On The Green, Issue 6
Rooted In History
This summer my family and I spent a week in London, soaking up that city’s culture, food, and incredible art scene. While visiting The National Gallery, we eavesdropped on a guided tour, and something the tour guide said caught my attention. She was standing near a painting, I think a Johannes Vermeer, describing in meticulous detail the process needed to maintain and, in some cases, restore, a 300+ year-old masterpiece. It was this comment that caught my ear: “A trained eye may be able to pick up a restoration, but to everyone else a restoration is invisible.” Like any degenerate golfer surrounded by the masterpieces of Monet, Rembrandt, and Seurat I quickly drew a parallel between the tour guide’s comment and the fine work of golf course architects like Hanse, Raynor, and Tillinghast.
Golf courses are like artwork. There, I said it. A keen eye can observe choices made on a course and determine if they were original or part of the layers of restoration made along the way. If every brush stroke on Bacchus and Ariadne tells a story, then each bunker placement and template hole at Yale Country Club does the same.
In New England, we’re surrounded by courses with enough patina to make even the most seasoned art historians blush. New England’s rocky coast served as a familiar palette for the early golf course architects who made their way to the United States from the United Kingdom in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie, Harry Colt, AW Tillinghast, and Woodstock Country Club’s original designer William Henry Tucker all choose to leave their mark here. And we’re all better for it.
It's with this in mind that we’re sharing a bit about Woodstock Country Club’s layered past. Not quite an art lesson, but a history lesson. Here’s a little about where we started and where we are today.
Fore please,
Ross Evans
OTG Creative Director
Stiles Upon Style
Wayne Stiles didn’t design the original golf course in Woodstock, Vermont, but he was responsible for modernizing it at a critical point in American golf history. By the 1920’s, golf was booming in America. As you’ll recall from last month’s OTG, this was due in large part to Francis Ouimet’s historic US Amateur victory at Ekwanok Country Club in 1914. And in Woodstock at this time, the state’s first public golf course had already undergone a significant change. The original 9-hole layout on Mt. Peg, located above the club’s current location, though awarding the golfer with spectacular views, was difficult to access. William Henry Tucker was brought in to reimagine the course. Tucker designed a new 9-hole layout in the Kedron Valley, just below Mt. Peg. This new layout opened for play in 1906. But it was Wayne Stiles who modernized the course in the 1920’s, expanding to an 18-hole layout while opening up fairways and adding hazards, all in the spirit of meeting the current style of play which was more aerial thanks to improvements in equipment. Stiles’ mark on golf was felt throughout New England. Along with his design partner John Van Kleek, Stiles is credited with hundreds of courses, including nearby Rutland Country Club, Taconic Golf Club, and one of my favorite 9-hole loops, Hooper in Walpole, NH.
Deep dive into our history here.
Woodstock’s original course, located on Mt. Peg. Photo Credit: Woodstock History Center
The OG (Original Green)
As is the case with any restoration, a designer makes decisions about what to keep and what to change. Woodstock Country Club’s history through the years paints the course as a living and breathing entity, starting from its original location on Mt. Peg, to its current routing today, designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. One constant since the course was relocated to its current location has been the fifth green, though it played as the eighth green until the Jones renovation in 1961. Pictured here is the 5th green from the tee shot in the 1920s compared to 2022. It doesn’t take an expert to determine how little has changed.
Nestled into the hillside at the foot of Mt. Peg and guarded on the front and right sides by Kedron Brook, it’s easy to see why multiple designers and architects choose to leave this green as it is. What more is there to do? Short by modern standards, the fifth green leaves the golfer with few options: hit the green from the tee or suffer the consequences. Art is as much about what you leave off the canvas as it is about what you add. Sometimes in golf, less is more. That’s certainly the case with the fifth green.
Explore the current course routing here.
Woodstock Country Club’s 5th green, in the 1920’s and today. Photo Credit: Woodstock History Center
The Chocolate Drops
Though Woodstock’s 5th green has remained intact through the years, there is one notable element on that hole that has undergone a little nip and tuck: the three seemingly benign mounds in the foreground of the picture here. They are present in the 1920’s version of the 5th hole, but noticeably absent today. Known as “chocolate drops,” this feature was a popular hazard in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At that time, chocolate drops stood century over a green complex, a difficult hazard for a game that was primarily played on the ground, with low, rolling golf shots. Of course, today, they wouldn’t be anything more than a greenskeeper’s least favorite spot on the course to mow, but back then they wreaked havoc on a golfer’s round. Turns out chocolate drops weren’t just a strategic design element, they played a practical purpose too. The rocky soil posed a problem for course shapers: rocks often needed to be moved to make way for greens or fairways, but the rocks needed to go somewhere. Architects would pile them up around greens and along fairways and plant grass on them, incorporating the rock piles into course design as hazards and eliminating the need to find a new home for the boulders. Read more about this unique design feature and its role in golf course design here.
Woodstock’s “chocolate drops” circa 1925. Photo Credit: Woodstock History Center
