By Ron Green Jr.
BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS | The color is primrose yellow, and if there is a story that goes along with why the clubhouse at The Country Club has been painted that shade for as long as anyone can remember, no one knows it.
Think of The Country Club and, along with grainy images of 20-year-old Francis Ouimet walking across the street to rewrite golf history in 1913 and Curtis Strange outdueling Nick Faldo in a flinty U.S. Open playoff 34 years ago, the clubhouse likely pops to mind.
It’s, at least in part, because of its distinctive color which sets it apart the way the hilltop setting of Stanford White’s design at Shinnecock Hills sets it apart and the former home of a nursery owner helps define Augusta National.
It was on an upstairs porch where the United States team sprayed champagne after its comeback victory over Europe in the 1999 Ryder Cup matches, the memory of Payne Stewart full of joy just weeks before his death part of the tapestry.
How it unfolds in this U.S. Open remains to be seen, but for a championship that prides itself on history, challenge and celebrating the game’s essence, it has found an ideal venue in The Country Club, which has hosted 16 USGA events but only three previous Opens.
Even the name reaches beyond the rocky, rolling 235 acres that sit about six miles from the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill in downtown Boston.
It is a product of its geography and its people. The golf course looks like New England with its exposed rock formations and tumbling terrain, intentionally scruffy in spots. Inside, it has all the right touches.
It’s just The Country Club, and it’s fair to say that all other American country clubs took that part of their name from this club. During a business trip to Shanghai in the 1870s, American businessman J. Murray Forbes found a social club for English-speaking traders there called simply “The Country Club.”
“We do hear that we’re presumptuous, but it comes from the lunch club in China,” club president Lyman Bullard said.
When Forbes proposed a club in 1882, primarily for the purpose of horse racing, he used the name that stuck with him from half a world away. When golf arrived in 1893 – not the course that will host the U.S. Open but on the same land – The Country Club became one of the USGA’s five founding clubs.
“One of the cathedrals of the game,” is how John Bodenhamer, senior managing director of championships for the USGA, describes it.
The Country Club is more than a golf course, though its 27 holes (the Squirrel, the Clyde and the Primrose nines) are exceptional, a handsomely rugged and ragged collection that when distilled to the 18-hole championship course can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best to be found anyplace.
With approximately 1,300 members, many of them bearing the surnames of members who preceded them by a century, The Country Club is its own community, albeit an expensive and exclusive one. It looks like a small college campus, its 22 buildings – including the yellow clubhouse, a large locker-room building and indoor facilities for regular tennis, paddle tennis and curling – neatly arranged.
Yes, curling, which insiders say is not only popular but financially beneficial because curlers enjoy a good time.
Even in the winter, when the Boston wind is cutting and cold, it’s not unusual to find a few hundred members at the club, some skating on one of the ponds, others shooting skeet and others in the fitness facility or elsewhere. The heartiest can play the Primrose nine, which is open year-round.
“This is family first and golf course second,” said Brendan Walsh, TCC’s long-time head pro. “All the decisions we make are based around family. It’s a high priority.
“We like to say there is an understated elegance here. You feel it here.”
“In New England, there is a saying that you should always leave the woodpile a little higher,” club historian Fred Waterman said. “That ties into The Country Club having an obligation to host big events.”
As for the course itself, it has its own backstory. The original six-hole course was designed by three men – Arthur Hunnewell, Laurence Curtis and Robert Bacon – who had never seen a true golf course. They had played a rudimentary version of the game on a makeshift layout using flower pots for cups, all designed by a woman named Florence Boit, on her uncle’s (Hunnewell) estate.
The Country Club agreed to pay $50, and six holes were scratched out.
Eventually, those holes gave way to what is now the original 18 holes (the Squirrel and Clyde nines) which hosted the 1913 U.S. Open. In 1927, William Flynn, who also worked at Shinnecock Hills, Kittansett and Cherry Hills, designed the Primrose nine.
“It was supposed to be Donald Ross, but it was Flynn who built the Primrose,” Bullard said.
During that time – from Ouimet’s victory in 1913 until 1930 – the number of golf courses in the United States went from approximately 700 to approximately 5,600, and the number of golfers increased similarly, from 350,000 to more than 2 million.
“Because this kid living across the street had this dream,” Walsh said.
In 2007, designer Gil Hanse was called in to develop a master plan. A portion of it was implemented by the time Matt Fitzpatrick won the 2013 U.S. Amateur in Brookline, and it has continued in recent years. The goal wasn’t to reshape or renovate the layout but to restore it to its original design principles, accounting in spots for the increased distance in today’s game.
Fifteen of the 18 greens were expanded, but they are still relatively small, two fairways were shifted and the existing character was enhanced.
“Gil said, ‘You already have an architect. I’m just here to help what’s already there,’ ” Walsh said.
That was important to the members, too.
“It’s New England character,” said Waterman, the club historian. “In New England, old is good.
“There is a reason why our golf course has never been renovated with an earthmover. There is a strong belief that great golf has been played on the course and there is no reason to bring a different texture to it.”
Nor change the color of the clubhouse that sits perfectly behind the 18th green where another story will be told at this year’s U.S. Open.