Newport Country Club

Newport Country Club is private, exclusive and also one of the original five founding member clubs of the United States Golf Association. The first president of the USGA, Theodore Havemeyer, along with a number of American businessmen including three members of the Vanderbilt family, helped to inaugurate Newport way back in 1894.

William Davis, the club’s first professional originally laid out a rudimentary 9-hole course at Newport Country Club, which was extended to 18 holes in 1915 by Donald Ross and then in 1924 it was redesigned by A.W. Tillinghast. Even the clubhouse mansion oozes style, originally designed for the Vanderbilts by pre-eminent New York architect Whitney Warren.

Host to the first U.S. Amateur Championship and the inaugural U.S. Open, this Rhode Island club is a tribute to golf’s beginnings in America and one of the country’s most important and historic venues. Wedged on a thin sliver of land between Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound, Newport Country Club has the look and feel of a seaside links and when the Atlantic winds funnel their way across the course you will need to hold on to your smoothest swing. Even on a calm day, accuracy is essential to find the often elevated and sloping putting surfaces.

Tiger Woods collected the 1995 U.S. Amateur here at Newport Country Club and his friend Annika Sorenstam followed his lead by eventually claiming the 2006 U.S. Women’s Open after a gruelling 18-hole playoff against Pat Hurst.