The 1953 Walker Cup, on the other hand, is easily the biggest thing ever to hit The Kittansett Club, one of New Englands most revrered if serially under-exposed golf venues. When you get your first glimpse of the club on the left-hand side my GPS was telling me Id arrived. Go further to the right and youll have the best angle in towards the green, but be more likely to catch the 3rd mound. With its spectacular views and challenging golf, a round at Kittansett is a truly memorable experience. Flattish and easy to walk, the ground across which the course was routed nonetheless possessed character, with Flynn making terrific use of the subtle hills and hollows. As for the Conservation Commissions need for a better relationship with Tabor: Much of the academys waterfront property is located in a flood plain and wetlands, and therefore subject to Conservation Commission overview for building projects. Relative to par, Im not sure theres a more difficult hole than the 11th. 6, 10 and 13 a bit further from the tees. The fairway is level, there is a very narrow creek about 15 yards to the left of the fairway. The bunkers on the right are among the deepest on the course. The Conservation Commission, which Briggs has long presided over, was the only board the school had to go to for permitting. The tournament, held at the Kittansett Club each summer, features retired athletes like Celtics Bob Cousy and Tom Heinsohn, Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee and Bruin Milt Schmidt. That brought the hazards back into play for better golfers while removing them as a concern for higher handicap players who did not hit the ball so far. Stay up to date with everything Boston. You have a recipe for a special place, and one Ive always personally been excited to see. All it takes is one look at a Google map of the course to see why. When you hit 16, youre brought back out of the trees to finish the course in the open. Its been a fixture on the various top 100 lists for decades. Designed by William Flynn and Frederic Hood in 1922 (it was restored by architect Gil Hanse in 1998), Kittansett was not particularly well known prior to the 53 Walker Cup. Bushnell Ion Elite Review: A Solid $200 GPS Golf Watch, Sun Mountain Mid Stripe Golf Bag: A New Player in Luxury Bag Market. Welcome to The Kittansett Club Our History Guest Information Golf Contact Login Eleven Point Road. But the discovery of a trove of documents in a Pennsylvania barn in the early 2000s revealed that the actual designer was William Flynn, one of the masters of the so-called Philadelphia school of architecture and a man whose credits include Pine Valley and Shinnecock Hills. Kittansett Club Team Growth. The course is located in South Newark and is operated by Essex County along with classics Francis Byrne and Hendricks Field. The British are supposed to be good losers, Duncan said at Saturday nights trophy presentation ceremony, since theyve had plenty of practice at it. Briggs maintains that he voted under the Rule of Necessity, which is a Common Law construction that may be used when a public body is legally required to act on a matter due to members being disqualified by conflict of interest. And with Hanse continuing to act as the clubs architectural consultant, one can be sure that the course at Kittansett will keep getting better. Briggs said he tried to resolve this issue last summer, but the Ethics Commission kept delaying the process. The first and second holes both measure 415 yards from the white tees. Outside of the 1953 Walker Cup, Kittansett has largely stayed out of the national spotlight. It feels quaint, subdued, and local in a good way. Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Digital Magazine! But Kittansett is seldom what it appears to be, especially at first glance. Originally, it was the Native Americans who led the Plymouth settlers and their cattle to the warmer winter pastures on these shores. The improvements over the past few years have transformed play. All of a sudden the courses you want to play tend to have less to do with prestige, and more to do with your personal preferences, geographic history, and the style of golf you enjoy most. Venturi, 22, was the baby in the group but his form was perhaps the best of all. An 18-hole golf course became a possibility when in the early 1920's a group of residents bought the land on Butler's Point, which until that time had been occupied solely by the Beverly Yacht Club. Please remove Mr. Briggs from the Conservation Commission immediately. At a prodigious 220 yards, this is a semi-blind par 3 courtesy of tall fescue directly in front of the teebox. This hole features another demanding teeshot with a narrow fairway lined by marshland and trees on either side. I thoroughly enjoyed my 25 years working at The Kittansett Club. This hole is perhaps the courses only routing