freshman year at

once again was a part of the maintenance crew. After

Westerly High School when he started to work at the

a few years, he determined that he needed to get his

Misquamicut Club in the summer of 1986. “A friend

college degree.

had told me they were looking for someone to help out

“I took some night courses at a local community

in the bag room, and that sounded like a pretty good

college and eventually enrolled at the University of

job,” he says.

Rhode Island,” says Bozek, whose father died when he

Indeed it was, and Bozek liked it so much that he

was just sixteen years old. “Then, in 1999, I got my BS

returned to Misquamicut the following year for another

in horticulture and turf grass management. I worked

stint in the bag room. The next season, he moved

the whole time I was in school and was able to do so

over to the maintenance crew, toiling there until he became assistant

because Bill was so flexible with my hours. Some semesters, I’d spend

superintendent in 1999. Eight years after that, Bozek assumed the role as

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the Club and take my classes on

golf course superintendent, and the father of two boys carries that title to

Tuesdays and Thursdays. For others, it would be the other way around.”

this day. Nearly fifty years old, he has never worked anywhere else.

Bozek not only earned his degree that year but also received

Bozek wasn’t much of a golfer when he first came to Misquamicut and

a promotion, with Morton naming him the assistant golf course

didn’t know a lot about the game. But he had some basic understanding

superintendent. Then, in 2007, Bozek moved up another rung and

of the sport, thanks largely to his father, who labored as a pipe fitter at

became superintendent when Morton assumed the role of director of golf

Electric Boat in nearby New London. “Dad liked to play a little golf, and I

course operations. 

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Holes E L E V E N â&#x20AC;&#x201D; S E V E N T E E N

Hole E I G H T E E N

A HIS TORY OF THE GOL F C O U R SE ’ S DE S I GN A ND R OUTIN G was able to add today’s holes five and eight and part of seven.

RESEARCH INTO THE HISTORY of the Misquamicut Club’s golf course reflects a complicated lineage. With several fortuitous land

In late 1916, Walter Travis submitted a radical redesign that

acquisitions, four renowned golf architects helped it grow and change.

would have reversed the nines and played the lower holes counter-

It wasn’t until the early 1920s that a fifth, Donald Ross, worked his

clockwise. He advocated that the Club make additional acquisitions,

magic to create the timeless course the members play today.

and his map shows holes six and 14 as Ross eventually executed them. Although Travis was never hired to build what he proposed, Ross

In 1895 Willie Park laid out the original nine holes, starting from the old Clubhouse on the south

seems to have borrowed extensively

side of Ocean View Highway, crossing

from his design.

onto land leased from farmers west of

The Ross course was developed in

Browning Road. In deference to the

stages. By 1918 the Club had acquired

primitive equipment, holes were much

the Lanphear property abutting East

shorter then, with the exception of the

Hills Road, allowing for the addition of

466-yard fifth hole, which later became

the sixth hole and the extension of the

the second, and which has remained

seventh back to its current tee. Ross also

essentially unchanged through every

created the fourth and ninth greens,

course design.

but the eastern property line precluded

The next year Willie Anderson

design changes for holes 13 through 17.

became the Club’s first full-time golf

In 1919 the Club was able to acquire the

professional. Along with his other duties,

final piece of property in the northeast

he added nine more holes, giving the Club

section of the Meadows that allowed the

a full eighteen. The new holes were routed west of Park’s course, all the

creation of the 14th hole and the building of a new tee to extend 15.

way to Ridge Road and where the Watch Hill Fire House is today.

With those changes, Ross was also able to move the 16th green and the

In 1900, with the change from the gutta percha to the wound ball,

17th tee to where they are today. Like Bendelow and Raynor, Ross’s

the Club decided the old course was too short. On newly acquired land

18th tee was originally on the back of the 11th hole, but, thankfully, he

to the east of Browning Road, Tom Bendelow constructed seventeen

later moved it to the current location, and completed his work in 1922.

holes. Six holes were near the ocean in an area called the Meadows.

The last routing in this section color codes which architect was

They were very different, but in the same area as the current lower

responsible for each of the eighteen holes. When the Misquamicut

seven. Bendelow was also responsible for two of Misquamicut’s most

Club states on its scorecard, “Donald Ross, course designer,” that is

iconic holes: 11 and 18.

only partially true. Ross (perhaps with an assist from Travis) designed

Recent research by the Club shows that in 1914 Seth Raynor

six holes of the current course, Bendelow five, Raynor four, and

designed several of the holes we still play today. He created holes three

Park one. Two holes are joint efforts: one is Raynor/Ross, the other

and four, and, with a land acquisition west of the Bendelow course, he

Bendelow/Ross. A fascinating heritage for a unique golf course. 

A 1916 scorecard for the Seth Raynor course

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T H E

G O L F

C O U R S E

3 8 2 9

PA R K R OUTI NG 1895 Willie Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first hole ran along the beach side of Ocean View Highway from the original Clubhouse; from there the routing crossed back over and up into the hills on the west side of Browning Road. His fifth hole (our second) ran nearly 500 yards, an incredible length in the days of the gutta-percha ball. 1 (178)

2 (190)

3 (215)

4 (187)

5 (466)

6 (229)

TOTAL: 1,875

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7 (170)

8 (105)

9 (135)

T H E

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T H E

M I S Q U A M I C U T

13 12

15 14

C L U B

4 3

11 10

A NDE R S ON R OUTIN G 1896-1899 Anderson added nine holes to Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s course, giving the Club a full eighteen. Most surprising is how far his course extended towards town, all the way to Ridge Road, and close to the Watch Hill Fire House. Besides his and Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fifth hole, nothing remains of the Anderson course. 1 (178) 10 (201)

2 (190) 11 (167)

3 (215) 12 (203)

4 (187) 13 (210)

5 (467) 14 (142)

6 (223)

7 (146)

15 (123)

16 (184)

TOTAL: 3,521

114

8 (159)

9 (275)

17 (113)

FRONT: 2,040

18 (138)

BACK: 1,481

T H E

G O L F

C O U R S E

14 8

B E NDE L OW R OUTIN G 1900-1913 Tom Bendelow created eleven new holes on the Clubhouse side of Browning Road, and six new holes near East Beach. His No. 1 hole, beginning at the Clubhouse, had the same layout as it does today. He also designed holes No. 9, 10, 11, and 18 of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s course. 1 (342) 10 (247)

2 (411) 11 (387)

3 (377)

4 (506)

5 (174)

12 (281)

13 (169)

14 (140)

6 (309) 15 (135)

7 (376)

16 (335)

TOTAL: 5,186

115

8 (126)

9 (278)

17 (347)

FRONT: 2,899

18 (246)

BACK: 2,287

T H E

H I S T O R Y

O F

T H E

M I S Q U A M I C U T

C L U B

6 5

7 8

14 16 9

18 1

R AY NOR R OUTI N G 1914-1921 In 1914 Seth Raynor made significant changes to the front nine. Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original fifth hole along Browning permanently became the second hole. Raynorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s third, fourth, fifth, and seventh (now our eighth) holes are the same as today. His sixth has the same green and fairway as the current seventh, but the tee was near the fifth green. 1 (400) 10 (330)

2 (510)

11 (403)

3 (242) 12 (306)

4 (290)

5 (400)

6 (266)

7 (176)

13 (273)

14 (166)

15 (147)

16 (354)

TOTAL: 5,330

116

8 (151)

9 (292)

17 (358)

FRONT: 2,727

18 (266)

BACK: 2,603

T H E

G O L F

C O U R S E

6 7

16 18

• ORIGINAL ROSS ROUTING • FINAL ROSS ROUTING

R OS S R OUTI NG 1 9 2 2 - TO D AY On the front nine, Donald Ross added the sixth hole and extended the seventh approximately one hundred yards. The biggest changes came on the ocean holes with a counterclockwise routing, plus the addition of the 14th hole and a redesign of 12, 13, 15, 16 and 17. 1 (400) 10 (405)

2 (403)

11 (429)

3 (242) 12 (135)

4 (315)

5 (379)

6 (192)

13 (453)

14 (375)

15 (227)

7 (492)

16 (320)

TOTAL: 6,016

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8 (151)

9 (368)

17 (464)

FRONT: 2,942

18 (266)

BACK: 3,074

T H E

H I S T O R Y

O F

T H E

M I S Q U A M I C U T

C L U B

6 7

TEE

RO UTING

GREEN

RAYNOR

BENDELOW

ROSS

PARK

RAYNOR

BENDELOW

RAYNOR

BENDELOW

RAYNOR

ROSS

RAYNOR

BENDELOW

ROSS

BENDELOW

ROSS

RAYNOR

ROSS

BENDELOW

ROSS

BENDELOW

RAYNOR

8 16

18 1

17 11

13 12

• BENDELOW • PARK • RAYNOR • ROSS

THE C OUR S E TOD AY H O L ES I D EN TI FI ED B Y D ES I G NE R

This view of today’s course details the routing of each hole color keyed to its original designer. What it clearly shows is how unique the Misquamicut Club golf course really is. Four of the game’s most renowned architects from the earliest days of the game — Park, Bendelow, Raynor, and Ross — are responsible for holes we still play today. 1 (382) 10 (381)

2 (433) 11 (335)

3 (228) 12 (169)

4 (272)

5 (424)

6 (194)

13 (431)

14 (435)

15 (363)

7 (522) 16 (391)

TOTAL: 6,224

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8 (165)

9 (359)

17 (525)

FRONT: 2,979

18 (215)

BACK: 3,245

119

C H A P T E R

F O U R

The

C L U BH O US E

Above: The second Clubhouse in the early 1900s. Opposite: In this aerial view of the Clubhouse, circa 1920s, we can track the progress of the Clubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tennis facilities. The two original tennis courts were to the left of the cars, where the upper parking lot is today. In the 1920s there were the six courts, seen to the right of the Clubhouse and above the 18th green. The courts were moved in the 1930s to where they are today, just west of the maintenance building that is visible above the six courts in the photo.

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

T SEEMS ONLY FIT TING that an association based in a town famous for its shingled abodes built one of

its own for its first permanent clubhouse. Designed by the noted New York architect Grosvenor Atterbury and his associate John Tompkins and completed in time for the start of the 1900 season, the stately

structure rose from a hill on the north side of what was then called Ocean Avenue, affording Misquamicut members a much more spacious and refined place to socialize than the converted corn crib that had served that purpose for the Club’s first five years of operation. In a biography on Atterbury that was released

women on the second floor. And it made mention

in 2009, authors Peter Pennoyer and Anne Walker

of Misquamicut members staging an opening

asserted

clubhouse

reception and ball there, noting that a grand time

“reflected the architect’s characteristic touch. The

was had by all in spite of a fierce summer storm

combination of simple massing with picturesque

delaying the start of the evening’s festivities.

that

Misquamicut’s

new

features — broad jerkin-headed dormers, curved

Quite conversely, there was not much to

porches, massive hipped roof and rough fieldstone

celebrate about their first Clubhouse, for it was a

base — created an appropriately informal clubhouse

rather ragged structure that had been moved in

well-suited to the seaside location.”

1895 from the old Everett Farm on Westerly Road

Members seemed quite pleased with the

to the south side of Ocean Avenue and the spot

building when it opened, and the local newspaper,

where Misquamicut’s original, nine-hole course

Watch Hill Life, ran a photo of it on the front page

began and ended. But the building did provide

of its July 7, 1900, issue. It also used much of that

adequate shelter for golfers and a place for them to

space to describe the interior of the three-level

convene before and after rounds.

structure. “Entering from the east… one finds

When members returned to Watch Hill for the

oneself in the large assembly room which forms the

start of the 1896 season, that once-red Clubhouse

centre of the lower floor,” it read. “A wide circular

had been painted white and the roof a moss-green

window set off by the whitest of curtains is opposite

color. In addition, one of its two verandas was

the entrance. Finished in cypress of a dark, brown

expanded to about twice its initial size and covered

stain, with the long writing table and other furniture

with a green and white awning. A new door had also

of heavy black wood to represent antiques, the room

been cut on one side of the building, and an annex

is deliciously cool and airy.” The article also noted

added to provide space for several dozen lockers

that the new Clubhouse boasted 120 lockers for

and a club repair bench. Photographs show that the

men in the basement and an additional eighty for

structure was so perilously close to the first tee that

Above: A July 27, 1895, Watch Hill Life newspaper article. Opposite: A July 7, 1900 Watch Hill Life front page article features the new Clubhouse.

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O F

T H E

golfers could not afford to be at all nervous about playing in front of

M I S Q U A M I C U T

C L U B

a workshop for golf professional at the time, Harry Reddie.

a crowd, for one seemed to gather regularly there.

Happy as they may have been with what Atterbury had produced, Misquamicut members made several changes to the building in the

used the old corn crib through

years after its opening. An article in Seaside Topics in the summer of

the summer of 1899. But when the following season got

1909 announced: “A convenience of much value to the ladies is the

underway, on Independence Day weekend as was customary in those

new boudoir,” a space that would more likely be called a sitting room

days, they had erected a new Clubhouse on a crag northeast of the

today. Then, in 1916, the Club reengaged the architects’ services so

initial building and across Ocean Avenue — and where Scotsman Tom

they could add an L-shaped wing, a stone porch, a porte cochere

Bendelow was laying out parts of a new golf course. As for the old corn

over the driveway, and a two-story shingle-and-fieldstone octagonal

crib, workers used a mule and sledge to haul it to a spot just below the

tower that in time came to house five sleeping rooms. Atterbury also

new structure, and it came to be employed as a caddie shack as well as

moved the entrance from the east side of the building to the south

ISQUAMICUT MEMBERS

Above: The old, red “corn crib” on Watch Hill Road was moved to Ocean View Highway and became the first Clubhouse. Opposite: The Reception Room of the new Clubhouse. Following pages: An outside view of the new Clubhouse, circa 1910

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side. Five years later, the Club added a

In time, Burke says, more of the

rectilinear wing to the west side, giving

evening events shifted to the Beach Club.

the building its present-day size.

