New Haven Country Club

The history of the New Haven Country Club is nearly as old as the history of American golf itself. The club was founded, complete with clubhouse and rudimentary golf course, in the horse and buggy days of 1898, just a decade after the St. Andrew's Club in Yonkers, N.Y., became the country's first established golf club. The club is one of only about 20 in Connecticut to trace its history to the 19th century. In fact, it was one of just a dozen charter clubs to form the Connecticut League of Golf Clubs, the forerunner of the Connecticut State Golf Association, in 1899. The story of the club actually precedes the founding date by three years when a prominent law professor at Yale chanced to meet an immigrant cabinetmaker from Scotland. In the spring of 1895, Theodore S. Woolsey, the professor, met Robert D. Pryde, the Scotsman who was crafting a cherrywood chest in the home of Woolsey's friend, Justis Hotchkiss, just two blocks from the New Haven Green.