Newport Golf Club

Newport Country Club, founded in 1893, is a historic private golf club in Newport, Rhode Island, that hosted both the first U.S. Amateur Championship and the first U.S. Open in 1895.

Theodore Havemeyer, a wealthy sportsman whose family owned the American Sugar Company, played the game of golf on a trip to Pau in the south of France in 1889 and returned to his summer home in Newport, RI excited about its future. In 1890 he and his friends rented some property on the old Castle Hill Farm and played golf on a primitive course. He convinced a few pals from the summer colony's social elite, men such as John Jacob Astor IV, Perry Belmont and Cornelius Vanderbilt II, - to purchase the 140-acre Rocky Farm property for $80,000 and establish the golf club in 1893. At the time of the club's founding, Newport was at the peak of its prestige as the favorite summer colony of America's wealthy elite. The city had thus established one of America's earliest golf clubs since the sport was played almost exclusively by the rich when it was first introduced to the United States. The primitive course that they played upon in 1890 was bought roughly 30 years later and is where the 2nd through 8th holes currently are on.

Anxious to host national competitions, Havemeyer invited the country's best amateurs to his new course for a championship in 1894. That December, Havemeyer held a meeting at New York City's Calumet Club with representatives from four other clubs: St. Andrew's Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY; Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton on Long Island, New York; The Country Club in Brookline, MA; and the Chicago Golf Club. These clubs agreed to form the Amateur Golf Association, the forefather of the United States Golf Association. In October 1895, Newport Country Club hosted both the first U.S. Amateur Championship and the first U.S. Open. In 1995, in celebration of the U.S. Amateur Championship centennial, the club hosted the 1995 U.S. Amateur Championship, which was won by Tiger Woods. To this day, the U.S. Amateur champion is awarded the Havemeyer Trophy. It was also the venue of the 2006 U.S. Women's Open, which was won by Annika Sörenstam. On April 25, 2017, the USGA announced Newport Country Club would be the site of the 41st US Senior Open in June of 2020.

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