A new 9-hole course on an age-old footprint, with functions revived from the Golden Age?
Entry with links to an avid golfer in Rhode Island, and you are inclined to activate memories of what used to be.
Founded in the early 1900s as a Metacomet Golf Club and moved to the current East Providence, RI, address in 1919, the course started his life with muddy DNA. Depending on telling, it was designed by the main professional of the club, Leonard Byles or double open championship winner Willie Park Jr. Or maybe a combination of both.
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What nobody disputes is that Donald Ross carried out a redesign a few years later, adjusted the routing and – the most important – built new greens and bunkers, which became a characteristic of the course.
An intimate layout of 6,500 meters, Metacomet protected itself with narrow play corridors, but his crumpled well surfaces and the dangers and buzzing edges that surround them the most important defense. If you could make it right there, you could make it everywhere.
Metacomet (the name was later changed to Metacomet Country Club) operated as a private club, and in a region of the country rich in Ross designs, it achieved the best, not as nationally known as, say, Wanamoisett, but locally loved and rightly considered a premium test.
No wonder the decline was a big problem.
Call that part of the story after a golfer of Rhode Island, and you could activate memories of the “Faxon 5.” That became Local Steno for a ownership group with Hero Brad Faxon, an eight -time tour winner who sharpened his famous short match on the Greens of Metacomet.
In 2019, with Metacomet in financial need, Faxon and four others took over the club. The story seemed ready for a happy ending, with a local golf celebrity in a savior role. Instead, it turned into a confused legal drama, with the membership of Metacomet choosing the group of Faxon for fraud. That suit was arranged in 2024.
On the way, in 2020, Metacomet was closed and was then sold again, this time to a development company based in Providence, which approached the building with a hybrid plan: the rear nine of the course would be reserved for real estate, and the front Nine would be revived under the leadership of the local architect Robert Mcneil and his Team.
Courtesy met left
In their restoration work, McNeil and Co. Seven original holes back on their original footprint, full of their Ross-IC functions and strategic requirements, and built two new holes to fit with the character of the rest. The result, which will be opened last summer, is a publicly accessible 9-hole layout full of attraction and reinforced by contemporary branding: with the left is the name.
For some golfers in the area there will never be another course as a metacomet. There can be none. And that’s the point. With the left is a partial resurrection, no replacement, a compelling newborn course with a complicated past. Play it with that mentality, and you will certainly be grateful for what was salvaged instead of hung what was lost.
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