Dorset Field Club - Dorset, VT
Arvin Harrington/Fred Holley/Bill Kent 1886, Arvin Harrington 1896, Steve Durkee 1999
Doak Scale Score - 4
The oldest nine holes on the property are draped elegantly on the land as seen here with the parallel par three 2nd hole (looking back towards the tee) and par three 8th hole (green behind bunker) to a ridgetop green set perilously close to the quaint little town.
Dorset Field Club claims to be the oldest golf course continually played in the United States, dating back to 1886. I had hoped to find proof of that but it's largely based on one anecdotal account and then the original got lost during copying and the story gets a little complicated. What we do know for certain is that there had to be enough golf activity and membership for a new clubhouse to be built specifically for the purpose by 1896, so it's a very old golf course in any case.
The original nine holes were all what I'd hoped to find. Quaint, no little earthmoving, draped on the lovely rolling land in unusual and interesting ways that perhaps no one would dare design today and while some may quibble the greens may be too small or too tilted I found them delightful.
The problem is that the club at some point round the turn of 20th century decided they needed a real 18 hole golf course and built a new nine holes. I'm not sure why because the land seemed lovely without much effort but those holes required tons of earth-moving to shape into place and seemingly without adding much merit to the holes themselves. It would probably not matter so much if you could still play the original nine but the new holes are interspersed with each nine such that they are jarringly incongruous.
The club itself seems to have recognized that problem, thankfully, and are now embarking on a project to make the course more cohesive. I'm hopeful we'll be hearing some positive reports about that in the near future. As we played it, the old holes would be a 5 or even 6, but the new ones maybe 2, if not 0.
Looking at the Bausch collection for Dorset Field Club, I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount movement and terrain around the new holes. While 4 is not a hole I would want on a course, the stretch from 12-16 moves over some interesting ground.
Here is 12, the short par 3.
If the green within that punch bowl were a true punch bowl, I think this hole might be stronger still. But still, this is an interestingly framed shot.
Here's the green site in question:
The rear bunker seems superfluous and the front buyer gratuitous. You could lose both and better still pull the green back and left (from the tee) to fill in the punchbowl. None-the-less, not what I would call a 0.
13 has a nice "between the dune" feel, and 14 and 15 benefit from this, as well.
As for 2/8, well, no one builds par 3's that fly over the green of other par 3's any more, so that's cool in it's own way. And 8, with the diagonal line of play and near dogleg layout will always be interesting.
Since this isn't far from home I'll be angling to get over there, soon.