“People came to prefer that setting, it seems, because they wanted something

HILE MOST EVENING socializing

that was less formal,” she says. “They also

in Watch Hill through the first half

liked being right on the water.”

of the twentieth century and beyond took

Edith Eglin well remembers how

place in individual homes, the Club did

formal things used to be. “Dinner parties,

on occasion host black-tie dinner dances,

whether held at the Club or at someone’s

with Lester Lanin-type bands providing

home, were usually black-tie,” she says.

the music that kept revelers going well into

And to illustrate how strong that dress

the night. “Those parties were a lot of fun,”

code once was, she tells a story about past

says Janet Burke, who first summered in

Club President Nelson Perin. “Nelson was

Watch Hill in the early 1950s. “We’d have

also president of the Watch Hill Chapel,

cocktails at someone’s house, and then

and in that capacity he invited guest

head to the Club for dinner and dancing.”

ministers to town to lead Sunday services,”

Burke is among those Misquamicut

Eglin explains. “They’d usually arrive on

members who also recall the Clubhouse

Thursday and stay with him and his wife

from those years as being a place they

Rebecca through Sunday lunch, with the

would also assemble for formal lunches

Perins hosting a couple of dinner parties

on Sundays. “There were very extravagant

in their honor. Well, one minister who had

spreads of food, with lobsters sometimes

come up from Washington, DC, neglected

used as centerpieces,” she says.

to bring his evening wear, so Rebecca had

Jim McCormick has similar memories.

to call the guests who were coming over

“I’d come to the Clubhouse with my

to dine that night to alert them that ‘the

parents after church on Sunday, all dressed

minister has no clothes,’ meaning he did

up, and the chef would have his toque on,

not have a tuxedo. So they could all just

and there would be lobsters and roast beef

wear jackets and ties and cocktail dresses.”

and shrimp,” he says. “And after lunch, my

Given that atmosphere, the trend

father and his buddies would go play golf

toward more casual wear was a difficult

while the rest of us would go to the tennis

one for some Watch Hill residents to take.

courts or to the beach.”

At least early on. “I remember discovering Above, top: Misquamicut member Jane Heminway was a cover girl for Vogue in the 1940s. Bottom: Jane’s husband and Club member Jack Heminway (right) with actor David Niven, in the late 1940s. Opposite: Spectators gather near the crucial 18th hole during a Club tournament.

128

Above and following pages: Members dressed up for the many costume parties and formal affairs held at the Clubhouse over the years. Opposite, from left: Tom Ahern, Susie Markham, Jack Burke, Joyce Ahern, George Nichols, Stan Burke, and Dean Markham share cocktails during a night out in New York City.

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1958 Prize Day winners (standing left to right): King White, Floyd Starr, James Batterson, Jerry Dunn, Maisie Lloyd, David Lloyd, Hope Lloyd, Charlie Cerrito, John Heminway, Francis Rutan, Janet Whitman, Dean Markham, Betty Mander, George Smith, unidentified, Art Cottrell, Sandy Whitman, Bill Vogt, Lorine Vogt, Jack Burke, Tom Ahern, and Ralph Bercovici; (sitting left to right) Nancy Richmond, Tallmadge Starr, Margot Camp, Sophronia Camp, Pammy Markham, Andy Gagarin, May Starr, Stephen Burke, Susie Markham, and Mary Stan Burke

2016 Prize Day winners

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in horror one summer in the 1970s that my husband had decided not

being left behind at every possible social opportunity, the Clubhouse

bring his tuxedo,” Eglin says. “But dressing for dinners and parties

continued to be the site of splendid affairs like the Centennial Ball in

became less and less the case in the ’70s and ’80s.”

1995, with attendees dressing in Victorian costumes from the time when Misquamicut was founded. And for many years, the building has

was taking place at the

quite nicely acted as the venue for 4th of July celebrations that included

beach, and more of them involving children who were no longer

dinner for more than 1,400 people at tables arrayed beyond the south

UT EVEN AS MORE OF THE REVELRY

Members dine on the Clubhouse terrace and lawn.

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THE WINE ROOM For decades, the space under the central staircase in the Misquamicut Clubhouse was used as little more than a storeroom. And the only reason longtime General Manager Phil Koretski initiated repair work there in 2009 was to reinforce the ceiling and replace the rotting wall that bisected the area. But then Chef Michael Paciga made a surprising find as those restorations were being made, in the form of a very well-preserved cork from an 1898 bottle of Champagne from Paul Ruinart, a vintner whose concern has been located in the city of Reims since 1726 and is one of the most celebrated wine houses in France. The thinking is that someone from Misquamicut placed the cork within that wall in 1900 to commemorate the completion that year of what was then a new Clubhouse. Though Koretski was not exactly sure how that long-neglected space was going to be used once the renovation was finished, the discovery of that nearly 120-year-old cork gave him an idea. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I thought we could turn the area into a wine room,â&#x20AC;? he says. It took some time for Koretski to fulfill that vision, but seven years after Chef Mike came upon the cork, the wine room became fully operational, with its rough-hewn pine ceilings and walls, its wooden wine racks and barrels that serve as tasting tables, and a long rectangular table at which lunches and dinners are enjoyed.

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Clockwise from top left: the Bar; terrace and patio; the dining area overlooking the first tee.

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General Manager Phil Koretski THE LONGEVITY OF PHIL KORETSKI and the fact that he has served as general

he toiled one winter as beverage manager at the Jupiter Island Club in Hobe manager of Misquamicut since the spring of 1988 are accomplishments enough. Sound, Florida, and then took an assistant manager’s job at the Stanwich Club But then there are the extraordinarily adroit ways that he has done his job through in Greenwich, in 1987. A year later, Koretski accepted an offer to come back to the years and assured that whatever the Club offers its members in terms of things Misquamicut as its general manager. as simple as pizza socials and as multifarious as al fresco dinners for 1,400, people He was pleased to be returning to a place he knew from his youth and also are invariably wowed by the overall quality of the affairs and the fun they have at his summers working at the Club, and to an area where he could indulge in each one. Time and time again, Koretski demonstrates that he knows what it takes recreational passions that included paddle boarding and salt-water fly-fishing. He to make his members and their guests happy. Nobody does hospitality better. also appreciated the opportunities that Misquamicut offered an ambitious young But what really sets him apart in the eyes of many is how cheerfully and man, and together they grew. At the time of his hiring in 1988, for example, effectively the man who today carries the additional title of chief operating Club dinners and events were catered, and annual food and beverage revenue officer handles any request that comes his way. And the was a meager $200,000. Today, that number approaches sense around Misquamicut is that if a member ever needs $1.5 million, with all meals prepared and served by some of something, all he or she has to do is call Phil. the roughly 180 employees under his command. Total Club “I honestly believe that if you asked him to put on a circus, revenues now top $6.5 million, and he and his crew must not he would simply smile and want to know how many elephants only take very good care of Misquamicut’s five hundred-odd you needed,” says Club member Will Vogt. members and their families and guests each season but also Adds Randy Abood, another longtime member who handle several wedding receptions, numerous private events, has held a number of leadership positions at Misquamicut, and a dozen or so golf outings. Since 2006, he has also been including that of president, and has worked extensively with deeply involved in more than $15 million in capital projects Koretski: “The words ‘can’t do’ and ‘no’ are not part of Phil’s and property acquisitions. day-to-day vocabulary. And everything he does is beyond Koretski seems to be a man in perpetual motion during the ‘normal’ call of duty. He is a gentleman and a leader. He the season, and it is not clear he even knows what sleep seeks excellence in himself and espouses it for others. He is means from mid May to mid October. But he has not one something special.” complaint about that jammed-packed schedule and the Clearly, the powers at Augusta National feel much the responsibilities he shoulders in his role as GM and COO. In same way, which is why they have asked him to work at the fact, he unabashedly cherishes the work that he does. Masters Tournament every spring since 1999, most recently as hospitality “Given the nature of this Club, as an incredibly special and unique destination, operations manager. we get to see people at their absolute finest,” says Koretski, who lives in Westerly Born in Babylon, New York, Koretski was raised in the most easterly parts with his wife Jodie, a visiting professor in the political science department at of Connecticut, in the town of Pawcatuck. Though he moved to the Nutmeg Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts as well as the director of the State when he was only a toddler, he nonetheless feels himself to be “a New state’s Public Managers Program there. “And that makes my time at the Club so Yorker at heart.” After graduating from Stonington High School in 1979, he enjoyable. I have a great staff, too, and great leaders within the Club who give me entered the University of Connecticut, from which he received a BA degree a lot of freedom to make things happen for our members and their guests and help in political science in 1984. By the time he left that school, however, Koretski them enjoy the Club in as many ways as is possible.” had received an education of an entirely different sort in the world of club Not surprisingly, Phil Koretski is very well regarded at Misquamicut. But management, thanks to a series of summer jobs at Misquamicut. he is held in high esteem throughout the club industry, and there is no better “I started in 1979, washing dishes at the Beach Club,” he recalls. “I did that example of that than his being employed by Augusta each spring for a position for a couple of summers before I moved to the golf club as an ‘assistant to the that entails supervising its Clubhouse Terrace food service operations as well as manager.’ I did everything from cooking and waiting tables to bartending and special evening events. helping with whatever else the club manager needed me to do. And I stayed at Given its position in golf, Augusta National is able to hire pretty much Misquamicut through the summer after I graduated from UConn.” anyone it wants, and they are inclined to take on only the best. So when it Clearly, there was something about that business that Koretski liked, and comes time to put together their Masters team each year, they do something Above: This is an engraved oval brass plaque Peace Medal, presented by Colonial Secretary Edward Rawson to the chiefs of those loyal tribes who aided the colonists during the following spring he went to work as an assistant manager at the Aspetuck with which Misquamicut members are quite familiar. King Philip’s War. This plaque was awarded at Council on June 20, 1676. The design shows a semi-nude Indian woman in feather dress. Valley Country Club in Weston, Connecticut. After two years in that position, They call Phil. Collection, artist unknown. Opposite: Painting of Native American Sachem Ninigret, circa 1700, RISD Museum 145

Chef Mike GROWING UP IN WHAT USED TO BE coal-mining country in

property in his wood-paneled Jeep. And it wasn’t long before I found

the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area in northeast Pennsylvania, Mike

myself working at the sandwich station at the Beach Club.” For many years, his Misquamicut gig was a summer one, and he

Paciga got into the cooking business when he was just a teenager. “It seemed like there was a pizza restaurant on

traveled to Florida in the winters to work, first at

every block of my hometown, and I started to

The Everglades Club in Palm Beach and then at

work in different ones during the summer and

the Gulfstream Golf Club in Delray Beach. Then,

also after classes during the school year,” says

in 1999, Paciga began a four-year stint as a sous

Paciga, whose father was a builder and whose

chef at the Augusta National Golf Club. But then

mother labored as a clerk in a True Value

he became a full-time employee at Misquamicut,

hardware store as well as in a nearby garment

and that meant he started staying year-round in

factory. “In fact, I liked the job so much that

Westerly, where he currently resides with his wife

I took a year off from high school to work in a

Sara and sons Nathan and Jacob. In 2008, Paciga

pizza place, and I also helped out a landscaper

assumed the job of head chef.

on a mowing team. Then, when it came time to

“I base myself out of the Beach Club because

go to college, I enrolled in a local community

we have created something of a monster there, as

college and began studying something called

that is where about 80 percent of our food and

‘food production management.’ ”

beverage activities now happen,” he explains.

After two years there, Paciga transferred

“We are so busy through the season, especially

to Johnson & Wales University in Providence,

with 4th of July and Golf Weekend. And truth

where he earned a bachelor’s degree in culinary

be told, the offseason doesn’t slow down much

arts. It was during that time that he determined

either, and there is lots going on, like staffing

he wanted to work in the club world. “I was

and ordering and getting ready for the next year.

looking for something small and manageable,”

It’s crazy a lot of the time, but I really enjoy the

says Paciga. “I was not interested in hotels or

work and the people, both members and staff,

big production places.”

and the sense of happiness that is so apparent

At first, Paciga pined to go west, and

throughout the Club. It is such a friendly place.”

he checked out a number of possibilities in

As is often the case with head chefs, Paciga

California. But he was discouraged by the lack

does not get to cook all that much at work. But

of available jobs as well as the cost of living

he tries to find time to get behind the stove at home, especially during the winter.

there. “Then one day, in the spring of 1994, I stopped by the career development office at Johnson & Wales and learned about a fax that

“I like to keep things pretty simple when I cook for my family,”

had come in from a guy named Phil Koretski at the Misquamicut Club,”

Paciga explains, adding that that occasionally entails going back to his

he recalls. “It sounded interesting, and I went down to the Club for an

culinary roots and making pizza for his wife and kids. “I still love playing with dough,” he says. 

interview. Phil and I talked, and then he took me for a ride around the

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terrace and a dazzling fireworks display. The gala dinner on Saturday

from atop an elephant, wearing a turban and holding in his hand, as a

night of Golf Weekend is another joyous event, with competitors in the

man from St. Louis should, a bottle of Budweiser beer.

tournament now called the Heminway Bowl salving whatever wounds

To be fair, though, the Clubhouse at Misquamicut has always

they had inflicted on themselves on the course by cutting loose on the

been more than just a place to party. It is the spot from which people

dance floor. Then, there are the private parties almost too numerous

set out for their rounds of golf, most of which begin on a tee so close

to count. Adie von Gontard and his wife Mamie organized a classic

to the building that anyone sitting on the back porch that overlooks

one some years ago for his eightieth birthday, and he greeted guests

it can hear bets being set and the curses that are invariably muttered

Above: Members enjoy dining alfresco. Inset: A menu from days gone by when whole lobsters were priced at $1.50. Following pages: A panorama of the Clubhouse with Block Island Sound as the backdrop

