Exeter Country Club

Golf at Exeter Country Club reaches back to at least 1889, when members of the Exeter Gun Club were already playing at the current Jady Hill site on a course known as Eddy's Links. Historians date the formal club to 1895, as the Exeter Golf Course, and it took the name Exeter Country Club in 1900, the same year a bungalow-style clubhouse with a wide wraparound porch was built. Phillips Exeter Academy kept its own five-hole course off Drinkwater Road by 1902; when that course closed, its golfers joined the country club. In 1953 a tornado described as a twin-headed monster destroyed the clubhouse and crossed the first tee. During the 1950s the course was redesigned by Manny Francis, the longtime Vesper Country Club superintendent known for developing Vesper Velvet turfgrass. Golf Magazine has listed Exeter among the 100 oldest courses in the nation. Today it is a member-owned nine-hole club that welcomes the public, with public tee times.