[Sven Nilsen]

During the summer of 1926 the 9 hole Lake St. Catherine CC opened in Poultney, VT.  As reported in the Rutland Daily Herald below, the course was laid out by an "expert who had charge of the design of the new course at Manchester."  The dates given for the preliminary work on the course in the Fall of 1925 line up with the timing for when Walter Travis would have been working on his design for the Equinox course at Manchester.

Rutland Daily Herald June 19, 1926 -

[MCirba]

Wow, this is an exciting, intriguing find, Sven.

I played there back in the late 1980s.   I'll join the hunt.

[Ken Fry]

I too played at Lake St Catherine in the early 80's.  The course didn't strike me as much at the time but I do recall the 3rd hole.  An uphill par 3 the locals called "heart attack hill."  The base of that hill to the green is still one of the toughest walks I can recall in my golfing life!
Ken

[MCirba]

Sven/All,

I came across this October 22, 1925 article from the "Rutland Daily Herald" that speaks of "golf professionals and experts".   At this time Travis had become a golf professional architect based on USGA rulings in the late teens, but he was such a popular, well-known figure by then one has to legitimately wonder why they wouldn't have just stated that.

[Sven Nilsen]

Mike:

It is possible that the "expert who had charge of the design of the new course at Manchester" discussed in the 1926 article wasn't brought in until after the 1925 article was published.

I do agree that it would have been odd for the paper not to mention Travis by name if he was involved.  The only other experts I know of who may have been involved with Equinox were A. J. Christie and John Fox, but I'm pretty sure Fox was hired after the course was built.

Sven

[MCirba]

Thanks, Sven.   I agree that the allusion seems to be to Walter Travis as the designer of Equinox.   

Sometimes the writers back then were maddeningly imprecise, which is counter intuitive to how much more golf course related coverage existed then than today.

[Craig Sweet]

Played this track many times when I was a kid. We had a cabin on the lake, so in summer I played it almost daily when we were there. Nothing fancy about it as far as I recall.

[MCirba]

Interestingly, the back nine of Lake St. Catherine was designed by former Vermont Governor Ray Keyser.   As I recall, the two nines are very obviously different.

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