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DONNA BAILEY – HEAD OF MEMBER SERVICES Donna Bailey was a stay-at-home mother living in Westerly, Rhode Island, when in 1987 she became a full-time employee of Misquamicut. Her title was assistant clerk, and she worked out of two different locales. One was in an off-season office that the Club maintained on Main Street in Westerly, and the other was a space on the second floor of the Misquamicut Clubhouse, where Bailey and her colleagues set up shop in the summers. “The Club was a very simple, very quiet place back then,” says Bailey, a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of the state of Rhode Island, as well as the mother of two grown children and the wife of a now-retired professional trucker and electronics technician. “And we did our work quite differently than we do today. All Club charges were made on paper chits, and one of my main jobs was to enter the transactions recorded on those chits into the one computer we had. It was, as you can well imagine, a very time-consuming process.” Indeed, it was. The chits came in by the hundreds, from the Beach Club and the golf pro shop as well as the tennis shop and the dining room and bar. “It got a bit complicated at times given how many legacies there were and how many people we had from the same families,” Bailey says. “So we made copies of their signatures from the checks they wrote and put them on note cards. That way, we could refer to the signatures when we were reviewing bills and determine which family member made what charge.” That duty disappeared with the introduction years ago of point-of-sales systems. And Bailey has not had to make an office move since the Club consolidated its administrative operations in 1989 into one building — the cottage-like structure situated just on the right of the driveway leading to the Clubhouse. Her title now is head of member services, and in that job, Bailey handles duties as far ranging as membership applications and reservations for the guest rooms to end-of-month billings including member correspondence. It’s a yearround gig, and while summer is certainly the most hectic part of the year, she says she keeps quite busy in the winter months with tasks like updating the Club’s rather voluminous directory. She is the twelve-month lifeblood of the Club.

when drives go astray. The building is also where members can take

Prize Day is held each Labor Day weekend as a way of recognizing the

in views of the golf course from several different vantages, whether

athletes who have excelled that season. The Club’s Board of Governors

of the first fairway from that same snug porch as it rolls and climbs to

meets in the Clubhouse on occasion, as do a variety of committees.

the green or of parts of the Meadows holes and the Atlantic beyond

Out-of-towners also use its guest rooms when they come for overnight

from the South Terrace

visits, finding not only a comfortable place to lay their heads but also a way to enjoy the building in its quietest and most deserted state.

linger over lunch at the Clubhouse

All these years later, the Misquamicut Clubhouse remains a

before games and consume Southsides there afterwards. It is

center of activity for members and guests. Those who built it would

RIENDS AND FAMILIES

no doubt be pleased. 

where bridge and backgammon tournaments are staged and where

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For many years, Misquamicut members ran their Club from a pair of offices. One was located on the second floor of the Clubhouse, and it was utilized from Memorial Day weekend to Columbus Day. The other was a winter office situated at 163 Main Street in downtown Westerly. And part of the duties of the Clubhouse staff each spring and fall was shifting from one base of operations to the other. It was, to say the least, an inconvenient and often cumbersome arrangement. But it also made a certain sort of sense in a community comprised mostly of seasonal homes that shut down when the weather started to turn cold — and did not open again until spring. Then, in the winter of 1988-89, Club leaders changed all that by relocating a 1,200-square-foot structure that had housed a handful of employees each season from a spot below and to the left of the first tee to a place on the right side of the road leading from Ocean View Highway to the Clubhouse. They then set about transforming it into a permanent Club office. “The building in its original state and locale looked and felt like a flop house,” says General Manager Phil Koretski. “It had four or five bedrooms, an asphalt roof, and only one bathroom that the residents had to share. We jacked it up and moved it to its present location, and then we fixed it up.” The result was a shingled cottage that boasts the look and feel of a typical coastal New England home. Club employees set up shop there in August 1989, and the modest structure has been the center of operations ever since. Today, the office serves as the place of business for Koretski, Controller Anthony Frattarelli, and Head of Member Services Donna Bailey, among others and includes a boardroom where meetings of various Club committees take place. 

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The 4th of July THE MEMBERS OF MISQUAMICUT know how to throw a party, and

dogs from one of the dinner stations, or steaks, ribs, fried chicken, and

at no time during the season is that more evident than on the 4th of

pulled pork from some of the others. A band plays the whole time from

July, when the Club stages an Independence Day dinner for some

a small space on the roof, mostly classic rock and country rock songs,

1,400 men, women, and children, and then treats them all to a world-

and tables arrayed on the verdant turf by the practice putting area and

class fireworks display.

the 18th green fill with up to four generations of Misquamicut families, the Atlantic Ocean serving the whole time as a backdrop.

The sheer enormity of the undertaking, to say nothing of the fun it engenders for young and old alike, is apparent to anyone

Dinners are finished as the sun begins to set, and when it gets

in attendance. Revelers start to arrive at the back terrace of the

dark, the fireworks start. A New Hampshire-based company called

Clubhouse at six oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock, with many clad in cotton sundresses and

Atlas PyroVisions has handled that part of the evening since 1990,

Bermuda shorts and both polo and button-down shirts that feature

when the Club started holding these family-style picnics on the 4th,

shades of red, white, and blue. Some children scramble to the area

and for half an hour or so, the sky is alive with the star-like lights that

where artists paint faces or treat themselves to rides down inflatable

burst from shells and rockets that are launched into the air by mortars

slides and climbs up rock walls. At the same time, adults assemble at

and boom when they explode. The colorful barrage seems a fitting

one of the four full-service bars to order drinks.

way to finish celebrating the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birthday, and the party ends with the arrival of a grand finale that is loud and luminous. ď &#x2DC;

When it is time for dinner, people procure hamburgers and hot

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BEAC H C LUB

Above: Public Bathing Beach in the 1920s. Opposite: An aerial view of Watch Hill town and harbor and the old Beach Club

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

IMES WERE TOUGH IN THE MID-1940S, even in tony Watch Hill. Fortunes had been hurt first

by the onset of the Great Depression, which crimped the financial ability of many people to visit and enjoy the seaside retreat, and after that by the Hurricane of 1938, whose wild winds and high

tides had torn up the town and caused the death of fifteen people. Then came the outbreak of World War II, which sent hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men overseas to fight. As for those who stayed behind, they had to deal with gas rationing, food shortages, and the uncertainty of how the conflict would actually turn out. As a result, fewer and fewer people were spending time in Watch Hill, if they went there at all. So, it was not surprising that late in the summer of 1945, with the war ending and Germany and Japan surrendering, members of the Misquamicut Golf Club and the Watch Hill Beach Club moved forward with an idea they had been discussing for some time: a merger. Part of the impetus for that was logistical, as most of the members

when it constructed a small pavilion on East Beach as well as a

of the Beach Club also were also part of the Golf Club. But economics

couple dozen cabanas and a cold water shower so members could

were the bigger motivation, as it had become increasingly difficult to

rinse off the sea water after a swim in the ocean. Initially, beachgoers

sustain those individual ventures with use of their facilities — and

took a small ferry pulled by a cable across Maschaug Pond to get to

revenues — way down.

those facilities. Then, the Club built a

“My family belonged to the

causeway over that body of water to

Beach Club in those days, and it was

improve access.

not an easy period,” says Edith Eglin,

The setup at East Beach worked

who first came to Watch Hill as a little

well for several decades. But it was

girl in the late 1930s. “There weren’t

abandoned in 1934 when summer

many people here back then, even

residents started the Watch Hill Beach

in the summers, and certainly not

Club and constructed a new pavilion on

enough to support two clubs.”

Napatree Point, just off Bay Street and

Those who ran the two associations

about two miles from the Misquamicut

well understood that situation, which

Clubhouse, the thinking being that the

is why they formally agreed to become

waters there were not as rough and thus

one, calling the new entity the Misquamicut Club.

more suitable for young children. Club minutes indicate that the first

Interestingly, the Misquamicut Golf Club had organized

meeting of incorporators of the new association took place on a train

something of a beach operation five years after its founding in 1895

on the New York, New Haven, and Hartford line on July 13th of that

Above: Children enjoying the beach in August 1956. Opposite: A map depicts projected improvements for Watch Hill’s harbor and bathing beach from the late 1940s.

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along with the thirty-nine private homes that had previously stood on Napatree. Fortunately, insurance covered some 85 percent of the cost of replacing that Beach Club structure, and members used those monies, which came to just a tad over $23,000, to build a new one. That was a welcome relief, but it did not ease all the financial problems the new entity was having, what with the advent of the Depression and then the outbreak of war. By 1942, Club leaders were talking with their counterparts at the Golf Club about combining

THE RAFT TEST

forces. Three years later, they did just that.

There are significant rights of passage as you grow up in Watch Hill. The first time your parents let you ride your bike to the village. Your first (legal!) drink at the Beach Club. Your first invitation to the Heminway Bowl. But none is more important than passing the Raft Test. For as many summers as you can remember, you have been sitting on the sand, maybe with your parents, maybe with a babysitter, watching the big kids swim out to the raft without a care. You can splash around in the shallows or ride a boogie board, but where you want to be is out on that raft, chilling with your friends, jumping off, then climbing back up the ladder, over and over. But you sadly know it won’t be this summer. When next summer finally comes, you’ve grown a couple of inches, you’re a little stronger and you’ve taken some swimming lessons at the local Y. Come mid-June, you’re back in Watch Hill and down at the Beach Club the first day it’s open. You pray a lifeguard is there to make the test official. Your first lap is easy. The second a little harder, but you joyfully sprint the last leg back to the beach. The lifeguard greets you with a knowing smile. You’re a big kid now! — Bill Miller

Early on, the Beach Club operated mostly in the months of July and August and was inhabited primarily by mothers, children, and the occasional nanny. “It was a very informal place most of the time,” recalls Eglin. “There was a snack bar that served lunch, and people spent most of their time swimming and playing in the sand. Being just after the war, it wasn’t at all crowded. But those who were around certainly enjoyed themselves.” The one time that things got at all upscale at the Beach Club in those days was on Sundays, when it was the site of rather lavish luncheon buffets. “We used to get dressed up for those, in heels, jewelry, and linen dresses, and go there with my father and mother,” says Ada Addington, another Misquamicut member of several decades. “The food was fancy for those affairs, too, and I remember lots of people being on the porch those afternoons talking, laughing, and drinking.”

HINGS AT THE BEACH GOT BUSIER THROUGH THE 1950 s

as Baby Boomers started to be born and the numbers of boys

and girls spending their summer days there grew. “Some of my

year. And though the organization was distinctly separate from the Golf Club, its membership roster included many men and women

earliest memories are of being down at the Beach Club” says Bill

from Misquamicut.

Miller, who started coming to Watch Hill with his family in the early 1950s. “Riding your bike to the Beach Club and passing the Raft Test

The Watch Hill Beach Club had only been in existence for four

were big deals.”

years when the Hurricane of 1938 hit and destroyed its beach pavilion

Opposite: Fun at the beach in the 1950s

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FA M I LY F UN A ND F R O L I C While the words “Family Fun and Frolic” can certainly be used to

participants. But it eventually came to include entire families, with

describe the ethos of Misquamicut and what it is all about, they also

contests for adults and children alike. “Field Day was one of the things

happen to serve as the name of an annual bash that brings hundreds

that signified the end of the summer at a time when most schools

of members to the Beach Club to engage in

did not start up again until September and

activities as varied as tug-of-wars, egg tosses,

families stayed in Watch Hill through Labor Day

musical chairs, kite flying, and sand-castle

weekend.” Miller says. “But as schools began

building. The much-loved event dates back

opening earlier, we started backing up the date

to the mid-1970s, and for many years it was

to the middle of summer so as many people as

simply known as Field Day and took place

possible could participate.”

over Labor Day weekend. Now, it carries a

The big attractions of the event are the

different appellation and is staged the Saturday

games and contests and the chance for families

after the 4th of July. But its essence — and

and friends to be together. But the fun can come

popularity — remains very much the same.

in other ways. One year, for example, organizers

Longtime Club members Bill Miller and Will Vogt remember the first

handed out campaign-style buttons designed to show how Misquamicut

Field Days as being end-of-season events arising out of Mr. Freeman’s

had become part of each participant’s lives. One button stated: “I am

infamous summer camp for boys in the 1950s and ’60s. “There would

Watch Hill,” indicating that the bearer was part of a family that had

be races for kids, and we would perform calisthenics,” Miller recalls.

summered there for years. Another possessed the self-explanatory

Vogt remembers that there was boxing, too. “With a real ring set

sentence: “I married Watch Hill,” while a third was for those who had

up, ropes and all,” he says. At first, the gathering was only for camp

ventured to town on their own later in life, reading: “I found Watch Hill.” 

Opposite: Labor Day 1989 musical chairs photo by renowned photographer and Club member Tina Barney

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But there was very little in the way of nightlife at the Beach Club

named Rockwell King DuMoulin that had the structure mounted

through the late ’40s and 1950s. “That’s because the social scene

on pilings so that water from future hurricanes flowed underneath

in those days revolved largely around cocktail parties and dinner

the building instead of pulling it off a more traditional foundation.

parties at individual cottages,” says Eglin. “People had lots of staff in

He also believed he could lessen resistance to the howling winds

those days, and they preferred to entertain at home.”

and surging waters — and further ensure its survival — by hinging all the walls and windows so they could be opened toward the

the Misquamicut Club appeared to have

direction from which the storm was coming. DuMoulin’s ideas were

recovered from the travails of the previous two decades. But

groundbreaking, and the passing of time proved them to be effective

then came Hurricane Carol in the late summer of 1954. It was a

as well, for his beach pavilion endured several hurricanes before

devastating storm that yanked the beach pavilion from its very

being replaced some fifty years later due to simple wear and tear by

foundation and eventually deposited it on the lawn of the Crawford

the one that exists today.

