Source: VT Golf Magazine | Issue: Summer 2006 | Author: William Noble

Synopsis: This article discusses the Rutland Country Club and its history. It summarizes the accomplishments this country club has had as well as bringing the reader through a timeline of the country club.

 

    The year was 2001, and the Rutland Country Club course was 100 years old. On a warm weekend, members of the smi-private club had been invited to play the original nine holes, as designed in 1901. “We set up a commemorative tournament,” says Bob Carroll, who, along with Jim Tinney, wrote the club’s centennial history. “We traced the original nine holes from drawings, and we even printed a commemorative scorecard.”

    That scorecard presented a course of 2,919 yards, with a par of 36. And because this was a 1901 re-created, the scorecard has a column for “bogey” of 42, a highly satisfying score to golfers of a century ago who used wooden shafted clubs, gutta percha golf balls, and thin-bladed irons. 

    In truth, 2001 was not the centennial of Rutland Country Club, only the commemorative for its current location along Grove Street. Four years earlier, in 1897, interest in the game of golf was sweeping across the eastern United States. In Rutland, a group of local businessmen bought a small wooded parcel along Clement Road where they decided a three-hole layound and offered memberships. They realized they were onto something when about 300 people showed up for the opening.

Link to source: 90-91