Newport National Golf Club

Overview: Newport National Golf Club’s Orchard Course is a modern links-style layout on a former 200-acre landscape nursery in Middletown. Arthur Hills and Drew Rogers used the rolling ground, old nursery plantings, rock walls and long views toward Sakonnet Passage, the Atlantic Ocean and Narragansett Bay to create a course that looks more established than its age. Wide fairways give the layout a generous first impression, while fescue, mounding, wind and firm running ground add definition. The scale of the property allows individual holes to have their own atmosphere without losing the sense of a coherent coastal route.

History: The project took years to assemble because the golf property was built from many nursery parcels and required decisions about ownership, investment, permitting, drainage and water. Hills and Rogers refined the routing as the land came together, using small out-parcels and existing landscape materials rather than forcing a uniform plan onto the site. The Orchard Course opened in 2002. Its links appearance was an evolution of the property and the design process, not an attempt to reproduce a historic course in every detail.

Did You Know? Newport National has two consecutive par threes that play in opposite directions. The third sits on a plateau among mature Japanese pieris, while the fourth turns the other way with a green backed by mounds and fescue. The unusual pairing helped free the rest of the routing to fit together around a small parcel. The course has also hosted the Rhode Island Open and an Adams Cup intercollegiate championship.