Y THE EARLY 1950S,

cottage at the end of Wapan Road. The pavilion was so badly damaged

Even after Hurricane Carol, the Beach Club continued to be

that the Club had no choice but to once again build a new one. And

a popular place to repose. The sweeping beach and mostly gentle

it quickly did so, completing the job in time for the start of the 1955

waters and breezes provided a quiet and comfortable place for

season and utilizing an innovative design by a Providence architect

youngsters to play, and for those watching over them a place to

Previous pages: Summer fun at the Beach Club, 1957 and 2016. Above: The modern new Beach Club pavilion was designed by Rhode Island architect Rockwell King DuMoulin and constructed after Hurricane Carol in 1954. Following pages: The Beach Club and raft in the summer of 2011

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MI S QUA M I C OOK It started simply enough several decades ago, with a handful of

cooked shrimp and tangy cocktail sauce, and platters are stacked with

members gathering informally at the Beach Club on Thursday nights

cheeses and slices of salami. Though wine may be procured at the bar,

for a cookout. The adults brought the food and drink and whatever

it is not unusual for diners to bring along special bottles of their own.

implements were needed to prepare them as their children played on

As a rule, the festivities begin at 6 p.m., and the energy builds as

the beach. It seemed the perfect way to savor a perfect setting on a

the deck fills with people. Cocktails are consumed, and hors dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeuvres

summer eve as well as the company of good friends and family.

passed among those sharing the same tables and also to fellow diners

In time, word of those repasts spread, and more and more

who happen to be nearby. Eventually, members make their way to the

members began to appear. Then, the Club decided to open the Beach

Club grills to cook their steaks and chops as well as their burgers and

Club bar for them, and the number of attendees steadily grew.

dogs and whatever seafood they may have brought along. The food

Today, as many as three hundred people assemble on Thursday

preparation is important, to be sure. But it is also occasion for some

nights for what has come to be called Misquamicook. They spread

serious socializing, and the lay-chefs chat amongst themselves as

cloths on tables and lay out plates, napkins, forks, and knives. Some

plumes of smoke and scents of meats and fish being seared rise into

even adorn their spaces with fresh-cut flowers. Bowls are filled with

the air while children play tag on the beach. Then, it is time to eat. ď &#x2DC;

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relax, with the porch offering welcome shelter from the sun and heat. By the 1960s, it had also started to serve every now and then as the venue for dinner dances, including ones that were known as

C L U B

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often seems like the busiest

part of Misquamicut. Lunches on the porch are always well

attended, and it is estimated that the kitchen there puts out some

Costume Balls. “There was a member named George ‘Tank’ Nichols

1,200 meals on a summer weekend. Family Fun and Frolic is

who was involved in New York theater, and he’d come up here with

invariably a big hit each July, as are the weekly Misquamicooks. Up

these elaborate costumes for people to wear,” says Miller.

to four hundred people come to evening affairs that are part of golf

Fun as those evening affairs might have been, the Beach Club

tournaments like the Heminway Bowl, while dinner dances, such

remained primarily a place for daytime activities well into the 1980s.

as the one put on each Labor Day weekend, draw healthy crowds

“But then it started to become a very popular place for Club events,”

of their own. In fact, the Beach Club has become such a big part

says Georgie Lewis, who has been coming to Watch Hill since 1928.

of the summer scene in Watch Hill that some members describe

“People didn’t have the staff they once did and they did not entertain

Misquamicut, tongue only slightly in cheek, as a beach club that

in their homes nearly as much. They were also looking for a place to

happens to have a golf course.

socialize that was less formal than the Clubhouse.”

“We go there frequently,” says member Tom O’Connor, whose

Members had also come to appreciate, perhaps in ways they

earliest memories of Misquamicut are of playing golf as a teenager in

never had before, what a beautiful setting they had at the Beach Club.

the 1960s and ’70s, and who only came to understand the pleasures

And the hiring of General Manager Phil Koretski in 1988 and Chef

of the Beach Club later in life. “The lunches are terrific, and so are

Michael Paciga six years later led to an overall elevation in the quality

the dinners and dances. You could not ask for a better place to spend

of the food and drink provided there, to say nothing of the service.

your time.” 

Above, left: The grill at the Beach Club. Right: Young members relaxing on the patio. Opposite: The sun sets on the beach and Napatree Point. Following pages: The Beach Club and harbor, July 2014

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THE BI G S TOR MS The seaside location that makes Watch Hill such a scenic and serene

Before the 1938 Hurricane

spot — and the Misquamicut Club such a beguiling retreat — is the same thing that makes them so vulnerable to the vagaries of Mother Nature. And both have been devastated over the years by storms that tore up cottages, washed away beach pavilions, flooded golf courses, and even led at times to the death of those unable to get out of their ways. The most memorable tempests include the Hurricane of 1938, which hit before such things had begun to be formally named, and Hurricane Carol, which came in 1954. Hurricane Sandy also did a number on the area in 2012. Of all the storms ever to strike Watch Hill, none was bigger or

After the 1938 Hurricane

more devastating than the one in 1938. It killed 433 people in Rhode Island, with fifteen of those lives lost in Watch Hill. The hurricane made landfall there around 4 p.m. on September 21st, arriving with little warning, as none of the early detection systems so prevalent today were in place. Winds exceeded one hundred miles per hour and tides were as much as twenty-five feet above normal. Its power was so great that it destroyed all thirty-nine cottages on Napatree Point, and water ran across the entire lower golf course at Misquamicut and over Ocean View Highway, ascending roughly twelve feet up the hill toward the Clubhouse. A carved granite boulder off the cart path by the 11th

the house, and then suddenly a big one hit and took away the front

tee marks just how high the seas actually rose. Longtime Club member Arthur Cottrell was only three years old

porch. Then the entire house collapsed, and they were swept into

in 1938, and he regards the hurricane as one of his earliest memories

the water, clutching anything that floated. Fortunately, the wind blew

of a childhood spent in Westerly. “My mother was playing golf that

them toward the Connecticut shore, where a tenant farmer rescued

afternoon with Harriet Moore,” he says. “The weather was decent

them and gave them shelter for the rest of the storm. Then, my mother

but breezy when they started. As their round progressed, the wind

caught a ride back to the family house in Westerly the next day.”

really began to blow. So they decided to stop after nine holes and

Another Misquamicut member, Jay Mellick, remembers his father

go back to Harriet’s house at Napatree Point to watch the surf break

talking about being in Watch Hill that same time. “My father, O. Waring

on the beach. Before they knew it, waves were coming right up to

Mellick, had just graduated from college and came to Watch Hill to see

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his mother Eleanor, who had rented a house there for the month of

summer season. Set on pilings, it was designed to let the surges from

September,” Jay says. “It was around his birthday, and knowing he was

any future storms run underneath the building and not yank it away, as

a nautical guy, his mother gave him a barometer from Abercrombie

had been the case with Carol.

& Fitch in New York City as a gift. But when my father opened it, he

Then, there was Sandy, which arrived on October 29, 2012, with

noticed there was no reading on the barometer, even after he tapped

high winds and an epic storm surge that breached the dike designed

it a couple of times. So, he called the store in New York to see about

to protect the lower Meadows holes on the Misquamicut Club golf

getting a replacement. And as he was telling the person from the

course. “Five of the seven holes there were totally underwater when

store about the problem, the man said, ‘That’s weird. None of our

I came to work the next morning,” recalls Course Superintendent

barometers are working either.’ My father hung up the phone and

Dean Bozek. “And I could not believe what I saw down there. Propane

turned to his mother and said, ‘A big storm coming our way.’ A couple

tanks. Patio tables and umbrellas. Garage doors. Entire decks that had

hours later, it hit.”

broken off from houses. The upper part of the course was fine, with

Hurricane Carol blew into Watch Hill on the last day of August in

just a few trees down. But the Meadows holes were a mess.”

1954, and it, too, was a mighty one, with winds up to ninety miles per

According to Bozek, the water on that low-lying area receded

hour and tide surges of some fifteen feet. Once again, Rhode Island

within twenty-four hours, thanks largely to the effectiveness of a

was hit hard, with seventeen deaths in the state attributed to the

drainage system the Club had installed there in the 1990s. But massive

storm. Fortunately, there were no local fatalities. But there was plenty

amounts of silt remained in a number of places, and several tees and

of damage, and among those properties destroyed was the pavilion

greens needed to be restored. As a result, it was not until June the

at the Beach Club, which was dragged out to sea and eventually

following year that the entire course reopened, with the first ten holes

deposited on the lawn of a house at the end of Wapan Road. There

and No. 18 serving as a temporary track until that time. Total cost of

was no way of salvaging that structure, so the Club constructed a

the golf course damages exceeded $350,000, and while the pavilion

new one, making sure it was ready in time for the start of the 1955

at the Beach Club held, it still required repair work costing $20,000. 

Previous pages: Widespread destruction occurred in Watch Hill and Misquamicut during the 1938 hurricane. Above: Hurricane Carol in 1954 tore the town apart. Opposite: Hurricane Sandy caused extensive flooding and damage in October 2012.

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Golf at the

M I SQUA M I CUT C LUB

Above: Early Misquamicut golfers with the Clubhouse in the background. Opposite: Caddies pose for a photo on the original Clubhouse deck in the late 1890s.

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

HE EXCITEMENT OVER THE FOUNDING of the Misquamicut Club in 1895 was matched only by

the enthusiasm for the game around which the association had been established. While golf had been played in the British Isles for centuries, it was at that period of time a very new sport in the States. Yet

it quickly captured the fancy of the well-to-do men and women who had taken to summering in Watch Hill, and they could not seem to get enough of it. Misquamicut frequently staged tournaments and challenge

then brought the beverages to the golfers on either the ninth green

matches in the early years of its existence as it also put on exhibition

or the 10th tee, depending on how fast they were playing and how

matches between traveling golf professionals, the results of which

quickly he was able to prepare their drinks.

were recounted in Watch Hill Life and Seaside Topics. During that

Club leaders continued to make improvements on their course

time, the Club also took steps to enhance its golf course, first expanding

through the early parts of the twentieth century, and golf remained a

it from nine holes to eighteen the year after its establishment

popular diversion. First, they engaged Seth Raynor of Southampton,

and then hiring Scotsman Tom

Long Island, to build several new

Bendelow to revamp most of that

holes by the start of the 1914

layout a few years later. When

season. Eight years later, they

Bendelow completed his work

hired Donald Ross, the noted

in 1901, Misquamicut boasted

Scottish architect and longtime

141 members, and the course

head of golf at the Pinehurst resort

fairly bustled with play during the

in North Carolina, to fashion the

season, which generally ran from

course that more or less exists

4th of July weekend to Labor Day.

today. Quite understandably, there

By that time, Misquamicut had

were rather dramatic fall-offs

also abandoned the converted corn crib that had acted as its original

in play during World War I, due to a rash of resignations by those

Clubhouse in favor of a spacious new structure that not only included

who could no longer afford the Club and the absence of members

a locker room but also a place to dine and drink. As for those players

who were serving in the military. Things began to improve after the

who needed to quench their thirsts during actual games, they availed

fighting ended in 1919, however, and activity on the Misquamicut

themselves of a so-called “wig-wag system” to order refreshments

golf course grew through the Roaring Twenties.

when they arrived at the ninth tee, waving a flag to alert a steward

But then came the stock market crash of 1929, followed by the

in the Clubhouse as to what they wanted — once back and forth for

Great Depression, and after that World War II. Once again, large

“fizz water,” twice for ginger ale, and three times for sarsaparilla. The

numbers of members resigned as a result of their own financial

steward acknowledged their requests by waving a flag of his own and

distresses, and usage of Misquamicut facilities by those who had

Above: A Seaside Topics photo shows a Misquamicut member teeing off in the early days of the Club. Opposite: The front page of Watch Hill Life from September 4, 1897, recaps the golf season at Misquamicut and displays tournament results.

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A wooden Challenge Bowl trophy from a 1902 match between the Misquamicut Land Company, which spearheaded the founding of the Misquamicut Golf Club, and the Club itself. Opposite, clockwise from upper right: Golf Club member and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Walter E. Hope played in a foursome in 1930 that included U.S. Secretary of Commerce Robert P. Lamont and U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell; a Seaside Topics article details Frank Ahernâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s win over Clement Griscom in the 1939 Club Championship; a 1919 golf exhibition match featured early professionals Mike Brady and Tom McNamara; Mrs. Louise DeKoven Phelps, the Misquamicut Golf Club Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Club Champion in 1927. Following pages: Various Misquamicut Club golf event trophies

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the means to stay dropped significantly, largely as a result of so

forty-five years, Dinger also saw no reason ever to hire an assistant.

many men having to go overseas to fight and impositions like gas

There simply wasn’t any need for another person, and he even had

rationing that made travel to and from Watch Hill exceedingly

time to moonlight most summers as the professional at Agawam

difficult for those still in the country. Club records indicate that

Hunt in East Providence, Rhode Island — and to write a regular

capital spending was nearly non-existent during that period, and

column for Seaside Topics called “Hum… Dingers.” In fact, play

golf course maintenance cut to a bare minimum as a result of near-

was often so sparse at times that for a spell, Misquamicut offered

empty coffers and labor shortages that made it impossible to keep on

seasonal guest passes to local businessmen that allowed

much of a staff — especially for a place that was

them to tee it up on certain days and times.

only open a few months a year. Not surprisingly,

“The tournament that is now known as the

member play plummeted as well, and revenues

Heminway Bowl, and was then called the Shinkle

from green fees tumbled by as much as 75 percent.