blemish as the 8th green is near the 9th and you have to walk the length of the hole backwards to reach the teebox. If you had to describe the setting in a word? The 470 yard par 4 17th is one of my favorite holes at Cascata as a beautiful sweeping, downhill dogleg left. I request that you do not reappoint people with conflicts to committees where those conflicts, at best, keep them from their posts a lot, or at worst, allow them to rule on things they should not, Rockwell wrote. On this peninsula could be seen the possibilities of a different type of course than most in this country at that time, and one that might have the character of the famous sea-side courses of Great Britain. [Ed. This has to be one of the better and more robust muni systems in America. Theres a giant crossbunker about 50 yards short and three deep ones on both sides of the green. The 18th with the clubhouse and outdoor patio bar over on the left. (Credit to this SI article for additional details). American weather, if you will. The Kittansett Club is a Please contact the clubhouse For membership rates & information Course Info Location and Contact 11 Point Road, Marion, MA, 02738 kittansett.org update website (508) 748-0148 update phone Have you golfed here? The penalty for this infraction is disqualification, of course, and Grainger invoked it without hesitation. When golfs luminaries gathered in September on this lovely seaside ground just south of the Cape Cod Canal, the prize at stake had become The Walker Cup, forever and always. Nothing of the sort happened at Turks this weekend. This teebox is directly adjacent to the pro shop and youll almost certainly have a gallery. Kittansett plays short (not even 7000 yards from the Tips) and even shorter given the firm and fast conditions, but I played horribly here and found the course to be extremely tricky. Kittansett's beautiful clubhouse and the 18th green You get a real feel for the wind on the exposed range. Tee Par Yardage Rating Slope, Blue 71 6934 75.0 145, White 71 6400 71.9 139, White/Green 71 6029 70.0 132, Green 71 5581 67.9 130, Yellow 72 4934 71.0 133. This approach runs uphill towards a back-to-front sloped green guarded by bunkers on either side. Epic experience.. The Americans were still three down after nine but they came home in 33, the best nine posted by any foursome pairing during the competition. Members here bleed the right color and the course itself, perched on Butler Point and surrounded on three sides by Buzzards Bay, is surely transformed by a stiff wind. The Republican Women's Club of South Central Kentucky's Tuesday night dinner buffet planned to feature one of the officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor. It was showing its age, and as good Yankees who were not inclined to spend very much, we waited awhile before doing something about it.. The 7th is one of three par 5s on the course, and the bunkering on this hole I found to be notable and forces you to really place your 3 shots well. Par is a tremendous score here. But some 70 years after the clubs founding, in the mid-1990s, its leaders hired Gil Hanse. But once you get out of the top 10 or 20 courses in the world, everyones personal golf bucket list tends to diverge a bit. I find it interesting how the parking lot and practice areas are found on some of the most beautiful parts of the property, but I think it speaks to the strength of the inland holes that this isnt more readily apparent. However, the course performed admirably, conceding not a single sub-par round during the weekends play, even though the wind a Kittansett trademark blew hardly at all. MARION, MASSACHUSETTS | Competitors in last weeks Massachusetts Amateur had the pleasure of playing one of the Bay States best golf courses at the Kittansett Club. Although my least favorite of the three, Weequahic offers strong value and a more than adequate layout for public golfers in the New York metro area. Accolades for Kittansett include: Conditions:8/10, Similarly to nearby Newport Country Club, Kittansett has a decidedly linksy feel to it with firm, fast fairways and greens that never run faster than an 11 on the stimp. That prompted us to restore them to their original sizes. Try and clear the bunker on the corner and take on the trees. Kittansett seems tailor-made for a national mid-amateur championship, and while Demmer hinted that the subject has been broached presumably with the folks who famously value par there are no plans. The Kittansett Club, a private golf club that fronts the ocean on Kittansett Point, off Point Road, is also located in a flood plain. That should tell you something about its allure. Like the 7th, this par 5 features numerous well-placed bunkers running down its fairway notably crossbunkers on the left at 260 yards, right at 300, and one very tricky one on the right side of the lay-up