Hyannisport Club

Favorite Hole

No. 3, par 4, 363 yards

Hyannisport’s first and most exciting encounter with Hall’s Creek Estuary, the third hole bends around a marshy inlet and finishes at a semi-island green complex. The “wow” factor here is undeniable and accounts for much of the hole’s appeal, but there are strategic questions to consider as well.

This Cape-style par 4 is a rare example of a Golden Age hole that may have benefited from the past century’s distance gains in golf. Using modern equipment (and playing from the proper tees), most players will face a tough decision from the tee: either hedge right, clubbing down in order to stay short of the fourth fairway and the marsh beyond; or take on the diagonal carry to the left, with the potential reward of a short, straight-on approach. The farther up a tee shot is pushed, however, the more angled and surrounded by water the landing zone becomes.

The open front of the green and the slight downhill cant of the approach encourage run-up play—an appealing option when the turf is firm and the wind is up. Missing long or left isn’t quite as devastating as it looks: when it’s not high tide, you can often play a ball from the seagrass.

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Overall Thoughts

I have a theory that if C.B. Macdonald had tried to build National Golf Links of America on Cape Cod instead of Long Island, Boston’s golfing elite would have run him out of town. I think they would have found Macdonald’s dream of creating the world’s greatest golf course arrogant and gauche. The Boston area’s top golf clubs have always preferred a lower profile. Their members, one senses, would like to avoid the attention that obvious architectural brilliance brings. It’s nice to play a top-20 course every day, but maybe nicer to play a top-200 course that no one has seen on Instagram.

This might be an overgeneralization, but it gets at a truth about golf course design in New England broadly and Boston specifically. The Country Club, Myopia Hunt Club, Essex County Club, and the Kittansett Club have quieter, more restrained golf architecture than the best Golden Age courses near New York City and Philadelphia. Boston-area clubs are also slower to react to trends and less likely to spend big on renovations.

Hyannisport Club exemplifies these tendencies. Its design is strikingly simple. Many of the fairway landing zones are un-bunkered, putting the onus on topography to generate strategy and challenge on the tee shots. Most of the greens are uncomplicated—with subtle tilts, rolls, and runoffs distinguishing each from the others—and fairly small, even though Ron Forse expanded them in the late aughts. As a result, the course’s individuality comes primarily from setting, terrain, and routing. Fortunately, Hyannisport has significant strengths in all three of those areas:

Setting—The club’s perch above Nantucket Sound not only provides memorable views but also exposes the course to strong, unpredictable winds. Combined with reliably firm conditions and open, at-grade entrances to most of the greens, Hyannisport’s seaside location allows for a decent facsimile of links golf.

Terrain—The closer you get to the water on Hyannisport’s property, the more interesting the land becomes. The topsy-turvy undulations near Hall’s Creek Estuary affect almost every hole; only Nos. 12, 13, and 14 sit completely inland, away from the influence of the marsh-adjacent topography.

Routing—In routing a golf course, the architect’s main job is to take thorough advantage of a property’s best assets. Ross did this at Hyannisport by spacing out the player’s encounters with the water. The routing first interacts with the estuary on the third and fourth holes, returns to it on Nos. 7 and 8, offers tantalizing views of it on Nos. 10 and 15, and pays a final, spectacular visit to it on the par-5 16th and par-3 17th holes. These moments give the course a sense of dramatic stakes and structure.

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Hyannisport’s reliance on the non-artificial elements of setting, terrain, and routing conceals the hand of the designer. The course directs the player’s focus toward the views, the weather, the journey, and the golf shots—not the architecture.

Ron Forse’s restoration work over the past three decades has retained this quality. Because he and the club have taken a gradual approach, making small adjustments rather than sweeping changes, Hyannisport has continued to feel at home in its environment. Forse’s rebuilt bunkers, for example, are weathered and naturalized, but not filigreed to the point that they appear self-consciously artistic or separate from their surroundings.

Because of its restraint, however, Hyannisport’s architecture doesn’t do much to spice up the blandest portions of the property. The middle stretch of the course occupies a flattish parcel that the club acquired in 1930, and some of the holes—particularly the inland-traveling sixth, ninth, and 11th—blend together in the memory. Here, perhaps, Hyannisport would have benefited from more adventurous earthmoving, particularly on and around the greens. Seth Raynor, for instance, might have saved his boldest template greens for this section of the site—a Biarritz here, a Double Plateau there.

And yet too many such flourishes would be at odds with Hyannisport’s modesty. The land is the land, and the course flows across it rather than fighting it. There’s something admirable, and distinctly New Englandish, about that.

1 Egg

Hyannisport Club is strong across our rating criteria of land, design, and presentation: an unforgettable setting with sections of exciting topography, elegant and well-preserved Donald Ross architecture, and bouncy turf. But, in my opinion, it doesn’t excel enough in any of those categories to reach two-Egg status. I might change my mind on that count, however, if the club were to restore all of the greens to Ross’s 1930 drawings. Either way, Hyannisport is a terrific member course—one that any golfer would be delighted to spend all summer playing.

Course Tour

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