Source: VT Golf Magazine | Issue: Summer 1997 | Author: Arthur Ristau
Synopsis: This article is about the Country Club of Barre and the arguably “Hidden Gem” of the sixteenth tee.
It is arguably Vermont’s most gorgeous golf hole. Stretching northerly from the course’s highest promontory Barre’s fourteenth presents a voluptuous Vermont terrain of rolling hills, forests and farms. It is a perspective unique to golf in the Green Mountains. Arrayed from the new platform tee, this 431-yard signature test first demands a lingering look at the dramatic and diverse Winooski Valley backdrop. In the foreground the fairway undulates into a valley of its own, and demands a pair of long, arrow straight shots for the average golfer who aspires to a par four.
The mesmerizing panorama of the fourteenth is rivaled only by the view from the new sixteenth tee. Here the golfer is invited t survey dramatic mountains to the west and south including Camel’s hump and Sugarbush’s famously steep F.I.S. trail, still well covered by snow in late May. Nearby, the view incorporates a tiered green mined by four bunkers. It is a 115-yard loft from the middle tee and, though rated the round’s easiest it can be nasty, particularly on a windy day.
Barre’s visual assets were first proclaimed in a prospectus issued in 1924 to obtain financing for what would ultimately become the Country Club of Barre. “It has been said that the grandeur of the mountain views here cannot be excelled in New England,” penned the underwriter.