area. All of the Tri-towns have people on their boards and commissions who serve double duty on other boards and whose businesses sometimes do business with the municipalities they serve. Truth be told, there was little overarching drama to the competition itself; the U.S. squad won easily, 9-3, securing its 13th victory in 14 tries. And on other occasions, Flynn made them more pronounced, as on the fourth, which doglegs sharply to the right. George Herbert Walker, great-grandfather to President Bush and founding patron of the international cup series, embodied the spirit of these times. . At 505 yards, the 7th is the first and best par 5 youll encounter at Kittansett. Those elements made Kittansett very much a placement course. They also reinforced the belief that it was indeed a creation of Flynns and a precursor to some of his most celebrated work, for in later years, he included very similar features in his collaboration at Pine Valley with George Crump (think of the fourth, seventh and 13th holes there) and Shinnecock. Rather than allocating more time and money to removing the rocks from the property, they used them to create mounds that in time were grassed over and employed as strategic hazards, much like the famed chocolate drops at Myopia Hunt Club north of Boston. For the 2022 season they expanded their outdoor bar, which is a fantastic place to have a drink and enjoy the view of both the course and the water. Because Kittansett is a golf club youre not going to find a pool, tennis, or all of the other amenities that youll typically find at a country club. Amateur champion, making his third Walker Cup appearance, was the senior member of his team and proved the weekends leading light. Kittansett was one of the first courses to be built with predetermined specifications. And theres a good chance driver will be too much and take you through the fairway. Its a severely sloped back-to-front green with a bit of a swale in the middle separating it into two sections. So, we formulated a master plan with a slow implementation of five or six years, so we could open up the course again and restore many of its original features and feels.. The hole looks pretty innocent from the tee, but there is more to it than initially meets the eye. The course was so well designed and there were so many well-executed strategic elements, that it seemed like there had to be additional help from someone who was more prominent during the era. So my good friend joined The Kittansett Club this year and Ive been lucky enough to play about a dozen rounds there. A club was formed and the course was built with play beginning in 1923. The most famous hole at Kittansett comes early in the round in the form of the 167-yard par 3, 3rd hole. Since the 1990s the course has gone through a series of redesigns by Gil Hanse, who has been a longstanding consultant with respect to restoration, improvements, and renovations of Kittansett. I hit my tee shot to 8 feet and drained the putt for my only birdie in 3 days. That served to reinforce the wisdom of the work Hanse had already completed with help first from Kittansett golf course superintendent, Lenny Blodgett, and then his successor, John Kelly as it also acted as a guide for future work. The 8th marks the start of the interior holes, which have a decidedly different feel than their seaside companions. Perennially ranked as one of "America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses" by Golf Digest magazine, Kittansett offers both a scenic and demanding test of golf. A fine hole in its own right, this short one-shotter features a front-to-back sloped green with a giant bunker short and cliffs long. This approach is a bit more challenging with large bunkers 60 yards short on the left and to the right of the green. Designer:William Flynn/Frederic C. Hood (1922), Gil Hanse/Jim Wagner (1998, tree removal and bunker renovation). Sometimes, the slants were quite subtle, like those on the par-5 seventh, and No. The Country Club is definitely Massachusetts' best course and then it is a battle among Kittansett, Boston Golf Club, and Old Sandwich as the state's next best track. Change). Granted each of these courses are quite different from one another, but the flat opening hole heading out away from the clubhouse reminded me of my experience at those other clubs. The club has followed through by continuing to fell trees, opening up never-before-seen vistas on the point holes 1, 2, 16, 17 and 18. View key info about Course Database including Course description, Tee yardages, par and handicaps, scorecard, contact info, Course Tours, directions and more. When asked what he thinks brought the matter to the. And in 2016, Murray threw fans cell phones off the roof of a second-story restaurant in Carmel, Calif., after they snapped photos of the actor, according to TMZ. So does the USGAs