Like many golf clubs founded in the 1890s, Waverley shape-shifted repeatedly in its early days. Its initial nine-hole golf course, dating back to 1896, occupied a small, quickly urbanizing parcel in Southeast Portland. Seeking elbow room, the club relocated to its current site on the Willamette River about five miles south of Portland’s downtown in 1898. Scottish professional Jack Moffat laid out the first and second nines at the new location in 1898 and 1899, respectively. Moffat’s layout was rudimentary and sized for the pre-Haskell ball era, so when Waverley added to its property in 1909, it hired architect Herbert Barker to redesign the course. Between 1912 and 1914, members of the green committee modified Barker’s routing to make way for a Dutch Colonial Revival clubhouse designed by the local firm of Whitehouse & Fouilhoux. Starting in 1916 and continuing into the 1930s, Chander Egan—U.S. Amateur champion, associate of Alister MacKenzie’s, and resident of Medford, Oregon—served as Waverley’s in-house architect. Egan’s renovations in 1916 and 1924 were especially impactful, and it was his version of the course that Gil Hanse restored in 2012. The club has hosted eight USGA championships, with a winners’ list highlighted by Lanny Wadkins, Juli Inkster, and Tiger Woods.
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Take Note…
The forgotten man. Chandler Egan usually gets exclusive credit for the original design of Waverley Country Club’s golf course, and indeed he was the architect of record when the club came of age in the 1910s and 20s. But Herbert Barker, who created much of today’s 18-hole routing in 1909, deserves more recognition for his work at Waverley than he typically receives. Barker became the golf professional at Garden City Golf Club on Long Island in 1907 and assisted Walter Travis, one of the greatest architects of the era, in renovating the course. With Travis’s encouragement, Barker went on to a minor solo career in design, and Waverley was his second commission. “While Egan gave the course its sinew and muscle,” Waverley’s 2021 club history reads, “it was Herbert Barker who was responsible for the skeletal frame.” I might go further: Waverley’s sunken, sod-wall bunkers and squared-off greens don’t look much like the features Egan built elsewhere in the 1920s, but they do resemble something that a protégé of Walter Travis might have produced. This is not to take anything away from Egan’s contributions to Waverley—just to suggest that he share the byline with Barker.
All aboard! Until 1958, an electric passenger rail line, which connected Portland to Oregon City, ran directly through Waverley’s property. Today, overhead power lines follow the railway’s former path, parallel to the Willamette and dividing holes 2-6 from the portion of the course bordering the river. Large sections of the railway’s earthworks are still visible, and in 1999 the club dug up and exposed about 15 yards of track near the seventh tee.
Work-life separation schmerk-life schmeparation. The smaller of the two buildings near the 10th green was the greenkeeper’s residence until the late 1990s, when a newly hired superintendent said, “Uh, thanks but no thanks.” Today it’s lodging for guests (and Garrett Morrison’s dream home).
