Essex County Club near Boston (not to be confused with Essex County Country Club in New Jersey) has roots going back to 1893. It was the sixth member club of the USGA—the first after the founding five of St. Andrews, Newport, Shinnecock Hills, Chicago, and Brookline. Today Essex County is probably best known for its association with Donald Ross, who served as the club’s professional and architect in the early 1910s. For the past 23 years, Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design, with Bruce Hepner taking the lead, has worked with the club to remove trees and recapture the original character of the greens and bunkers. Director of Grounds Eric Richardson came on board in 2007 and has been an enthusiastic ally of Hepner’s ever since.

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Take Note…

The bathtub. The third green at Essex County Club has one defining quirk: a depression in its front-left quadrant, probably the result of removing a tree stump. A less adventurous architect would have filled it in or turned it into a green-side bunker. As the key feature of the green, the bathtub enlivens an otherwise understated hole.

The tee that shall not be named. There are two sets of tees on No. 12: the commonly used one up the hill to the right from the 11th green, and another one down and to the left. From the upper tees, the hole is a straightaway par 4 with a blind, downhill drive that can be hit with abandon; from the lower tees, it’s a sharp dogleg that requires a sub-200-yard tee shot. The latter hole is awkward and, by almost universal agreement, worse than the former. Well, at the first edition of The Backyahd—our event at Essex—Will, Cameron, and Garrett decided to use the lower tees for the afternoon alternate-shot session, just for the hell of it. Andy has never let them forget it. “You took one of the best holes on the course and made it one of the worst!” Such are the small pleasures of working at The Fried Egg.

Donald Ross’s yellow house is to the left of the second green, behind a tee occasionally used for the 15th hole. Hard to miss.

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