Don’t go long here - unless you’re running short on balls in which case you’ll find many that have run aground behind this green. The 6th was a beauty and unless you’re a long hitter your tee ball will likely end up kicked right off a crest into a fairway trough, leaving a blind second into a back to front green perched into a dune. Hitting my third onto middle of the green, by the time I’d made it up there, the wind - helped by the slope - had blown it off the false front like a rat deserting a sinking ship. The par 5 5th tacked uphill with a dramatic fairway that looked remarkably like something from Royal Hague. Beautifully framed holes now came hand over fist. From here on I sailed closer to the wind, and on this Par 3 caught between the devil & deep blue sea. It’s a good hole though but relatively plain sailing up to this point.Īt this point I turned the corner and arrived at a tee box overlooking Pleasant Bay, with the lovely short hole 4th to contemplate. I cannot agree with the previous reviewer saying this is a great strategic short 4, because if you can’t see the options off the tee then it’s hard to make or appreciate the decisions. The third was another blind tee shot as you tee off over another rise, with the right tack being to shoot across the bows of the inside fairway bunker on the left. Here in Chatham it worked much better in the routing. Crossing another road to get to the third tee, you may be reminded that this unusual design element was also employed by Herbert Fowler, less successfully, at Walton Heath. You’re unlikely to be dead in the water with this carry as it’s of no significant distance. The second involved crossing a road to a tee box down by the waterside and a hit up over the water and over a rise, slightly blind. It’s a great opener to get the heart rate up. So I set sail from the first tee, hoping for fair winds & following seas, facing a scenic downhill drive followed by an uphill long shot. If your soul is not shaken or stirred at this point, then you might be better off staying in the clubhouse with a Martini. Golfers with open umbrellas are likely to resemble little sailing ships all at sea. Aside from the absence of any sea views, this relative safe haven typifies what you can expect for the remainder of the course: Rising & falling fairways that resemble a rolling heaving ocean swell. Stepping out of my car I was taken aback by the enticing vista of holes 1 & 9. It was therefore with several ironies that my drive along the thin strip of Cape Cod - passing signs for the likes of Sandwich, Falmouth, Yarmouth, Harwich, & Barnstable with a b - occurred on Patriot Day. Visiting Eastward Ho! was something of a pilgrimage for this limey. But there is never a dull moment, and the ridgetop views of Little Pleasant Bay are breathtaking.” “Seeing a 6,400-yard course get proper recognition on a few Top 100 lists is a welcome sign that character is replacing difficulty as a metric… The roller-coaster fairways are not every golfer’s cup of tea – there are several places where your drive either crests a hill and rolls another thirty yards, or falls short and rolls back toward the tee. “Keith Foster’s brilliant restoration of Eastward Ho! cements its place as the most exciting course on the Cape, if not New England,” said Tom Doak in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. Some, however, regard the best on the scorecard to be the 395-yard par four 9th, which is played from the highest point on the property towards a landing area that leads along the spine of a ridge to the green.

The four par threes at 4, 7, 10 and 15 are exceptional short holes with the 140-yard 15th considered the signature hole on the course.

Herbert Fowler, the esteemed English golf course architect – best known for his work at Walton Heath and The Berkshire – was the man responsible for creating this classic layout in 1921 at the former Chatham Country Club on the eastern seaboard at Cape Cod.Ĭoincidentally, Fowler had reworked Old Tom Morris’s original course at Westward Ho! ( Royal North Devon) a few years earlier so it was somehow fitting that he should also be the man chosen (over Willie Park Jnr) to design Eastward Ho! on the other side of the Atlantic.įowler’s understated approach is apparent here on the cliffs above Pleasant Bay with simple tee box areas, minimalist bunkering and straightforward greens (that are often seamless fairway extensions) laid out on a rolling landscape.

Eastward ho