Greenwich country club is a fun 18 hole regulation course located at the Greenwich Country Club facility in Greenwich, CT. From the longest tees it features 6,706 yards of golf for a par of 71. The course was designed by Seth Raynor and opened in 1900.
The Greenwich Country Club was organized as the Fairfield County Golf Club in 1895, but its roots go back to 1892 when the club’s patriarch, Julian Curtiss, introduced the little-known game to his friends. Curtiss, an executive with A.G. Spalding & Bros., the sporting goods company, purchased $400 of golf equipment while on a business trip in London. His superiors were not happy with his speculation, however, and wrote it off as “Curtiss’ folly.”
Refusing to give up, Curtiss and two of his Greenwich neighbors laid out a five-hole course in their adjoining front yards and invited friends to have a go at the new game. It was an instant success, and the result was an informal golf club. In 1920, Curtiss became president of the Spalding company. By 1895, Curtiss’s course had been expanded to nine holes and the Fairfield County GC was officially established.
One of the club’s early members, Findlay Douglas, a native of St. Andrews, Scotland, won the U.S. Amateur in 1898 and was runner-up the next two years. The most influential benefactor in the early years was Edmund Converse, a banker and industrialist and first president of J.P. Morgan’s U.S. Steel. With his backing, the course was expanded to 18 holes in 1908 and the club was renamed the Greenwich Country Club in 1909.
In 1911 the course was redesigned by Seth Raynor, then an apprentice to Charles Blair Macdonald. Glenna Collett (Vare), the leading American amateur of the 1920s and 1930s, was a summer resident of Greenwich and an honorary member of the club. She represented the GCC when she won the 1930 U.S. Women’s Amateur, one of six times she won the title. The club was host to the 1920 Metropolitan Open, won by former U.S. Open champion Walter Hagen.