Norwood Hills (West)

The golf facility at Norwood Hills Country Club is an early Wayne Stiles design from 1921, built when the architect had only a few New England golf courses to his name. It’s something of a mystery as to how he was appointed in the first place but stranger still is the fact that, despite setting out an outstanding layout for North Hills Country Club (as the club was originally named), Stiles never received any further contracts within the local area.

In the book The Life and Work of Wayne Stiles by Bob Labbance and Kevin Mendik, the authors have this to say about the course:

“Everything at Norwood is on a grand scale, from the enormous clubhouse to the stunning natural canvas that Stiles painted 45 holes of golf upon. His design work included a championship course (the West), a shorter members layout (the East) and a ladies or beginners 9-hole loop (the South). In the intervening years the nine-hole loop has been eliminated.

“As many as 250 workers built the courses under the direction of construction superintendent Sam Lyle (who) had previously built Hudson River in New York, 36 holes at the Dixie location for Royal Montreal in Canada and the San Francisco Golf Club – so clearly he knew his craft. But his wanderings came to an end at Norwood, where he remained the head greenkeeper for the first 22 years of the club’s existence.

“Although a great deal of the construction work was still done by hand using the labor of 55 teams of horses driven by local farmers, by the early 1920 mechanization was taking over course construction. Eight 5-ton trucks brought materials to the site, including 150 truckloads of manure, 50 loads of sand, 15 loads of humus, 45 loads of cinders, as well as fertilizer, lime and grass seed. Five tractors did the large scale earth moving before the teams of horses performed the detail work.

“Norwood Hills is the only Stiles design to host one of golf’s major championships. The 30th PGA Championship was played at Norwood May 19-25 1948, when the premier event was still contested as match play. Players used the East Course for practice, with matches conducted on the West course. Champion Ben Hogan barely survived the early rounds (before he) had an easy time of Mike Turnsea in the final, winning 7&6. Had the tournament been conducted at stroke play Hogan would have been 35 under par over the 213 holes he played.”