The History of the Newport Country Club

The History of the Newport Country Club is more than just the parochial story of a club and its golf course. Perhaps more than any other club in America, the history of the Newport Country Club is tightly bound to the history of its city, state, and country -- along with being one of the 5 founding clubs of the USGA, providing the first president of the USGA, and, in 1895, being the site of the first U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open. One of the colonies' great cities before the Revolutionary War, Newport never regained its pre-war prominence as a port, but in the mid-1800's found its destiny as a resort, becoing the favored retreat of America's richest families, who in the 1890s wanted a golf course where they could play the newly popular game, and who insisted upon a clubhouse that would equal the grandeur of their Gilded Age mansions. Written by Frederick Waterman, historian at The Country Club, MA, and designed by Larry Hasak, whose history of golf at Brookline won the USGA's Herbert Warren Wind Book Award in 2009, The History of the Newport Country Club, in 305 pages, ties together Newport's history of pirates, clipper ships, and religious freedom; Rhode Island's early slave trade and the Americas' sugar industry; the role of Theodore Havemeyer and his shrewd handling of C. B. Macdonald; the arrival of Willie Davis, the first golf professional in the Western Hemisphere; the building of the adjacent, 9-hole Ocean Links course; the design contributions of A.W. Tillinghast and Seth Raynor; the visits of the Duke of Windsor, and the stories of the young caddies who carried the former king's over-loaded bag and despaired at his 10-cent tips; the summer escape from Washington, D.C. that Newport and NCC provided to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy; Tiger Woods' 1995 U.S. Amateur victory; the magnificent 2005 preservation and restoration of Whitney Warren's clubhouse; and Annika Sorenstam's career-capping victory at the 2006 U.S. Women's Open.