Bowl, was popular in the 1950s and ’60s,” recalls Bill Miller, a past Misquamicut president and the son of Muriel Miller,

FTER THE END OF WORLD WAR II, people began returning

who won her first Club Championship in 1948 and her last

to Watch Hill. But the golf course at Misquamicut was

in 1970. “Members also liked the eleven-hole tournament that

strangely quiet for the next several decades. Interest in

the Club organized for mixed groups each Sunday, and that

the sport seemed to have waned, and tournaments were

included the first ten holes and then the 18th. But other than

infrequent and not very well attended. Golf balls were

those events, and the annual Club Championships, things

the only merchandise that Club Professional Fred Dinger

were very quiet.” None of this is to say that the golf program was in any

sold out of what was a tiny shop, and there was no junior program to speak of, with youngsters spending most of their

way neglected. The Club constructed a new cart barn in

time on the tennis courts or at the Beach Club. Men were for

1957, and then two years later purchased its first golf carts. The end of that decade saw the building of a proper

the most part only around on weekends, and even then it was unusual for more than eight or ten foursomes to

practice facility to the left of the ninth tee, and while

go off on a given Saturday or Sunday. And while there

Dinger seemed to have little use for it and continued

was an enthusiastic core group of female golfers, led

to give lessons off No. 10, it proved to be popular among members. Then, in 1967, work on the reservoir to

for many years by eleven-time Women’s Club Champion Muriel McKaig Miller, their numbers were small. In fact, the course

the left of the par-5 seventh hole began, and when it was completed

was usually so empty through the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s that Dinger

several years later, Club leaders contracted for the installation of a

never worried about disrupting play when he gave lessons from a

rudimentary irrigation system.

small tee near the 18th green and let members hit shots to the 10th

Other big changes came to the Misquamicut Club in 1968 when

fairway below. A native of Cincinnati and a one-time caddie who

Dwight Campbell and Charlie O’Lari replaced Dinger and longtime

was hired by Misquamicut in 1923 and employed there for the next

Green Superintendent Oscar Chapman, respectively. O’Lari’s first

Above: A crystal trophy from a bygone era. Opposite, clockwise from upper left: Caddies at the close of the qualifying round of their annual tournament (Fred Dinger Jr. is pictured first from the left in the front row); a Seaside Topics article touts Dinger’s forty-four years at Misquamicut; Dinger presents Shinkle Bowl trophies to Louis Cerrito and his partner (Jack Heminway is pictured standing behind the trophy); Dinger’s Seaside Tropics column

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The Ladies Invitational Golf Tournament FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER MALE GOLFERS at Misquamicut created

and the fields often consisted of several guest-guest teams. But in

what is currently known as the Heminway Bowl, distaff players started

time, the Ladies Invitational became consistently well attended.

an annual event of their own. Called the Ladies Invitational Golf

These days, the tournament is held in mid-July. Members are

Tournament, it was first officially staged in 1960 and is now a summer

allowed to invite anywhere from one to three guests, with the field

fixture, attracting some ninety contestants for three

limited to the first twenty-four foursomes. Players start

days of golf and good times.

to filter into town on Sunday, and they play practice

For many year’s, the Ladies Invitational was run

rounds on Monday. The actual competition begins the

by Susan Markham McShane and Lorine Vogt, who

following morning. It is a two-day, best-ball affair, with

started coming to Watch Hill as children and whose

prizes being handed out to both gross and net winners

grandchildren spend their summers there nowadays.

at a luncheon once play on Wednesday is complete.

“From what I understand, they oversaw everything in

While golf is the main attraction of the Ladies

the early years,” says Lisa Griffin McGill, an eighteen-

Invitational, there is plenty of off-course activity as

time Women’s Club Champion at Misquamicut and a

well. Beach Club privileges are granted to all guests

regular at the Ladies Invitational. “They got people

and whatever members of their families attend.

to play, both members and guests, and pretty much

In addition, the Club puts on a cocktail party after

determined who would go to what parties during

Monday’s practice rounds and a dinner the first day of

the tournament, and who would sit next to whom at

the competition.

dinner. They took care of it all.”

“We try to make it a real girl’s trip,” says McGill.

The number of tournament participants varied at first, in part

“It’s a time to play golf and also to fill up your house and have fun with

because the women’s golf program at Misquamicut was not that large,

your friends.” 

Above, top: Participants in the 1964 Ladies Invitational Golf Tournament Inset: Glenna Collett Vare, six-time National Women’s Golf Champion with her partner, Mrs. R. H. Fullerton, at the 1961 Women’s Invitational. Opposite: Ladies Day 1988 photo taken by Tina Barney

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The Misquamicut Club staged a Ladies Invitational Golf Tournament in 1947. The players, with Head Professional Fred Dinger: Front row, left to right: Mrs. T. F. D. Haines, Miss Katherine Foster, Mrs. R. S. Patton, Miss Patricia Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Sullivan, Mrs. Glenna Collett Vare, Mrs. J. Lloyd Hoen, and Mrs. Leon Mowry. Back row: Fred Dinger, Mrs. Robert T. Oliphant, Mrs. T. L. Burns, Miss Elizabeth Greene, Miss Dorothy Atwood, Mrs. H. A. Cooke, Mrs. Ralph Powers, Mrs. Eckley B. Coxe, Mrs. Harry Parsons Cross, Miss Elizabeth Maxson, Miss A. G. Donahoe, Mrs. Melvyn Johnson, Mrs. Louise DeKoven Phelps, Mrs. John C. Bell Jr., Mrs. T. Ellwood Webster, Mrs. Harold E. Waterworth, Mrs. Fred Barrows, Miss G. Z. Mahan, Mrs. Scott Curtis, Mrs. C. C. Madiera, and Mrs. Edgar Arnold

Above, clockwise from upper left: Anthony Bryan putts on the 16th green in the 1965 Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Invitation; 1973 Shinkle Bowl winners and runners-up; Golf Pro Dwight Campbell and his assistant Joe Benevento; Mrs. Muriel Miller accepting congratulations from President George V. Smith for one of her eleven Ladies Club Championships; 1978 Shinkle Bowl winner Charles Arnold on the 10th hole; 1941 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Invitational winner Mrs. Helen Waterhouse (left) and finalist Mrs. Frederick H. Davis; (center) 1989 Club Champions John Holstein and Lisa Griffin

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task was to complete the irrigation project, and the condition of the

years old. It included his brother John and another member named

golf course improved dramatically after that. “It changed the whole

Doug Ronaldson, and it was a big deal to me.”

look of the place,” recalls Miller. “The fairways were now green

It was a big deal in part because there were not many juniors

through the summer instead of being brown and burned out in July

playing back then. “I never got the sense that juniors were not really

and August.”

welcomed,” says O’Connor, whose daughter, Katherine, won the

As for Campbell, a quiet yet personable fellow, he was charged

Women’s Club Championship in 2011. “It’s just that golf was not

with injecting some energy into the somnolent golf program.

promoted as much to them as tennis and swimming was, and

And he was able to liven it some by starting the first ladies

kids back then seemed to gravitate more to the courts or

and junior clinics at Misquamicut and hiring the Club’s

the beach. But Dwight made the few kids who did play

first assistant professional.

feel welcome.”

Tom O’Connor came of golfing age around the

Some of those kids turned out to be pretty

time those programs started to take hold, and what

good players. Like Lisa Griffin McGill, who went

he remembers best are the rounds he used to play

on to capture eighteen Misquamicut Women’s Club

with his maternal grandfather, Ed Breck, the son of

Championships. “I started playing in the mid-70s,

the founder of the Breck Shampoo company. “He had

when I was fifteen years old,” she says. “There weren’t

a regular game on Saturday mornings,” O’Connor recalls.

any girl golfers to speak of, so I mostly played with my

“Always at 10:10 a.m., for some reason, and I became a

brother and his friends. We would play thirty-six holes, and

regular part of it in the mid-1970s, when I was fifteen or sixteen

we could rip right around because there weren’t many people on the golf course. There were plenty of women golfers who were very much my senior, and I would also tee it with them on occasion. They taught me good manners as much as they taught me about golf.”

T WAS MUCH THE SAME WAY

for Laurence Whittemore, a

nine-time Men’s Club Champion. “There were clinics back then,

and the assistant professional would play with you as well,” he says. “There were some boys playing in the 1970s as well. Some but not a lot. And we were made to feel pretty welcome. In fact, I remember winning the second flight of the Men’s Club Championship in 1979, when I was fourteen years old, and nobody had a problem with a kid playing in an event for regular members. Golf may not have been

Above: The 1971 Men’s Invitation Tournament winners receive trophies from the Shinkle family (left to right): Mrs. Bradford Shinkle Jr., Mrs. Jackson Shinkle, Mrs. Andrew Shinkle, Mr. James M. Kin, Jr. of Newport, and Mr. Aquila Giles of New York. Inset: Mr. A. Clifford Shinkle, one of the namesakes of the Shinkle Bowl, in 1941

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GOLF CLUB CHAMPIONS There has been a golf Club Championship for men ever since Misquamicut was founded in 1895, and a Providence resident named John H. Congdon won the tournament the first three times it was staged. By 1900, women golfers were playing for their own title. Augusta Knevals, the then-twenty-two-year-old daughter of Misquamicut’s first vice president, Sherman Knevals, took that inaugural competition, with Ethel Burnet prevailing in four of the next five years. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Misquamicut did not record a winner for its Men’s Club Championship in 1908, 1912, and 1913, and the ladies did not post one from 1907 to 1914. Only a handful of players have been able to take the Men’s Club Championship more than a few times. With his nine titles, Laurence Whittemore III boasts nearly twice as many as his closest rival, Thomas Wall IV, who has five. And one behind Wall is Brendan Lemp, with four. Whittemore and his son James also enjoy the distinction of being one of only two father-son duos to have prevailed in that event, with James coming out on top in the summer of 2016. The other pair to triumph was John and Jonathan Holstein, with John the Elder taking three titles, in 1989, 1992, and 1998, and his son winning in 2007 and 2008. Dominance has been much more the norm with the women’s championship. Lisa Griffin McGill captured that tourney a remarkable eighteen times, her first win coming in 1985 and her most recent in 2014. She and her brother Bakewell are also the only sister-brother combo to have taken golf Club Championships at Misquamicut, with his coming in 1978 and 1982. Not far behind McGill is Louise DeKoven Phelps, who came out on top fourteen times over a thirty-one-year period that began in 1927 and ended in 1958. Maisie Barlow has enjoyed just as impressive a run, winning twelve titles from 1975 to 2016. And Muriel McKaig Miller asserted her supremacy in the post-World War II years and beyond, emerging victorious a total of eleven times from 1948 through 1970.

hugely popular with my generation at that time, but it certainly was accessible to those of us who wanted to play.” Jim Corrigan took over as head professional in the spring of 1991, and he remembers that the junior golf program his first few years on the job consisted of maybe five or six players. “The interest among juniors was not that high, and the season still only ran from the 4th of July through Labor Day,” Corrigan says. But as Baby Boomers produced more and more children, interest in junior golf grew, and so did the number of kids signing up for Corrigan’s clinics. “Now, we have as many as sixty junior golfers a day,” he says. “Families are staying in Watch Hill longer, and more of their kids are excited about playing and learning golf while they are here.” Juniors are not the only ones playing golf in much greater Men’s Golf Champions, seated: Tom Kellogg, Laurence Whittemore, and James Whittemore; standing: Brendan Lemp, Tom Wall, and Bryan Jacobs. Not pictured: Bakewell Griffin, Ted Carey, John Holstein, Jonathon Holstein, and Marc Murphy

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Director of Golf Jim Corrigan JIM CORRIGAN WAS TOILING AS AN ASSISTANT at the tony Round

and shoot in the 60s ten rounds in a row that I might be able to do it. But I

Hill Country Club in Greenwich, Connecticut, when the telephone rang.

never could achieve that goal.”

Just thirty years old and about to be married, he listened as his boss, head

As it turns out, that was probably a good thing for Corrigan, for he was

professional Tom Henderson, fielded a long distance call from a member of

able to concentrate on becoming a top-notch club professional without the

the Misquamicut Club, George Wheeler. “Tom and I shared an office, and it

distraction of wondering whether he could have made it as a tour player.

was hard not to hear what was going on,” recalls Corrigan. “Tom had grown

To that end, Corrigan enrolled in Ferris State University in Big Rapids,

up in Westerly, Rhode Island, and worked as an assistant at Misquamicut

Michigan, and became a part of the first PGA Golf Management program

under Dwight Campbell. Well, Dwight was retiring,

ever offered in the U.S. He interned at a series of East

and Mr. Wheeler wondered if Tom might be interested

Coast golf and country clubs during college and then

in the job.”

got into the business full-time after earning his degree

Henderson was flattered by the offer but told

in 1982, as an assistant at the Scarsdale Country Club in

Wheeler he was very happy at Round Hill. Before

Westchester County, not far from his childhood home.

hanging up, however, he opined that his assistant would

Growing up in the tradition-minded Met Section of

be a wonderful fit for the position.

the PGA and with a father as a professional, Corrigan

“Then, Tom handed me the phone,” Corrigan

understood the importance of being well rounded in his

says. “And I listened as Mr. Wheeler asked when

work. He strove to keep his game strong, and he also

I could come up to Watch Hill for a meeting. I said

honed his skills as an instructor, developed an ability to

the following day would work, and he said that suited

work well with players of all ages and abilities and found

him just fine. So I drove up to Misquamicut, and after

time to tee it up with his members. He took pride in the

playing golf with Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Patton Kline, I

way he ran golf tournaments and stocked his golf shops

spent a couple of hours talking with them in the men’s

and in how he mentored his assistants and helped them

locker room.”

move on to head professional positions of their own.

Corrigan returned to Greenwich after that conclave

“I liked being able to wear all the hats,” says

and quickly turned his attention to another pressing

Corrigan, who has the athleticism and the sort of outgoing

matter, his marriage to his fiancé, Belle, the next week.

personality one expects of a golf professional as well as

“After that, Belle and I went to Bermuda for our honeymoon, but then I

the year-round tan that comes with the position.

got word that the search committee wanted to meet me, and my new wife,”

Corrigan was working as an assistant at the Seminole Golf Club in Juno

Corrigan explains. “So, we cut our honeymoon short by three days to do that.

