Hotchkiss Golf Course

The golf course at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville was designed in 1924 by Seth Raynor, one of the great architects of golf's Golden Age. The link to the school ran through Charles Banks, a Hotchkiss English teacher who befriended Raynor and became his partner; after Raynor's death in 1926, Banks completed more than thirty of his unfinished courses, and in the 1930s he returned to Hotchkiss to reconfigure several holes. The result is a nine-hole, par-35 course of just over 3,000 yards that carries the bold, geometric style of the Macdonald-Raynor school in compact form. Although it belongs to a boarding school, the course is open to daily-fee golfers, with members, school personnel and their guests given preference on weekend mornings. It has drawn national notice for a nine-holer, landing on Golf World's 2010 list of America's best nine-hole courses and on Golfweek's lists of the best public courses in Connecticut.