Nashua Country Club

Overview: Nashua Country Club is an early Wayne Stiles design in southern New Hampshire, with tree-lined fairways, ponds and creeks creating a classic parkland framework. The course’s 18-hole routing is strategic without being severe: the natural water features influence club selection, while the greens and narrow corridors reward accuracy. Its mature setting can make the course appear older than its date, but the design remains a clear expression of Stiles’s early ability to work with natural ground and create variety within a compact country-club property.

History: The course opened in 1916 as Wayne Stiles’s first golf-course design, after Nashua Country Club was established around its original group of founders. The initial routing was later expanded and refined, with Stiles and John Van Kleek associated with additional work and a back nine reported as opening in 1925. The club has retained the course as a central part of its identity for more than a century, and current club material still describes it as an historic 18-hole Wayne Stiles course. Its longevity is a testament to a design that could evolve without losing its basic character.

Did You Know? Nashua was Stiles’s first golf-course commission, making it an important early marker in the career of an architect whose work later spread across New England. The course’s 1916 opening was celebrated with 240 founding players, and its original influence can still be read in the relationship between the fairways, water features and fast, carefully positioned greens.