George Wright, one of America’s greatest municipal golf courses, was originally conceived as a private club. The investors hired Donald Ross in the late 1920s to design a course on the Grew family estate in the Boston suburb of Hyde Park, but the project fell apart when the U.S. stock market crashed in 1929. A few years later, the estate donated the property, 156 acres of old-growth forest, to the city of Boston. Mayor James Michael Curley decided to build the course according to Ross’s plans—a gutsy call in the midst of the Depression. The land was dominated by ledges, swamps, and sudden elevation changes. According to local lore, Donald Ross said that he’d need either a million dollars or an earthquake to complete his design. He wasn’t far off. The construction of George Wright Golf Course, overseen by Ross’s longtime associate Walter Irving Johnson, required a sizable grant from the Works Progress Administration, several years of labor from between 800 and 1,000 men, and 60,000 pounds of dynamite. The result, unveiled in 1938, was a striking and varied collection of 18 woodland golf holes.
The course lost its luster in the ensuing decades, but over the past 20 years, superintendent Len Curtin and architect Mark Mungeam have nursed George Wright back to health and recaptured many aspects of Ross’s vision.
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Take Note…
Jam-packed. In the post-pandemic years, George Wright has averaged around 50,000 rounds annually, in spite of a relatively short golf season in the Boston area. The course starts buzzing before sunrise and doesn’t empty out until after sunset. This creates complications for Len Curtin’s grounds crew, as documented in this installment of our “All Grass Is Local” series. Even as demand for golf at George Wright has grown, however, the course’s green fees have remained fairly stable. As of November 2024, the peak weekend rates for residents and non-residents are $55 and $62, respectively. That’s a terrific deal. (Historical sidebar: when George Wright opened in 1938, the daily fee was $2 and a year’s membership cost $35.)
Golden Age? More like Middle Ages. During its five-year construction period, George Wright’s workforce built not only a huge, glowering Romanesque clubhouse but also a nearly three-mile-long stone wall around the entire site. These features give the property the feel of a fortified medieval city. I can’t think of anything else like it in American golf.
A feat of infrastructure. Situated on rocky, heavy-clay soils, George Wright needed a first-rate drainage system to be functional as a golf course. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was in charge of construction design, and they did outstanding work. The primary drain lines are huge—between 24 and 36 inches in diameter, according to Curtin. The maintenance crew has replaced some clay feeder pipes over the past two decades, but the steel main lines remain intact. “The system has been in the ground since 1938,” Curtin told me, “and the vast majority of it is still working fine.”
The Wright-Devine double. Fifteen minutes northeast of George Wright sits William J. Devine Memorial Golf Course at Franklin Park, Boston’s first municipal course. I’d recommend playing both. William J. Devine’s roots go back to 1890, when George Wright, a former star shortstop for the Boston Red Sox and the eventual namesake of Boston’s second municipal course, started hitting golf balls around Franklin Park. Willie Campbell established a formal nine-hole layout six years later, and Donald Ross redesigned the course and expanded it to 18 holes in 1922. Like George Wright, William J. Devine has employed Mark Mungeam since 2003 to direct course improvements.
