Almost 50 years after given up for dead, a Tillinghast-designed golf course is given a second chance.

by Rich Skyzinski

FOUR MILLION tourists visit the Newport, R.I., area every year, and about two-thirds of them do so during the golf season. But southern Rhode Island is one of many areas in this country with too many golfers and not enough courses.

That was not the case 50 years ago. From the late 1920s until 1947, there was a course, not in Newport, but just across Narragansett Bay, in Jamestown, R.I., that went begging for players to the point where the disinterest became fatal.

Beaver Tail Golf Links went out of business in 1947. The company that was responsible for its operation just up and left. Told the staff it was no longer needed. Turned out the lights, locked the doors, collected the flagsticks, walked away, and simply never came back.

Half a century of disregard will transform even the best property into an unattractive creature, and that was the fate suffered by Beaver Tail.

The course once had a nice little stream running through the property. It crossed the first fairway and rambled over to the ninth, then took all sorts of crazy turns over by the seventh green and eighth tee. It eventually found its way to the southwestern corner of the property, where it emptied harmlessly into Narragansett Bay. But things changed over the years of neglect. Leaves and twigs and debris clogged the stream and dammed it; the dams forming the ponds have since been breached.

Now, where the first fairway once ran down toward the bay, brambles, briars, and scrub brush have overrun the grounds and grow without regard to other vegetation. Almost smack in the center of a pond that once sat in front of the eighth tee grew a maple tree, recently felled, with a trunk 21/2 feet in diameter and limbs that reached nearly 30 feet high.

Just as it's difficult to look at the Wicked Witch of the West and imagine Miss America, it takes creativity and foresight to view the property on Beavertail Road and envision a golf course. But that's the plan, and it'll happen sometime soon if Robert Munro Clarke has his way.

Clarke has a grand plan -- and a grand piece of property to go with it -- and if everything comes to fruition, the new Beaver Tail Golf Links will truly be something to behold.

The original Beaver Tail Golf Links was a magnificent site. Located on a bluff offering majestic views of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island Sound, and the Atlantic Ocean, it was built on the estate of Audley Clarke for one person -- the owner. (There's a relation between that Clarke and this Clarke, but don't ask how; it's very complicated.) Robert Clarke first contemplated opening a nine-hole course on the property, but after some research turned up proof the abandoned course was designed by famed golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast -- and even after he discovered that fact, Clarke, a non-golfer who admits he knows next to nothing about the game, had to understand who Tillinghast was and why his work is considered so significant -- his mind started to work.

He likens his find to a "violinist discovering an unidentified Stradivarius." And who would want to waste such an opportunity?

So his plans changed. Now they consist of restoring and modernizing nine holes of Tillinghast's original Beaver Tail, and supplementing those with nine new holes designed in a similar style. (Only nine holes of the original course are still available; the remaining land was sold in the 1970s and used to develop large residential estates.) If Steve Smyers, who's been hired to do the design work once the project reaches that stage, does his job, the style of the two nines will be so similar players won't be able to distinguish between the two.

"The Tillinghast nine would be restored and enhanced," says Smyers, "and the enhancement comes from designing for the modern-day golfer. It definitely needs length and we have to make the tees bigger because there are more people playing. Remember, when the course was built it was built for one person.

"The routing of the original golf course was brilliant in that you're always battling the wind from a different direction. If we can come close to duplicating that on the new holes, and keep the feel of the existing nine, I think we'll be fine."

Thoughts have jumped ahead to the clearing of land and the start of construction, which could happen late this spring, but getting to that point is more than a mere formality. The difficult permitting process still needs to be completed, and when precious waterfront property is involved as it is at Beaver Tail, nothing can be assumed.

"If we can get through these next few months," said Smyers, "we're downhill after that. You don't want to take anything for granted, it's a critical three months we're in, but everyone's also ready to go forward."

The old-timers in southern Rhode Island all agree the original Beaver Tail Golf Links was a fine golf course, which makes it even more difficult to believe how quickly it deteriorated and was left for dead. But the summer colony, largely from Philadelphia and St. Louis, dwindled. Effects from the Depression still lingered, and the only access to the island was by ferry.

Only a few years after the course was opened, Audley Clarke began a series of leasing agreements with various operating companies. They'd pay Clarke a nominal fee -- sometimes as little as $1 a year -- and have to assume responsibility of the course's upkeep. None of the operating companies was in good financial health -- not surprising; a 1942 ledger found among the old records shows a total income of not quite $1,000 for the year -- and time and time again the course changed hands.

After Audley Clarke died in the late 1940s, the skid accelerated. When the operating company in charge of the property pulled up stakes in 1947, no other interest ever developed until Robert Clarke, who owns some 18 acres adjacent to the property, did so in December 1973.

"This is just not another golf course," Clarke says firmly. "It's something much different than that. I didn't realize that when I first got involved, but now, after finding the historical significance, I know the project has the potential to be so much more."

Adds Smyers, "I'm not certain it would have the charm or the romance if it wasn't a Tillinghast site, but because of that we can restore a golf course that can be so dramatically different from some of the courses we're building today. It will have individuality and variety . . . we hope we're able to open the golfer up to a whole new golfing experience."

Aerial and topographic maps will enable Smyers to locate with specificity sites and designs of fairways, tees, greens, and hazards, but 50 years of complete disregard has changed the property in ways that can never be restored. "While digging some areas out," Smyers explains, "we found about 18 inches of silt. A lot of things have changed because of the vegetation that's grown there, and there's no doubt it's made a significant change to the design and playability of the golf course. . . . There also are other ecological changes."

The course Tillinghast designed was virtually treeless, presenting golfers with bay and ocean views at every hole. "I'd like to make it a near-treeless site because I think that would give it the playability the site needs," Smyers says. "The site needs to be exposed to the elements, and the more exposure the better."

Anyone with an appreciation of golf history, tradition, and architecture certainly would realize an incredibly rewarding experience from participation in such a project. So why does it mean so much to Clarke, who's never played golf and by his own count has been on exactly two golf courses in his lifetime?

"It's what drives every developer," he replies, "a pride of accomplishment. I think developers like to ride by their properties, whether it be a golf course, an apartment building, or the Empire State Building, and tell their grandchildren, 'Hey, I built that.'"