Essex County Club

One of the oldest clubs in the U.S., on Boston's North Shore, where Donald Ross lived on site and built the current course over most of a decade.

Essex County Club was founded in 1893 in Manchester-by-the-Sea and was the sixth club to join the USGA, after the five founding members. An 18-hole course attributed to Herbert Leeds, John Duncan Dunn and Walter Travis came first, but the course that survives is Donald Ross's. Ross was hired in 1908, served as the club's professional, lived on the property from 1909 to 1913, and rebuilt the course a few holes at a time until 1917 while it stayed open.

The land suits the work: rocky ledges, wooded hills and a tidal flood plain on the North Shore. Ross used the ledges for blind and semi-blind shots and gave the course sharply contoured greens. The 8th is a good example, with a blind drive over a ledge to a split-level fairway and a steeply sloped green. Bruce Hepner of Renaissance Golf Design spent more than two decades restoring Ross's features.

The club has hosted women's amateur golf from the start. It held the U.S. Women's Amateur in 1897, won by Beatrix Hoyt, and in 1912, won by Margaret Curtis, one of the sisters for whom the Curtis Cup is named. The Curtis Cup itself came to Essex in 2010, a fitting match for a club so tied to the event's history.

Holes to know

8

Par 4 · 422 yd

A blind tee shot over a ledge to a split-level fairway, finishing at a sharply sloped green.

3

Plays across a tidal flood plain; the green, thought to date from the club's earliest years, has a deep swale in its front-left section.

Championships

• U.S. Women's Amateur 1897, 1912
• Curtis Cup 2010

Design history

• c. 2000–2023: Bruce Hepner (Renaissance Golf Design) long-term restoration of Ross's greens and bunkers