George Wright Golf Course

Favorite Hole

No. 6, par 4, 384 yards

This mid-length par 4 winds elegantly uphill to a green nestled into a saddle just below the highest point of George Wright’s property. Only a practiced eye will note that a tremendous amount of dynamite was needed to fit this fairway into the site. Just left of both the tee and the lone fairway bunker, exposed portions of the blasted ledges are still visible.

The “S” shape of the hole creates a strategic dilemma. From the right portion of the fairway—or the lower bulge of the “S”—the approach is blind, obstructed by a knoll and an imposing bunker that seems closer to the green than it actually is. The green opens up from the left side of the fairway, but lurking near that landing zone is a bunker cut into a natural rise.

This simple risk-reward design received an upgrade two years ago. The hole previously had two additional fairway bunkers, clumsily constructed and pointlessly located to the right of the fairway. Mungeam decided to eliminate these bunkers and improve the shaping of the strategically sound one on the left. The hole now has a clear, coherent identity. Sometimes—often, even—good golf architecture is about subtracting some elements to clarify and enhance others.

(When I posted about this hole on Instagram, Mark Mungeam chimed in with this insight: “I debated removing the left bunker, as it is not an original Ross feature, but I decided to keep it for the strategic and interest it adds.” The right bunkers were also non-original.)

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Overall Thoughts

Recently on our podcast and social media channels, various members of the Fried Egg Golf team have suggested that George Wright is one of the best municipal golf courses in America—arguably the best. These claims have attracted some disagreement. How could little old George Wright, with its bargain green fees and shabby-chic conditioning, possibly be considered the equal, much less the superior, of Bethpage Black and Chambers Bay? My favorite bit of Instagram pushback came from a Hyde Park native: “George Wright, like the George Wright in Boston? I grew up down the street and never dreamed I’d hear someone call it the best public course. I love it, but also, really?”

It appears, then, that I need to lay out the case for George Wright’s excellence—its excellence not just as an accessible muni, but as a golf course, period.

George Wright’s terrain is its best asset, but it is also the primary challenge that Donald Ross’s design had to overcome. The site’s mixture of ancient maples and oaks, enormous granite ledges, rugged rock outcroppings, thickly vegetated wetlands, and continual undulation is unique and exciting—as well as incredibly resistant to golf. Most architects would have struggled to produce a functional course on this land, much less a walkable and enjoyable one. The fact that George Wright turned out so well can be attributed to two main factors: earthworks and routing.

The earthworks at George Wright are among the grandest of the Golden Age of American golf architecture, deserving of mention alongside Seth Raynor’s achievements at The Lido and Yale. Significant portions of holes 3, 6, and 11 were blasted out of granite, manufactured from the rubble, and blended back into the surrounding landscape. The craftsmanship here by Walter Irving Johnson’s construction team is stylish and tidy. Although fabricated, the holes feel at home in their settings.

Equally impressive is George Wright’s drainage system, which includes monumental cuts that direct water away from playing surfaces and toward the steel pipes that vein the property. These earthworks are matched to the scale of their surroundings and mostly hidden from sight, so in spite of their size, they are not immediately noticeable. For instance, even regulars at George Wright might not be aware of the artificial gully that runs along the right side of the approach to the 10th green. While plainly visible from the air, this feature is concealed from players standing in the fairway.

The second key to the way George Wright manages its topography is Donald Ross’s masterful routing. The green-to-tee transitions are short and intuitive, and almost every uphill walk is followed by a downhill reprieve. So in spite of the land’s severity, the course is walkable for a fit and healthy golfer.

An even greater accomplishment of George Wright’s routing is how much variety it finds in the terrain. One drawback of hilly golf properties is that options for tee and green sites tend to be limited to high points, which may result in repetitive hole designs. (See: the back nine at the otherwise excellent Lancaster Country Club.) At George Wright, however, Ross’s routing achieves a balance of uphill, downhill, up-and-over, ridge-to-ridge, and level holes. Consider the opening stretch. The par-4 first hole plays mostly flat; the par-4 second features a level tee shot and an uphill approach; the par-5 third climbs uphill for its full length; the par-3 fourth plays ridge to ridge; the par-4 fifth travels up and over a ridge; and so on. No two consecutive holes bear the same relationship to the ground.

Furthermore, the landforms that the golfer must play and walk over—some natural, others manufactured, many not readily identifiable as one or the other—are distinctive and beautiful. I especially love the craggy undulations of fifth, seventh, ninth, 10th, 12th, and 15th fairways. With topography this eventful and charismatic, the course doesn’t need many artificial hazards to be challenging and memorable. This is probably why Ross’s original plan called for only 30-some bunkers.

Fortunately, appreciation for George Wright’s architecture seems to be on the rise. One reason for this shift is, of course, Mark Mungeam and Len Curtin’s two-decade-long restoration effort. Their work has stabilized playing conditions and allowed the course’s virtues—which were never eliminated, just shrouded—to shine through.

Yet George Wright is still underrated. This is partly because Mungeam and Curtin have not finished their work. In order to bring the course’s brilliance into full relief, they would need to remove a few hundred trees, opening up additional lines of play and uncovering more of the site’s magnificent hillocks, hollows, and rock outcroppings. But even if Mungeam and Curtin were to carry out this final project (no easy task in an urban municipality), I suspect that some people would still have trouble accepting George Wright as one of the country’s finest courses.

“George Wright?” they might say. “The George Wright in Boston?”

Yes, that one.

2 Eggs

(How We Rate Courses)

George Wright’s land is stunning. Its construction design is a feat of American ingenuity and enterprise, accomplished at the nadir of the Great Depression. Its routing is a testament to Donald Ross’s mastery. And its presentation, executed on a modest budget and in the midst of relentless business, is a model of municipal golf course maintenance. With substantial tree removal and maybe some tasteful, Ross-ian enhancements to the contouring of a few greens, a third Egg would be in play.

Course Tour

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Additional Content

A Pair of Golden Age Munis: George Wright and Swope Memorial (Fried Egg Golf Podcast)