Eastward Ho!

Herbert Fowler, the esteemed English golf course architect – best known for his work at Walton Heath and The Berkshire – was the man responsible for creating this classic layout in 1921 at the former Chatham Country Club on the eastern seaboard at Cape Cod.

Coincidentally, Fowler had reworked Old Tom Morris’s original course at Westward Ho! (Royal North Devon) a few years earlier so it was somehow fitting that he should also be the man chosen (over Willie Park Jnr) to design Eastward Ho! on the other side of the Atlantic.

Fowler’s understated approach is apparent here on the cliffs above Pleasant Bay with simple tee box areas, minimalist bunkering and straightforward greens (that are often seamless fairway extensions) laid out on a rolling landscape.

The four par threes at 4, 7, 10 and 15 are exceptional short holes with the 140-yard 15th considered the signature hole on the course. Some, however, regard the best on the scorecard to be the 395-yard par four 9th, which is played from the highest point on the property towards a landing area that leads along the spine of a ridge to the green.

“Keith Foster’s brilliant restoration of Eastward Ho! cements its place as the most exciting course on the Cape, if not New England,” said Tom Doak in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. “Seeing a 6,400-yard course get proper recognition on a few Top 100 lists is a welcome sign that character is replacing difficulty as a metric… The roller-coaster fairways are not every golfer’s cup of tea – there are several places where your drive either crests a hill and rolls another thirty yards, or falls short and rolls back toward the tee. But there is never a dull moment, and the ridgetop views of Little Pleasant Bay are breathtaking.”