Wampanoag CC

[Jon Spaulding]

Saw an old Burroughs thread on this; from 2002. I am going to Manchester/Tolland in September to see family and play a game there. From the thread, it appears to be highly regarded in the area.

Wondering if anyone has some photos they can put up, and offer any general sentiment on the course, 5 years later.

[mark chalfant]

A friend once drove me by to pick up a score card. the rolling terrain looked pretty neat. I think Tom Doak describes it as a very nice routing.  I believe Brad Klein may feel the same way. Im curious how it compares with the  27 holes at  Hartford Golf club

[Brad Klein]

Second-tier Ross in West Hartford, just NW of downtown Hartford. Maintained on a shoe-string budget. Greens are phenomenal. Some tinkering on a few holes and a few greens by an overly-zealous green chairman and the maintenance staff in the 1980s are something of a blemish but the course is one of those places that would benefit massively from an infusion of money and a thorough restoration -- bunkers need to be rebuilt badly, drainage lacks in the fairways, cart traffic has taken a terrible toll, and trees have overgrown too many areas. Could be a gem, but it's worth seeing for the green surfaces. See my Ross biography for a detailed chapter on Wampanoag.

27 holes of Hartford GC a mile away are a mix of everybody and their brothers and cousins, including Ross, Trent Jones, the Gordons and Geoffrey Cornish. Lush, way too treed, and not quite the character of Wampanoag.

[Jon Spaulding]

Are the original bunker locations still intact, or are skeletons abound? How is the current management doing?

[Brad Klein]

Most bunkers have migrated, all have been refomed over time, whether intentionally or not. Basically deep-dish pies without much character. You can see the remnant/shadows of many old fairway bunkers screaming to be put back. Management company has stabilized the place because the membership was incapable of doing so, but in the course of the 15-year contract (ending in a few years) not much has been put back by way of capital improvement.

Management company is responsible for maintenance; club is responsible for capital improvement. But they never realy settled on what was what, and if you let maintenance slide for that long and run carts all over the place (with revenue going to the management company) fixing the mess is a capital project. Wampanoag's longtime greenkeeper, Greg Stent, is a miracle worker and he focuses on the greens. This with a budget that is smaller now in simple dollars (forget about real dollars or relative purchasing power) than it was in the early 1990s.

The club tried a renovation project in the late 1980s, botched it entirely, tried to blame the architect, and could have easily fixed everything but instead cannabilized the remaining money.

[Jon Spaulding]

Interesting; looking forward to seeing the place....and reading the book on the plane ride . From the original thread it sounds like a good routing.

Your comment about the maintenance budget is nauseating, considering all the funds that get poured into (or onto) lesser works. I have played Peninsula a number of times before & after the redux, and while good was done there, I would guess that Ross designs in the East would have been better served with that mega-budget.

In my line of work, $1 from 1990 sure won't go anywhere in 2007, and I would presume it's the same in gc maintenance.

[Phil McDade]

Wasn't this the course whose alterations of Ross' original design led to the creation of the Donald Ross Society to preserve and protect his works?

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