By Paul Sullivan
The first time I played Woodway Country Club as a newly admitted member, it was a cold, damp day in April 2015. My sponsor had texted me the good news and suggested we get out and play.
My one memory from that round was my second shot on the sixth hole, an uphill dogleg left that is the No. 1 handicap hole then and now. It’s a beast of a par 4, playing much longer than its 438 yards, longer still on a cold day.
I hit a 7-wood out of the rough as high, soft, and straight as I could. It set up a birdie putt that I sank.
“You’d better remember that one,” my sponsor said. “It may be your last on this hole.”
No truer words were spoken.
Woodway, a classic Willie Park Jr. course in Darien, Conn., dating to 1916, has a remarkable pedigree as a tough challenge for even the best golfers. Walter Travis called it one of the finest sites for golf he had ever seen. In 1921, George Duncan, fresh off winning the Open Championship, declared Woodway the best course he played on a national tour that included The Country Club, Myopia Hunt, Ekwanok, Garden City, Sleepy Hollow, Merion, and Scioto.
Well-known players from many generations have played it, including Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, Bobby Jones and Arnold Palmer. Five-time PGA Tour winner and Connecticut native Ken Green even parked his RV in front of the clubhouse when he played in the 2016 Connecticut Open. (That championship was won by Adam Rainaud who shot 75-66-65, setting the course record on the final day.)
But like many courses in the Met Area, Woodway went the way of Augusta National, seduced by the siren song of trees lining fairways and surrounding greens. As the years went on, the holes became corridors leading to greens tented with high-limbed trees.
The array of trees around the sixth green was once known as “The Cathedral.” I wasn’t sure if that was out of reverence for surviving the walk up the hill or the need to pray after hitting a great shot that could still be knocked down into a bunker.
The most tree-choked hole may have been the seventh. It’s a par 4 from the highest point on the property. Back then it had rows of maples and pines that narrowed the driving area and focused the eye on an enormous pine tree by the green, some 400 yards away. The message was clear: hit it dead straight or suffer the consequences.
Back in 2015, I didn’t care. I was happy to be a member of such a great club just ten-minutes from my house. But I’d played remarkable courses that were more open, including Oakmont when it had trees and later when it did not, so from the start I was wondering what the trees were hiding.
Some deeply unfortunate mistakes transpired later that spring that changed what Woodway would be. An herbicide incorrectly labeled as a fungicide was applied to the greens – weeks before a U.S. Open qualifier – and a season without puttable greens became the spark that ignited a decade of change.
Woodway Country Club was founded in 1916 by a group of golfers breaking away from nearby Wee Burn Country Club. The renegade group had secured a fantastic piece of land, with all the topographical undulations that define the most memorable courses in the Met Area: moraines that cut across the property, streams winding through the land, deep ponds for irrigation, and lots of elevation changes.
The club considered Alistair Mackenzie, Seth Raynor, and Donald Ross – all Golden Age luminaries. But it chose Willie Park Jr., who came from a storied Scottish golf family that rivaled Old Tom Morris, to create the course. Park’s father won the first Open Championship in 1860 at Prestwick. Junior won his first in 1887. Uncle Mungo Park won one in 1874. After Junior won a second Open in 1889, he set off for America like many great golfers of the time to design courses.
When Park was selected to design Woodway, he took a particular interest in the topography. Park wrote one of the first books on putting and his signature feature is contoured, undulating greens. At Woodway, he created greens that are large and subtle and do not reward simply hitting a shot on the green. You have to hit a shot on the correct part of the green if you wanted to avoid three putting.
At the time of its completion, Woodway was hailed as a championship venue. At 6,470 yards, it was the longest course in Connecticut. (Today the par 71 tips out at 6,900 yards).
Park was so proud of the design that he listed it on his personal business card with just two other courses: Sunningdale in England and Mount Bruno outside of Montreal. (Absent from his card were Park’s two best known courses in the U.S.: Olympia Fields and Maidstone.)
True to Park’s vision, Woodway’s greens were seeded with smooth-rolling poa annua grass, but that was all gone with the misapplication of the chemical in 2015.
The U.S. Open qualifier went forward, but it was a disaster. Mike Ballo Jr., who grew up on the course and is now the head professional at Tamarack Country Club in Greenwich, Conn., said at the time that he’d never three-putted so many greens at Woodway in one round.
That low point for Woodway was the catalyst for change. Harry Day Jr., whose father had been president several decades earlier, asked Rob Minicucci, a Harvard Business School graduate, to be the next club president. He was tasked with bringing about change.
“There hadn’t been any significant investment in the golf course for a decade,” Minicucci says. “Tom Doak (who grew up minutes away) wrote something like, ‘Woodway’s a great course, but they’ve got to take out the trees.’ Gil Hanse said the same thing.”
So Minicucci applied a corporate governance philosophy to the club, and the greens and grounds committee. The superintendent who had damaged the greens moved on, so there was an opening. In 2018, the club brought in Anthony Garzia, who had been the first assistant at Pine Valley.
Garzia suggested Bruce Hepner, who had been the lead shaper for Doak on such great new courses as Ballyneal.
As fate would have it, a friend of Minicucci knew Doak and set up a call. “Doak said if you can get Bruce Hepner you have to get him – he’s perfect for Woodway.”
That call lead to serendipitous collaboration between Hepner, Garzia, and the team at McDonald & Sons, the golf course construction firm.
What started as a project to redo bunkers on the front nine became a master plan to redo all the bunkers, align the tee boxes, remove trees, and expand and rebuild greens to Willie Park Jr.’s original intent.
“Anthony said this is the opportunity to change the mow lines,” says Pete Hunsinger, the former publisher of Golf Digest and greens and grounds chairman during the restoration. “Then Hepner said, ‘While we’re all here you can do these other things.’ Rob led the charge and said, ‘We’re going to defer to the experts and move in one direction.’”
Like any club that has been around for over 100 years, not everyone was happy when Hepner completed the major part of the restoration in 2020 (he’s still fine-tuning it). People missed trees. It took time to adjust to the new look. Some complained that the course was easier. (A tracking of handicaps showed the opposite: the course has played harder for lower handicaps and easier for higher ones, which has sped up pace of play.)
Gradually members accepted the changes. With Garzia’s program for the greens, Woodway now has some of the truest and fastest putting surfaces in the Met section – a fitting tribute to Willie Park Jr.’s intent.
Shortly, before he passed in 2022, Mike Ballo Sr., Woodway’s long-time head pro and the father of Mike Jr. at Tamarack and Pete at The Connecticut Golf Club in Easton, came back to see what had been done. Riding around in a cart, surveying the changes, he paused at the 16th hole. It’s a long par 4 with a quintessential Willie Park Jr. green, perched on a ridge with the look of an infinity pool flowing off into bogeys. What had once been surrounded by tall trees was now pristine, open, and often wind-blown.
Ballo Sr. smiled and said: “This is what this hole looked like when I first caddied here.”
On May 1, Woodway will host its first U.S. Open qualifier since that ill-fated day in 2015. For anyone who competed ten years ago, it’s a completely different course. It’s open, firm, and once again true to Park’s vision. And it will challenge the best as it has since the Golden Age greats played it.