GolfNewsRI

Earlier this week, I got the chance to play revamped Wannamoisett Country Club as part of Northeast Amateur Media Day. 

The Northeast Am returns to Wannamoisett June 22 through June 25. 

As GolfNewsRI has reported extensively, Wannamoisett was renovated over the offseason by Andrew Green, and it just recently opened for play about a month ago or so. 

VIDEO: Exclusive Look Inside the Renovation of Wannamoisett 

On a personal note, I found myself thinking about my uncle Jim a lot while playing. He was a member at Wannamoisett for a long time, and I would go play at least a few times a month, then eat lunch/dinner with he and his friends, the hole nine yards. 

My uncle is currently battling early stage dementia, and while he has some good days, it’s not really going to get better. He can’t drive, no longer works and, for all intents and purposes, can’t really play golf anymore. Though he has tried to go and hit balls. 

He still loves Wannamoisett and asks about it all the time. I definitely thought of him at different times throughout the round. 

Anyway, sorry, let’s tee off. 

The Course 

As you would expect, the tees and fairways were in pristine condition. 

Through the renovation, they added tees and added/moved bunkers in the fairways. 

The newly placed bunkers definitely came into play more often then I remember. 

Maybe I just stink. 

They did add back tees, but like Northeast Amateur Chairman Ben Tuthill said before we went out, “we actually added more forward tees than back tees.” 

One noticeable back tee they added was on the par 3 12th hole, where there is now one on the other side of the cart path, almost in the 18th fairway.

Will be fun to see the Ams play from back there and hit it over that giant bunker. 

The renovated green complexes is, of course, what everyone is waiting to hear about. 

The greens seemed a little patchy in spots, it wasn’t the silky smooth greens you would expect. 

But, again, the course just reopened a month ago, maybe less, so I chalk it up to that. 

The complexes themselves were impressive. 

As Andrew Green talked to GolfNewsRI about, they were going back to original Donald Ross designs of how he envisioned it way back when. 

Just about all the greens have been expanded, opening up about 2-3 (if not more) new pin locations on every hole. 

You can see where the greens were expanded, so that was actually kind of cool. 

One other thing that struck me was that there is still a lot of work being done.

A good portion of the cart paths are not in yet and so there is a lot more dirt and rocks than you would expect.

Course renovations are always a work in progress.

Overall

It was great to get an opportunity to play Wannamoisett. 

Now, let’s see how the top amateurs in the country play it in a few weeks.