Beach, Florida, when he took the helm as head professional at Misquamicut

And when I returned to Misquamicut, the Club offered me the job.”

in 1990, and he continued that winter relationship for four years. Then,

It was Corrigan’s first gig as a head professional, and he was thrilled, in

the head job at Jupiter Island opened up, and Corrigan impressed enough

large part because golf was such a big part of his DNA. After all, his father

during the interview process to be offered the top spot at that place as well.

was a professional, at the Rye Golf Club outside New York City, and as a

Since taking that job, Corrigan, who is the father of two grown children,

youngster, Corrigan had fallen hard for the game.

Megan and Timothy, has been dividing his time between two of the most

“When I was sixteen years old, I thought I was a pretty good player,”

esteemed golf retreats in the country, spending his winters on Florida’s East

Corrigan remembers. “But my father knew that you had to be more than just

Coast and the warmer parts of the year at Misquamicut.

pretty good to make it as a touring professional. He said that if I could go out

It’s a good thing he was there for that phone call. 

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F R A NC E S C A NB Y GR I SC O M

Of all the golfers who were ever members of the Misquamicut Club,

Canby Biddle. Clement Griscom was an early member of Misquamicut,

only Frances Canby Griscom was good enough to win a United States

joining in 1903, and two of his sons, Clement Jr. and Rodman, also

Golf Association championship. Better known as Pansy, she won the

became part of the Club. In addition, a grandson, Clement III, was

1900 U.S. Women’s Amateur. The twenty-one-year-

admitted in 1930 and would go on to serve as vice

old Philadelphian accomplished that feat by beating

president, from 1937 to 1940, as well as on the Board

Margaret “Peggy” Curtis in the finals, 6 and 5, at

of Governors. Both his son and grandson joined the

the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton,

Club in later years, meaning that five generations of

New York. It was an impressive win, especially

Griscoms were members of Misquamicut. But only

considering that Curtis would go on to capture

Frances was a good enough golfer to prevail in the

three U.S. Amateurs of her own, and with her sister

Club Championship.

Harriot would donate a trophy in 1932 for a biennial

Upon his death in 1912, the elder Griscom left a

golf competition between teams from the United

portion of a plantation north of Tallahassee, Florida,

States and Great Britain that came to be called

to Frances, which she then renamed Water Oak. It

the Curtis Cup. One newspaper writer attributed

was seven thousand acres in size, and the place

Griscom’s triumph at Shinnecock to “her superior

where she spent most of her winters until her death

short game,” and the putter she used in that tourney

a few weeks short of her ninety-fourth birthday in

has long been on display in Golf House, the site of

1973. There, she hunted everything from bobwhite

the USGA headquarters in Far Hills, New Jersey.

quail and pheasants to alligators, and enjoyed other

While winning the Women’s Amateur was

outdoor pursuits such as fishing, trap shooting, and

Griscom’s biggest triumph in golf, she demonstrated

driving a coach led by four horses. Griscom was also

her prowess as a player in other tournaments and

well regarded as a racer of automobiles, a skill she

international matches through the years. She would also win a pair of

no doubt developed in her youth as the first women in Philadelphia

Ladies Club Championships at Misquamicut, in 1916 and also 1925.

ever to own her own automobile, and in her thirties, when she worked

Born in the spring of 1879, Griscom was the daughter of Clement

as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I.

Griscom, a Philadelphia shipping magnate, and the former Frances

Golf, cars, and alligators. She was a remarkable woman. 

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numbers at Misquamicut these days. People of all ages and abilities appear to be teeing it more often, and the Club now records

GOLF COURSE RECORDS

roughly 11,000 rounds a year. Not surprisingly, the time between

The first course record for Misquamicut was posted by founding member John Congdon on Independence Day in the summer of 1896, when the Club celebrated the opening of its second season with a tournament on its newly expanded eighteen-hole layout and the Providence resident shot 110. Clearly, Congdon was new to the game, and so were the other players who entered that event, as none of them were able to best that rather inflated number. Over the years, the mark has fallen quite dramatically, for men and women players. Misquamicut Head Golf Professional Matt Doyle (below) holds the current record for a professional of 60, which is 9-under par. As for the lowest score by an amateur, former member and two-time Club Champion Bill Upthegrove has possessed that for roughly a half a century after shooting 63 on a day when the golf course was enveloped in fog — and when the St. Louis native had to rely heavily on his caddie to discern where the greens and flags were as he readied himself to hit his approach shots. As for the women’s record, it stands at 66, with eighteentime Club Champion Lisa Griffin McGill scoring that during a round from the red tees in 1997. The course from those markers is par 71, which means that McGill’s score was a stellar 5-under par.

Independence Day and Labor Day remains the most active for golfers. But Corrigan says that there is considerably more play throughout the entire month of May these days, and in June, September, and October as well. His lesson book is usually quite full, and so is the golf course, thanks not only to casual games that members set up on their own but also to a series of weekday events the pro shop facilitates for men on Wednesday and Friday afternoons and women on Thursdays. In fact, things have gotten so busy that the Club was compelled several years ago to institute a tee time system to handle weekend play.

EMOGRAPHICS ARE CERTAINLY ONE REASON

for that

increase in play, thanks to Baby Boomers who are able to tee it

up more often as their careers wind down — and whose progenies are getting more and more into the game themselves. Golf’s popularity is also helped by advances in technology that have allowed people to work more effectively at home — and to spend longer stretches of time during the season in Watch Hill. It also doesn’t hurt that the golf season is longer these days. Improvements such as the installation of a modern irrigation system on the golf course as well as the practice range have helped bolster the number of people who come out to play as it has also elevated their playing experiences. So have things like the building of the short game practice area off the south terrace of the Clubhouse and the latest bunker restoration program. As far as Whittemore is concerned, an effort to bring more members and their families into the game has been productive as

added for senior and junior players, so more members can have

well. “We have tried to make golf fun for as broad a cross section

some fun on the golf course.”

of players as possible,” he says. “Those weekday tournaments we

Golf is what drove the founding of the Misquamicut Club. And

started are an example of that, and so are the forward tees we have

it is what sustains it to this day. 

Opposite: Frances Canby Griscom won the 1900 U.S. Women’s Amateur held at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York.

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THE P UTTI NG C OUR SE While it was the golf course at Misquamicut that received top billing

shaped like that punctuation sign. As for the finishing hole, no record

in the Club’s early years, there was a period in the early 1900s when

exists as what its appellation might have been, though it was reported

its popularity was nearly matched by a putting course that Keeper

to have employed a pair of angled wickets.

of the Green James H. Davies created in an area where the practice

While it was described as a “putting course,” there are indications

green is situated today, and beyond. An article in the Seaside Topics

that golfers had to hit over obstacles on occasion, and not just around

newspaper described his design as “a thing of beauty and vexation”

them. At first blush, that seems strange. But it makes sense when

and “a favorite meeting place.” The publication also averred that

one considers that in those days, golfers often carried two flat sticks.

tournaments held there were “popular social diversions.”

Generally speaking, one had a few degrees of lofts for those putts

Born in England and influenced by a father and grandfather who

stroked exclusively on the greens, while the other one featured as

were passionate gardeners, Davies found pleasure in constructing so-

much as 12 or even 15 degrees, because it was made to hit those long

called “miniature golf courses” at various hotels and inns. Once he

putts of seventy or eighty yards that were so common on the firm and

moved to the States, he also tended to the layout at Misquamicut and

fast links that dominated back then. The thinking was that to get those

laid out a few regulation-size eighteen-holers in the New World. He

longer putts to their targets, golfers needed to get their golf balls

saw his putting courses as “garden-like” creations that needed to be

into the air initially. Perhaps, then, those higher-lofted putters were

as eye-catching as they were architecturally interesting. In speaking

employed when those obstacles on the putting course at Misquamicut

about his father and grandfather to a reporter from Seaside Topics,

Club came into play.

Davies remarked: “They were always puzzling in their heads to make

A year later, Davies expanded the course to eighteen and

the most beautiful gardens spots in the world. And when I finally quit

changed some of the routing as he also altered the sequence of

gardening and went into the golf game, I brought the trademark along.”

the holes. The new additions were endowed with such monikers as

The first miniature course that Davies built at Misquamicut opened

Google Eyes; Cliffs; and Tennis, where a miniature tennis net acted as

in 1915. And each of the nine holes boasted a name. No. 1 was dubbed

the primary hazard.

Beauty, for example. Then, there was Needle’s Eye, which compelled

Popular as that mini-layout was for a spell, it did not seem to have

participants to putt under an arch of boulders adorned with ferns and

lasted much beyond the 1920s. Though there are no records as to

flowers. Following those were Farm Gate; Misery; The Hedges, which

why it disappeared, one can easily surmise that the stock market crash

featured a pair of boxwood hedges; Rocky Mountain; Kitchen, so

of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed put such financial

named for its locale near where food was prepared in the Clubhouse;

pressure on the Club that its leaders decided to allocate funds to more

and Question Mark, which forced players to contend with a bunker

essential places. Such as the main golf course. 

Opposite: Ladies play the miniature golf course, circa 1915.

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THE HE MI NWAY B OW L

Most Misquamicut members regard the tournament known today as the

And some duos have been together for as many as thirty years. For a

Heminway Bowl as the highlight of the golf season. Long considered one

time, organizers staged an often boisterous, pre-tournament Calcutta

of the finest club invitationals in the Northeast, the event lasts nearly an

that gave competitors the opportunity to back their favorite players.

entire week, with cocktail parties and a big-tent dinner dance as much

Wives and significant others also make the trip to Watch Hill for what

a part of the schedule as the rounds of golf that in 2016 featured ninety-

has also been dubbed Golf Weekend, and when they aren’t following the matches from their golf carts,

four two-ball teams. First staged in 1946, when people

they are enjoying afternoons at the

were looking for a little cheering up

Beach Club, drinks on the Clubhouse

after the death and devastation of

terrace, and for the less sedentary,

World War II, and traditionally held

games of tennis on the courts.

over the first weekend of August, the

These days, the Heminway Bowl

event is officially named the Men’s

begins with a Past Champions dinner

Invitation Golf Tournament. But for the

at the Clubhouse on Tuesday night of

first forty-two years of its existence, it

tournament week. It is hosted by the

was also called the Shinkle Bowl, as a

most recent winners and attended

result of the widows of two long-time

by those who have also emerged

members, Bradford and Clark Shinkle,

victorious in the past as well as

donating a golf trophy for the tourney

Head Golf Professional Jim Corrigan.

in their memory. Then, in 1989, it acquired a new moniker, the Heminway

Practice rounds are played on Wednesday afternoon, and then there

Bowl, in honor of another Club icon, Jack Heminway, a former Captain

is a best-ball, medal-play qualifier on Thursday. Handicaps are used,

of Golf who with fellow member Jim Snowden did much to popularize

with sixteen being the highest allowed, and they are sufficiently vetted

the Invitational — and who for many years hosted a Saturday night

by the Golf Committee the Sunday before to ensure that no player is

dinner at his house for select competitors that one summer featured

coming into the competition too high, or too low. The Championship

circus acts involving elephants and flame throwers. Many of the teams

flight is made up of the top-eight qualifying scores, and the rest of the

in the Men’s Invitation are made up of one member and one guest. But

players are organized into flights based on how they finished.

there are also Member-Member pairings, and Guest-Guest ones, too.

There is plenty of tension on the golf course during qualifying as

Fathers and sons join forces, as do brothers and old prep school chums.

contestants grind over drives and approaches and line up putts from

Above: The Heminway Bowl trophy. Opposite: “Glutten” Pershing drinks from the trophy.

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different angles. Once the groups start coming in, small crowds build

While golf is the main attraction of Golf Weekend, the parties

around the scoreboard as players and non-players alike look to see

that are organized around it help to make the tournament so special.

who has done well, and not so well. As for evening entertainment,

Drinks and dinner are served at the Beach Club on Friday night, and

nothing formally associated with the Heminway is organized for

it is a convivial affair, with some four hundred people in attendance

Thursday. But there is no shortage of fun to be had that night, thanks

and in some cases three generations of families represented. Ocean

to the cocktail parties that are held at different homes.

breezes blow and waves break as food as wide ranging as pulled pork

The matches begin on Friday, with those who prevail advancing to

and sushi is served at food stations. A raw bar replete with oysters,

the next round on Saturday while those who do not enter a consolation

clams, and shrimp does a brisk business as well, and waiters pass

round in their flight that same day. Lose on Saturday, and you are out,

trays of hors dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeuvres.

with Sunday being when the winners of each flight and the consolation

As for Saturday night, that is when a dinner dance for nearly an

brackets are decided. The matches attract dozens of spectators, some

equal number of revelers is put on beneath a massive white tent.

of whom walk with groups of players while others ride in golf carts,

Again, there are multiple generations of Misquamicut members joining

sipping Southsides and smoking cigars as good shots are applauded

the fun, with some men wearing red and green Club jackets.

and bad ones bemoaned.

It is some kind of night. And one special tournament. ď &#x2DC;

The 1949 awards for the Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Invitation Golf Tournament, pictured from left: Mr. James M. Snowden, master of ceremonies, presents replicas Wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Opposite: Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in of the Shinkle Memorial Bowl to the winning team, Messrs. Jay K. Secor and James McHenry, with Mr. A. Clifford Shinkle Jr. and Miss Florence Shinkle hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit ieu. Following pages: Duis autem veleum iriure dolor in representing their families who donated the bowl in memory of Mr. A. Clifford Shinkle and Mr. Bradford Shinkle. nostrud modo consequahendrerit in velit esse consequat, vel illum dolore duis hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore duis hendrerit ieuis autem.

216

1948 invitation for the Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Invitation Golf Tournament

S C E NE S FR O M T HE HE MIN WAY BO W L

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S E V E N

T E NNI S at the Club

Above: A tennis tournament is played at the turn-of-the-century on the original courts that were adjacent to the Clubhouse, where the upper parking lot is today. Opposite: An aerial view shows the tennis courts and building in present day.

