Depending on your definition of “country club,” Myopia may have been the first of its kind: four nearsighted brothers founded it in the 1870s, with tennis and boating as their initial priorities. Only later did they take up fox hunting, the activity that defines the club’s name and logo to this day. In the early 1880s, a faction of members split off to form the Country Club in Brookline. By 1894, Myopia had moved to its current location in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and the Country Club had added six holes of golf. Perhaps in the spirit of inter-suburban rivalry, Myopia established its own nine-hole course, later redesigned by Herbert Leeds, a former Harvard baseball player. From the late 1890s through the 1920s, Leeds directed the course’s architecture, expanding it to 18 holes and, according to legend, adding hazards wherever he saw wayward shots escape punishment. Until the flowering of American golf architecture in the 1910s and 20s, Myopia Hunt Club was considered, along with Garden City Golf Club on Long Island, one of the two finest (and hardest) courses in America. Since 2011, Gil Hanse has guided the club through tree removal and fairway expansions.
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Take Note…
The original monster. Myopia Hunt Club hosted four of the first 14 U.S. Opens. In the 1898 edition, when the course still consisted of nine holes, designer Herbert Leeds tied for seventh. On the newly expanded layout in 1901, not a single competitor broke 80. Scottish professional Willie Anderson, who posted a 72-hole score of 331, won by scoring 85 in a playoff. By 1905, the Haskell ball had made the course more manageable: Willie Anderson won again, this time with a score of 314. Myopia hosted its final U.S. Open in 1908, three years before John McDermott became the first American-born player to win the championship.
Gronkle. James Dodson’s essay “The Art of Gronkle,” which recounts a chilly, casual round at Myopia with author John Updike, is a charming read, in spite of the author’s shaky knowledge of the “Alps”-hole concept.
