The Misquamicut Club

The Misquamicut Club was founded in 1895 in the seaside cottage colony of Watch Hill, Rhode Island, nurtured by prominent American families such as the Procters, Ballantines, Swifts and Mellons. For its first course, a sporty nine, the club turned to the celebrated player-architect Willie Park Jr. It also made an early mark on the game by hiring a teenaged Scot, Willie Anderson, as its first professional; he went on to win four U.S. Open titles. Over the following decades several Golden Age architects shaped the grounds, including Tom Bendelow and Seth Raynor, before Donald Ross carried out a well-known redesign in 1923. The result is a classic New England seaside layout that has kept its historic character for well over a century as one of Rhode Island's storied private clubs.