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

HOUGH GOLF WAS THE SPORT around which Misquamicut was formally organized in 1895, tennis

has been an important and much-loved part of the association from nearly the beginning. In fact, there were times, especially in the 1970s and ’80s, when its courts were considerably more crowded

than the golf course. That situation has certainly changed with regards to the royal and ancient game, as there have been increases the past several decades in the number of rounds played. But the tennis program remains extremely prosperous, and those ten courts arrayed in the dell by the driving range and to the left of the ninth hole continue to be hubs of activity.

Newspaper reports from the turn-of-the-twentieth century show

details are hazy as to how and why that

that tennis became part of Misquamicut in 1902 when Club leaders

project was initiated, but it appears they

initiated the construction of two courts adjacent to the Clubhouse

replaced four of the six original clay

where the upper parking lot is today. Particulars are sparse, but it

courts. And they sustained what had

appears the playing surfaces were grass and they were enclosed

become a very anemic tennis program. “I

by a fence along the driveway. By the 1920s those courts had been

don’t think there were ten tennis players

abandoned and six new grass courts built where the cart barn and

in the Club in the late 1940s and through

short-game area are today. Sometime in the 1930s tennis made its last

much of the 1950s, and Misquamicut did not even have its first tennis

move with the building of six clay courts in the same area where the

Club Championship until 1946,” says Jim McCormick, who won that

courts are today.

tournament six years after its initial playing, and whose sons Daniel and Peter later took that title sixteen times between them.

In 1946 the Club constructed four new clay courts. Once again,

Above: Tennis at Misquamicut in 1930. Inset: Seaside Topics article, 1916

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By the late 1950s, those who did play had become increasingly

colorful personality that induced the one-time pro at the

dismayed with the state of the Club courts, and longtime member

Fontaineblueu Hotel in Miami Beach to paint the nails on the paws

Pam Heller remembers that they were subject to closure for several

of his two poodles pink. According to McCormick, Everett also

days if heavy rains fell. That prompted her father,

drove a pink Thunderbird.

Dean Markham, who happened to be the Tennis

Chairman at the time as well as a multiple Club Champion, to push for replacing the two older clay courts with all-weather hard-surface ones. It was

S FOR THE MAN

who presided over the

tennis program at Misquamicut before

Everett, he was Alex Mayer, a native Hungarian and

a move that seemed to please most tennis players,

one-time Davis Cup player who was also a skilled

says Heller, who won several Club Championships

target shooter and once set up a pistol range in back

of her own. But some traditionalists were so

of one of the Club courts. Mayer was also pretty

disdainful of the additions that they came to call

good at producing tennis champions, and his sons

them, “Markham’s Macadam monsters.”

Gene and Sandy went on to become ranked in the

Not long after those courts opened, the tennis

top ten in singles in the world and win the men’s

program received a tremendous boost when the

doubles championship in the French Open in 1979.

Club hired Spencer Gray as its head professional.

The arrival of Gray coincided with the coming

Just twenty-one years old and newly married

of tennis age of a slew of baby boomers at the

when he began at the start of the summer of 1960,

Club and a steady rise in the popularity of tennis

Gray was a highly ranked tennis player in New

throughout the U.S. The Misquamicut program

England and had attended the University of North

took off as a result. “Spencer was very engaging,

Carolina for a spell on both tennis and basketball

and his enthusiasm was infectious,” says Lisa Griffin

scholarships. He also had the good fortune to come

McGill, who spent many summers of her youth at

to Misquamicut with a letter of recommendation

the tennis courts before gravitating to golf. “He

from tennis Hall of Famer Don Budge, with whom

organized clinics and ladder matches. He arranged

Gray had played several exhibitions.

interclub matches. He made tennis fun for us all,

During that same period, the Gardner family donated what has

but at the same time he never put up with any nonsense. If you swore,

become the most coveted prize in children’s tennis, the Gardner Bowl.

he would put a bar of soap in your mouth. If you misbehaved in any

Given in memory of Arthur Gardner, a former Ambassador to Cuba,

way, he would make you run laps around the court.”

the trophy is awarded each year to the girl and boy who show the most

Another tennis player of that time, Patrick Lemp, remembers

diligence and sportsmanship in that summer’s tennis program.

how the youngsters all respected Gray’s authority. “He was in many

Gray succeeded professional Harris Everett, whose talents as

ways a surrogate parent to us,” Lemp says. “And he had no issues with disciplining kids.”

a tennis instructor were somewhat overshadowed by a rather

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PENCER GRAY WAS TOUGH, TO BE SURE.

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courts were an enjoyable place for us to be. We’d play in the

But at

clinics in the morning and then hang around the rest of the day,

the same time, he made the tennis courts the place to

playing on our own and listening to the stories that Spencer and his

be. “Spencer put on clinics through the morning and came

assistants told.”

up with different games for us to play, with prizes like free

Lemp and Kellogg felt much the same way. “It was such

Cokes going to the winners,” says Tom Kellogg, who has won

an incredibly fun period of my life,” Lemp says. Kellogg agrees.

multiple tennis Club Championships at Misquamicut.

“We would be there all day every day,” he adds. “We loved it.”

Past Misquamicut Club president Bill Miller, who took his first tennis lesson from Gray in 1960, was just as enthralled with the new

While it seemed at times that the kids dominated the tennis

professional and the program he ran. “I really got into tennis once

program, they were not the only ones filling the courts through

Spencer came to the Club,” he recalls. “A lot of us did, and the tennis

the 1970s and ’80s. “It got so you had to make a reservation if you

Above: Former Tennis Professional Spencer Gray poses with some of the many players he taught in his 43 years at Misquamicut. Opposite, clockwise from upper left: The original tennis courts were located left of the Clubhouse in the early 1900s; a July 1954 exhibition match with Denver Hobbs and Dean Markham (forecourt) and Alex Mayer and John Leede (backcourt); Mrs. Susie McShane with her grandchildren; from left, Dan McCormick, Chris Knisely, Pat Lemp, and Tom Kellogg dominated the tennis program in the ’80s and ’90s; (center) July 1953 youngsters with Tennis Pro Al Chapline (left to right) Johnny Camp, Jimmy Snowden, Johnny Whitman, Margot Camp, Wendy Taylor, Terry Pierce, Cici Spencer, Suzie Snowden, Nancy Richmond, and Wendy Joline. Following pages: Tennis is still strong at Misquamicut.

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wanted to play at certain times,” Heller says. “The game simply got that popular with the adults, too.” Gray had a knack for developing good players. His interclub teams were for many years nearly unbeatable, and several of his pupils went on to play college tennis. He was also known for nurturing assistant professionals, many of who came from outside the U.S. And he says that seven of eight of them went on to play Davis Cup tennis for their home countries.

T WASN’T ONLY THE TENNIS PROGRAM

that got better

under Gray’s leadership, and by the end of the end of his second

decade at Misquamicut, the Club had made several improvements to

ten, with six being hard-surfaced and four utilizing Har-Tru, a crushed

the facilities. The biggest of those was the building of a new tennis

stone material with performance attributes very similar to clay.

pavilion. Prior to that, the tennis shop was

Gray stayed at Misquamicut for forty-

a cramped space that had been housed in a

three years, leaving after the 2002 season.

portion of the golf maintenance building and

Bob Wuhrman, who was serving as the

often smelled of gasoline. But in 1979, Club

director of tennis at the PGA National Resort

leaders engaged a one-time assistant to Gray,

and Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida,

Lyman Goff, who had gone on to become

when he came to Misquamicut in 2013,

not only an architect but also a member

runs the tennis program these days, and by

of Misquamicut, to design a replacement.

all accounts it is as popular as ever. He says

“I used the Newport Tennis Casino as

that each year he has more than one hundred

my model, with its arched entryway and

youngsters in his junior program, and adds

dormers as well as the weathered shingles

that there are plenty of avid adult players as

and green trim,” Goff says. “It was nine-

well. “We offer clinics for all ages of men,

hundred-square feet in size, and I think we

women, and children, and we give plenty of

built it for less than $50,000.” In addition to

private lessons as well,” explains Wuhrman,

serving as the new tennis shop, it also acted

who continues to work at PGA National in

as the halfway house for golfers looking for

the winter. “We also run weekly scrambles and organize other tournaments and try to make the environment

refreshments after they had teed off on the ninth hole.

here as fun and exciting as it is welcoming.”

The popularity of tennis during the Spencer Gray era also

Just as it has been for some time. 

prompted the Club to add four courts, bringing the total number to

Above: Director of Tennis Bob Wuhrman. Top: Entrance to the tennis pavilion

234

Tennis Club Champions IT WAS NOT UNTIL AFTER WORLD WAR II that Misquamicut

family as well, with his father Jim winning that tournament in 1952,

staged its first Club Championships for tennis. The year was 1946,

his brother Peter prevailing four times over the years, and his first

and the winners were Andrew Coombe on the men’s side and Molly

cousin Brian coming out on top once.

Wheeler among the women. Interest in

Next in line is Lex Urban, with eleven.

the sport was low back then, as evidenced

The first of those triumphs came in 2002,

by the gaps on the boards of winners in

and after winning again in 2006, he began

the Clubhouse. No Club Champions were

a roll in 2008 that has lasted through 2016,

recorded for men or women in 1947 or 1950.

amassing nine straight titles in the process.

In addition, the men did not post a winner

Then, there is Dean Markham, who won

from 1961 through 1971, nor in 1973. As for

seven straight tennis Club Championships

the women, no victors were acknowledged

from 1953 to 1959. He, too, passed along

from 1961 through 1964.

his tennis skills to subsequent generations,

But winners were cited the rest of

with his daughter Pam winning the women’s

the years, with some members showing

title in 1970, 1987, 1988 and 1990, and his

up numerous times and several families

granddaughter Lydie Abood in 2009.

featuring multiple-generation champions.

With regards to the women, no one has

As of this writing, Tom Kellogg stands

taken more tennis Club Championships than

on the top of the heap in the men’s division

Tracy Regan, who has won nine times from

with thirteen Club titles, the first coming in

1992 to 2007. Meg Kellogg is right behind

1975 and the last in 1994. A quick look at

with her seven, the first of which came in

the board listing women’s champions shows

1971, and Claire Keyte has demonstrated

that part of Kellogg’s prowess on the tennis

her racquet skills by capturing six of her

court is clearly genetic, as his aunt Meg

own, first in 2010 and most recently in 2016.

Kellogg took seven Club Championships

Holding onto the fourth position is

of her own. Tom Kellogg has also proven

Muriel McKaig Miller, who put together

his athletic skills on the golf course, having

five Club Championships. One of the finest

won the Men’s Golf Club Championship in

athletes ever to grace the courts or the

2004. That makes him one of only two men

course at Misquamicut, Miller also prevailed

at Misquamicut ever to have accomplished

in eleven golf Club Championships. The

that double feat, George Kirkpatrick being

only other woman to accomplish that dual

the other.

feat was Lisa Griffin McGill, who took the

Close behind Kellogg in accumulating tennis championships is

tennis title in 1991 amidst a flurry of golf Club Championships that to

Dan McCormick, with twelve. And good play appears to run in his

date number eighteen. 

Above: Past and present tennis Club Champions photographed in 2016. Top, left to right: Jim McCormick, Tom Kellogg, and Andy Gagarin. Not pictured: Dan McCormick, Peter McCormick, Lex Urban, and Brian McCormick. Bottom, left to right: Tracy Regan, Pam Heller, Lisa McGill, Robin Knisely, Marty Walker, and Jane Cannon. Not pictured: Maisie Barlow, Alice Mahoney, Lydie Abood, Claire Keyte, and Olivia Dewey

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OTHE R A C TI VI TI ES

Though Misquamicut has largely been known as a place for golf and

In 1902, leaders at Misquamicut also decided to build a bowling

tennis, its members have long had the opportunity to enjoy other

green that measured 120-feet-by-75-feet in size, as well as a house

sports there. Shortly after its founding in 1895, for example, the

near the current Clubhouse in which four ping-pong tables were

Club created a gun club at a location that was described in reports

placed and a shuffleboard court constructed.

as being “on the dunes near the bath house,” an area that lies near

Interestingly, these new pursuits were initiated around the time

what today is the back 12th tee. By the early 1900s, men and women

the Tom Bendelow redesign of the golf course was complete, and

were participating in “weekly clay pigeon matches” that commenced

they gave Misquamicut members even more ways to enjoy the Club.

each Saturday morning during the season at 10:30 a.m., the targets

While historic documents are quite clear as to when these new games

pulled by caddies from the Golf Club. Dues for this adjunct enterprise

came to be, however, it is not at all certain how long ping pong and

came to five dollars for men and three dollars for women, with the clay

shuffleboard were played at the Club, nor when the trap field went

targets and 12-gauge shotgun shells costing extra. Around that same

quiet. But one can safely speculate that interest in all those things

time, the Club also built a shooting range for those wishing to test

seriously waned with the advent of the Great Depression in the early

their skills with .22 caliber rifles.

1930s and then the outbreak of World War II, both of which put a

The combative instincts of future lawyers Sandy Whitman, left, and Jay Stevenson are displayed while boxing at Mr. Freeman’s camp in the late 1940s.

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damper on Club activities and compelled people

that has become fiercely competitive and attracts as

to direct their energies to more serious matters.

many as sixty players.

