Ekwanok Country Club

Ekwanok Country Club - Manchester, VT

The year after he won the U.S Open at The Country Club as an amateur, Francis Ouimet beat Jerome Travers on the par 3 13th at Ekwanok in 1914 to win the U.S Amateur. 

This 1899 Walter Travis Design, with help from John Duncan Dunn,  boasts a phenomenal routing in a dream-like setting. Surrounded by mountains, the course lies in a valley, where holes 1-4 and 16-18 play out and back to the clubhouse (East to West) and the rest of the holes play along rugged,hilly terrain and are routed going North to South, making great use of approximately 120 acres. This was Travis’ introduction tot golf course architecture, and he frequented the property more often than most architects at the time as he would keep finding inspiration from the great links courses in the UK. 

Travis’ charm can still be found here, with bold mounding, blind shots, distinct contours in some greens, and holes that lay over rugged and hilly parts of the property. As you make your way out, away from the clubhouse, you will find phenomenal land for golf and Travis made the most of it. This can be shown on the famous par 5 7th.

I can write a whole article on this hole. Many architects would have used the giant landform that lies in the middle of this hole and try to use it to come into play on  more than one hole. Travis on the other hand, saw it, and decided to build a true 3 shot par 5 with the giant mound formation being in a strategic spot of the hole. Similar features can be found on the 17th Alps hole at Prestwick, the Klondyke 4th hole at Lahinch, the 8th at Pebble Beach, and the par 5 6th at Cruden Bay. This makes you think, a lot of memorable holes come from the bold features than accompany them, like Hell's Half Acre at Pine Valley, which may not be inverted like the hill on the 7th at Ekwanok, but play similar in terms of being strategic. 

The tee shot on the par 5, 7th.

The short par 4 8th then plays the opposite direction with a fairways that slopes downhill after a crest which can kick your ball towards bunkers on the right and a harder angle to the two tiered green. Left off the tee looms a giant hill with thick fescue.green sitting in a low valley. 

From the middle of the fairway on the short par 4, 8th.

11 is a great long par 3 over the rugged terrain, and 12 plays over yet another crest where devilish fairway bunkers lie before the top of the hill drops significantly down to a green sitting at the bottom of the hill.

Tee shot on the par 3, 11th

The tee shot on the 14th plays over what apparently used to be a green site, surrounded by hills with two giant bunkers. A spectacular piece of the property. 

The tee shot on the par 4, 14th

The tee shot on the par 4 15th requires a long hitter to take on a risk-reward line going over a creek where mounds loom right, and a farther carry over the creek on the right. 

From the fairway, before the creek on 15.

Donald Ross eventually removed mounds, Robert Trent Jones Sr. removed other features, and Paul O’Leary and Geoff Cornish rebuilt greens, removed mounds, and filled in bunkers. 

In the 90’s Bruce Hepner and Tom Doak came along to restore the mounds, green sizes, bunkers, and  remove trees. Ekwanok came full circle, and there is still work to be done. Brian Schneider, who has worked on Travis courses before like North Jersey which he beautifully restored, is consulting with Ekwanok and laying out more Travis features that may be missing. Looking around at the greens and bunkers, you can tell that some of Travis’ charm still isn’t fully there. C-shaped bunkers were once present here along with cross bunkers in the fairway, bold green contouring, mounding, and possibly a different green site in between rugged terrain where the club still keeps the bunkers on the hill maintained, shown here.  

This creates questions of what the original Travis design might have looked like. Were greens in different places, how many greens are Travis originals? And what bunkers are still missing? You can feel the history once you step on property and it can be shown in the design and routing. To think that this can be enhanced even more is very exciting and we all hope it can eventually come to flourish, just like what they are doing at Yale. Being ranked over and over as the #1 club in Vermont, Ekwanok has potential to crack the top 100 in the U.S. Ekwanok is a very old school golf course and you can feel it once you step on property. The club does a fantastic job at preserving its rich history and it is very exciting to see how they will show this hitory when it comes to the golf course in the future.