Metacomet

Named after a native Indian chief of the Wampanoag tribe, Metacomet was founded in 1901 by five Rhode Island businessmen who established a golf course in Rumford, close to where the Agawam Hunt Club is now situated.

Moving to Barrington Parkway in 1919, the golf club (as it was called then; the name change to Country Club didn’t happen until the 1950s) had its new course laid out by Leonard Byles but, within seven years, it was replaced by a new Donald Ross design.

Some of the more memorable holes here include the par five 2nd, where the fairway doglegs sharply to the right, and a couple of long, testing par threes at the 228-yard 10th and 242-yard 12th.

Today’s course measures less than 6,500 yards from the back markers, thanks mainly to the confines of a very constricted 105-acre site that offers little room for expansion.

Famed Ross restorer Ron Prichard has worked at Metacomet in recent years, refurbishing bunkers and reconstructing greens to the old master’s original specification.

Sadly in September 2020 Metacomet closed and the curtain was drawn across more than a century of golfing history. The financially ailing club had succumbed to the developers and In December 2020 its assets were unceremoniously sold off at an online auction.