Men of a certain age remember with varying

Then, there is bingo. While not really a sport,

degrees of affection the athletic options that arose

it certainly has a past in Watch Hill, and many Club

in the post-World War II years with the establishment

members recall playing it as kids at the Ocean House.

of Mr. Freeman’s Camp at the Beach Club. “It was

These days, it is the game of choice at the Beach

only for boys, and we’d have swimming races and

Club on Tuesday nights in the summer, with pizza and

play dodge ball and kick ball,” recalls Bill Miller. “We

prizes and several dozen men, women, and children

would also box, with really old and really big gloves

joining in the fun.

that usually hung from pegs in the men’s patio and

The construction of a single paddle tennis court

looked like they had been around since the 1920s.”

near the golf practice range and tennis courts has

Will Vogt describes Freeman as “a sort of Charles

given fans of that mostly cold-weather sport something to

Atlas gym teacher” and “very old school.” As for the boxing matches,

do athletically when they are in Watch Hill during the offseason — and

Vogt remembers their taking place on the beach itself, with a ring

when thoughts of doing anything at the Beach Club have long

delineated by strands of seaweed. He smiles when he thinks how

been abandoned. 

he and his fellow pugilists, none of whom ever wore headgear, tried to pick opponents they thought would cause the least amount of damage should they mange to land a punch. And Vogt chuckles as he considers how inappropriate that sort of activity would now be viewed. “Can you imagine any summer camp today where boxing was part of a recreation program?” he asks. The decidedly more sedate sports of bridge and backgammon are also part of the Misquamicut sporting menu, with bridge being played since the first decades of the Club’s existence. It was largely viewed as a social activity back then, and then transitioned into more of an instructional pursuit. These days, bridge boasts elements of both as the program also strives to provide competition to players, mostly in the form of an annual Club Championship. As for backgammon, the Club now hosts an annual invitational

Above: Skeet shooting at the Beach Club in October 1949. Inset: Bridge Champion’s plaque (the 2016 Bridge Champions were Christina Whitman and Georgie Lewis)

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C H A P T E R

E I G H T

The

F U TU RE

Above: On the beach, summer 2016 Opposite: Prize Day 2016

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

Y MOST ANY MEASURE, the future of the Misquamicut Club could not be brighter. The boys and girls

crowding the tennis courts in their whites most summer mornings speak to that, and so do the groups of youngsters strolling up and down the sandy shore at the Beach Club in their bathing suits, their hair

tousled by the ocean breezes. You see it in the groups of golfers who tee off on the historic Misquamicut course through the season and also in the members who fill the tables at the Clubhouse for lunches and brunches and whatever special events are staged there. And there can be little doubt that things are going well when a 4th of July event that includes a sumptuous outdoor meal followed by fireworks attracts more than 1,400 people — or that the Beach Club will serve dinner to that many people during an average summer weekend. also outlined ways to pay for them.

The sense that things are fine also comes from the fact that Misquamicut, which celebrated its 120th birthday in the summer

The outlook for the town in which the Club is based is equally

of 2015, is in solid financial and physical shape. The membership

optimistic. Though it has become somewhat busier and more buff

numbers are strong, and they will likely stay

the past couple of decades, Watch Hill remains

that way for decades to come, thanks to the

a quaint, quiet and very alluring retreat, with

number of legacies who will seek to become

tall, thick hedges, stately shingled homes, and

junior and eventually subscribing members

sweeping water views. There are more day-

and those new to the area who will also

trippers these days, to be sure, lugging their

look to join. In addition, a series of capital

chairs and coolers from their cars to the beach.

improvement programs initiated in the early

But kids from the Club still ride their bicycles

parts of the twenty-first century led to the

between the Beach and Golf Clubs on mostly

investment of millions of dollars in projects as

empty roads as gardeners silently tend the tidy

varied as the reshingling of the Clubhouse, the

beds of hydrangeas and roses that grow outside

installation of a modern golf course irrigation

their cottages. The Flying Horse Carousel

system, and the construction of new beach

continues to run at the end of Bay Street, its

and tennis pavilions as well as a new golf cart

stationary steeds full most days of young riders,

barn. And those upgrades were made without

as couples engage in games of croquet on the

infringing on the simple, New England-shore feel of the Club. Along

grass court at the stately Ocean House, which reopened in 2010,

the way, Club leaders have been diligently planning for the future,

restored to its former splendor.

recently producing a long-range report that laid out in great detail

None of this is to say, however, that there aren’t concerns.

the capital projects that need to be initiated down the road as they

As scenic and serene as it may be, Watch Hill has become an

Above: A 4th of July celebration. Opposite, top: Enthusiastic young tennis players. Bottom: Beach games

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Quite naturally, the demand for more events and activities increase as a result, and so do the desires for things to be more polished. Another issue has to do with overcapacity, and the concern that there may come a time when the number of members start to overwhelm the facilities, and in the process diminish the overall experience, whether on the golf course, the tennis courts, or down at the beach. Those are reasonable worries, one and all, and Club leaders must ponder them as Misquamicut moves deeper into its second century of existence. But as they do that, they can also be reassured by how good things really are. Among the many positive conclusions that came out of the Long Range Report was that membership should not be a problem going forward, as there will be plenty of well-regarded men and women, legacies and non-legacies alike, to keep that roster robust in years to come. It also states that whatever capacity issues that might arise can be dealt with quite easily and supports the sense that the Club is fiscally fit and poised to stay that way. And anyone who spends time around Misquamicut can clearly exceedingly expensive place to live, which makes it difficult for

sense that it retains much of its traditional aura as it seeks to serve its

all but the very wealthy to keep homes there, and for longtime

members and their guests in bigger and better ways.

denizens to pass on abodes to younger generations. It’s unlikely that

development will affect the town and its long-term attractiveness and health. But it can have consequences for a Club whose rolls have been dominated for decades by legacies. Where does Misquamicut

HAT LAST FACTOR

is an especially important one, and it

speaks to another key to the Club’s future prosperity, which

is keeping Misquamicut and its members in touch with their pasts

go if they start to go? To be sure, there is no reason to think that

while looking ahead.

there won’t be more than enough people to fill those spots. But what

“We do not live in a static society,” explains Randy Abood, who has

happens to its character and culture if those folks are replaced by

spent most of his adult life around the Club and became its president

people with much shallower roots in the community and the Club?

in 2015 after serving as its co-head of Long-Range Planning for twelve

Then there is the matter of Misquamicut not being just a little

years. “And the world of golf and country clubs is not static either.

summer club any more, with a season that only lasts a few months.

Of course, we have to maintain the great traditions of our Club and

These days, it fairly bustles from mid-May to mid-October, and

its culture. But at the same time, we have to keep up and keep

increasing numbers of members are spending more time there.

moving forward.” 

Above: Tennis Pro Bob Wuhrman presents a Prize Day trophy. Opposite: Sunset over Napatree Point

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C H A P T E R

N A M E

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C H A P T E R

N I N E

The

M I SQUAMICUT FAMI LY Through the Years

E HOPE YOU ENJOY

The History of the Misquamicut Club as much as we did working on it. The final product is the result of many hours of

detective work and discovery, including meetings and interviews with senior members, staff, past champions, and former and current leaders.

When we started out, Club President Randy Abood inspired us to ask why the Club is so special to each of us. And that raised many other questions.

How did the golf course, the Clubhouse, tennis, and the Beach Club evolve? What made it possible that descendants of eight founding members are in the Club today? How was the Club able to overcome the challenges of two World Wars, the Depression, and two devastating hurricanes? Our author, John Steinbreder, spoke to a wide variety of the members to hear what they think makes the Misquamicut Club so unique. They first mentioned the stunning location, the golf course or the Beach Club or the tennis facilities, but they quickly focused on fellow members and staff. It is these lifelong relationships and friendships that serve us so well. It is going to a Misquamicook or Sunday lunch at the Beach Club and seeing four generations of one family sitting together. It is walking into the Clubhouse or Beach Club and seeing so many friends, old and new. Our season is compressed into ninety days of the summer, and we share so much together. Our typical day starts at 8 a.m. with children at the tennis courts or 9:30 a.m. at Kids Club and ends with dinner at the Club or at home with friends, with lots of golf, tennis, and beach in between. For many of us, our children and grandchildren are friends, and we take pride in this unique multi-generational tradition. This final pictorial chapter, “The Misquamicut Family Through the Years,” perfectly illustrates all that we mean to each other. We are a Club that is a family, where friendships last forever. Speaking on behalf of the Book Committee, it has been an honor to work on this project. — Robert H. Saglio, Chairman, The History Book Committee Opposite: 4th of July, 1989, at the Beach Club as photographed by Tina Barney

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249

250

251

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253

254

255

256

257

258

THE 1995 C E N T E N N IAL BALL

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APPENDICES

THE HISTORY BOOK COMMITTEE

From left to right: Len Kline, Tom Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor, Randy Abood, Robbie Pyne, Ada Addington, Bill Miller, Rob Saglio, Will Vogt, Joan Beth Brown, and Brad Kopp

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A P P E N D I C E S

CLUB PRESIDENTS

From left to right: Patton Kline, Bill Miller, Randy Abood, Francis Jenkins, and Ros Curtis

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A P P E N D I C E S

FORMER PRESIDENTS

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A P P E N D I C E S

WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

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WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

Maisie Barlow won in 2012, 2015, and 2016 and Lisa G. McGill won in 2013 and 2014

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A P P E N D I C E S

MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

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MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

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A P P E N D I C E S

M E N â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S I N V I TAT I O N G O L F T O U R N A M E N T

2016 winners were Peter B. Griffin, Jr & Richard P. Brisky

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WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP

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A P P E N D I C E S

MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

WAS FORTUNATE TO HAVE ASSEMBLED

as well as photographing all of our documents.

a Book Committee of

hard-working, dedicated members, especially my friend Bill Miller.

We spent untold hours in the archives of the Westerly Library

Joan Beth Brown contributed many hours of her time beyond the

and the Westerly Historical Society reviewing old photographs and

call of duty and Brad Kopp produced

newspaper articles, especially Watch

never-before-seen photographs and

Hill Life and Seaside Topics from

post cards. Len Kline and Bill Morton

1895 onward. Special thanks go to

spent hours in the musty basement of

Jan Tunney of the Historical Society

Town Hall tracking property sales and

for the Utter Collection photographs,

transfers from the late 1800s and early

and especially to Nina Wright, head

1900s. We hired four Junior Members

librarian for the archives section of

(Katherine Johnson, Grace Lambrecht,

the Westerly Library.

Jack Cooper, and Juliette Livingston) to

Of course, nothing happens at

review the Board minutes from 1895

the Club without Phil Koretski. We

to today. Will Vogt and Ada Addington

can never thank him enough for his

provided historical perspective, Robby Pyne introduced us to the

contributions. And when you get Phil, you also get Donna Bailey, our

historian for the USGA, and Tom O’Connor advised us on all things to

go-to person for all requests, big and small. For me the inspiration for this book is Bill Morton. For five years

do with printing. As a result of our efforts, I am sure you have learned

as Green Chair I worked very closely with Bill, who continuously

many new facts about the history of our Club. Our first and most important Committee decision was to hire John

promoted writing an accurate history of the evolution of the golf

Steinbreder to write our history and Larry Hasak, along with Susan

course. I could not be more proud of the progress made in restoring

Balle, to design and publish the book. Their professional skill and

the course to its former glory and now to learn of its fascinating

guidance have helped create a Club history we can all be proud of.

history. Bill also brought in Rob McNeil of Northeast Golf Company to design the fabulous routings at the end of Chapter 3.

How fortunate we are to have Larry Lambrecht, the preeminent

Finally I would like to thank Randy Abood for his tireless support

golf course photographer of our time, as a fellow club member. In

and involvement every step of the way. 

addition to selections from his inventory, Larry contributed many new photographs to the book, particularly the stunning aerial shots,

— Robert H. Saglio

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CR E DI TS Alamy: 210 Dennis Algier: 201 Tina Barney: 168, 202, 244 Joan Beth Brown: 19 Thomas Brown, Flying Fox Photography: 150-151, 154, 182-183, 233 Gerard Daly: 17, 18-22, 40-41, 48, 72, 104-105, 136-137, 142-143, 144 (top left and right), 148-149, 152, 155-161, 176-181, 208-209, 218-219, 221 (top left and right), 222-223, 231, 232 (top left and right), 234-235, 238-239, 240 (bottom), 242, 262-263 Hayward H. Gatch: 82-83, 162 Greg Gulino: 23 Pam Heller: 134-135 Brad Kopp: Vintage postcards on Front and Back Endpapers, 120 Tim Kniffin: 102 L.C. Lambrecht: 2, 4-5, 8-11, 14-15, 25, 49, 67 (center), 73-74, 78-79, 84-85, 90-93, 94 (bottom right), 95, 96-99, 103, 106-111, 119, 138-141, 144 (bottom), 146-147, 153, 174-175, 211, 215, 225, 230 (top), 237 (top), 243, 264-271, Dust Jacket Back Office of The Secretary of State, R.I.: 6-7, 12-13, 38-39, 45 (bottom), 46 Ocean Views: 206 (middle center) Hubbard Phelps Collection: 44 (top) Jane Maxson: 45 (top left) Public Domain: 27, 29, 30-32, 34, 35 (bottom left), 52, 54-55, 57, 68, 70-71, 81, 86, 89, 100, 184, 185 (top left and right, bottom left) RISD Museum: 26, 33 Seaside Topics: 24, 28, 35 (top left), 36, 44 (bottom), 163, 186-190, 194, 197, 200 (top, left and right), 203-205, 206 (top left and right, middle left and right, bottom left), 207, 213, 216, 224, 226-227, 228 (top right, left and center) Jay Stevenson: 236 The Misquamicut Club Archive: 1, 47, 51, 56, 58-59, 62-63, 66, 76, 88, 94 (top), 102, 112, 121, 125, 128-133, 164-167, 169-173, 191, 193, 196, 198-199, 200 (center and bottom center), 206 (bottom right), 214, 217, 221 (bottom), 228 (bottom left and right), 229, 232 (middle left, bottom left and right), 237 (bottom right), 241 Watch Hill Life: 35 (right), 37, 43, 45 (top right), 53, 61 (top left), 64, 75, 77, 122-123, 195, 197 (bottom center), 228 (top left), 246-261, 272 Westerly Historical Society: Dust Jacket Front, 16, 50, 60, 61 (bottom), 62-63, 124, 126-127, 192 Westerly Sun: 185 (bottom right) Bob Wuhrman: 230 (bottom), 240 (top) Yale University: 65