decision to stage the U.S. Senior Amateur here in autumn 2022, the year of the clubs centennial. Town of Marion, Massachusetts, United States View. These include the Massachusetts Amateur Championship in 1958, 1978, 1990, 1999, 2008 and 2020 and the WGAM Edith Noblit Baker Trophy in 1954, 1979, 1989, 1995, 2005 and 2015. The conditioning and scenery were also fantastic. Had the absolute pleasure of waiting on the comedic ICON himself, Bill Murray, McCarthy wrote on Facebook. We all have our list of bucket list courses. He and Urzetta easily won their foursomes match and the San Franciscan breezed past a beleaguered James Wilson in singles, 9 and 8; Venturis outward round of level-par 70 was the competitions lowest. But there are so many other holes of note. Briggs admitted to violating the conflict-of-interest law by voting as a town Conservation Commission member to issue an Order of Conditions authorizing Tabor Academy to install two 2,000-gallon saltwater tanks at its Marine Sciences Center building. Then, they are left with an uphill approach to a slick green backed by the bay, again with bunkers right and left. One of those revisions came shortly after the discovery of the Flynn drawings in that Pennsylvania barn. Those who go left or long will find a bunker at 195 yards or worse be OB. At 355 yards, the par 4 13th is the last of a trio of very challenging short dogleg rights. In light of the recent state Board of Ethics ruling against Sherman Briggs, I request that you send a message to the other town boards that this is not acceptable behavior, and that if you engage in this type of behavior you will be removed. The reachable 330 yard 10th gets my vote for easiest hole at Kittansett. Matt. Anytime you want to come back I can absolutely get you back out there, (hes a really good friend) just let me know. But work still needed to be done. Because of the ever-present winds perhaps, Hoods design rarely calls for forced carries into the greens themselves. Teeing off on the first hole gives you vibes similar to other old-school seaside courses like Fishers Island or Maidstone. The Kittansett Club, appropriately named from two Native American words meaning "near the sea," is situated in the town of Marion at the end of Butler Point, which extends into Buzzards Bay. State Ethics Commission Executive Director Karen Nober gave Briggs two weeks from the March 5 offer to get back to Ethics Commission or face up to a $50,000 fine. It was here that Wilson and MacGregor proved they were very good sports indeed. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2012-2022 Location 180, LLC | All rights reserved. The 375 yard 17th is another dogleg left running in the opposite direction of 16. This integrated piece appeared as a course feature and Walker Cup sidebar in LINKS Magazine during the summer of 2006. Tabor Academy representatives filed a Notice of Intent with the ConCom on June 3, 2011 regarding the project. The first thing I noticed was that the golf course had become overgrown and had suffered from what can best be described as benign neglect, said Hanse. The major defense is undoubtedly the wind, which usually whips off the Ocean, but the layout is also difficult, especially off the tee. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Kittansett. The approach to this small undulating green is guarded by a deep bunker on the left. With a carry over fescue and bunker, this green is guarded on either side by deep bunkers and slopes extremely hard back-to-front. A Kittansett club wedding was a dream of Molly's. She grew up spending summers in Marion, surrounded by the sea and spending time with her family. The railroad tie path through the bunker to the green is a cool aesthetic touch and adds to the interest of the experience. With his plans and knowledge, the club brought in famed architect Gil Hanse to restore the course to fit Mr. Flynns original designs. In some areas its more subtle (like on the 2nd fairway for instance.) A charming rock wall and fescue guard just right of the green as well. At the Commissions June 22, 2011 hearing on the Notice of Intent, Briggs, in his capacity as a ConCom member, discussed the Notice of Intent and voted to issue an Order of Conditions regarding the Notice of Intent. Keep it up! The 6th plays out towards the water and has a sign off the green designating the high water level from previous hurricanes. Marion, MA. During their annual 4-Ball Tournament I got my first hole-in-one on #3. Briggs said he signed the disposition agreement March 15. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for B Draddy THE KITTANSETT CLUB Blair Half Zip Golf Pullover Logo Blue Large New at the best online prices at eBay! The Cup was named for the then President of the USGA George Herbert Walker, a banker and businessman.
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