Bald Peak Colony

Laid out above Moultonborough Bay in Lake Winnipesaukee, the course extends to a very modest 6,264 yards from the back tees and it occupies a heavily wooded site with lightly bunkered fairways – there are only twenty sand traps for the eighteen holes – running largely parallel to the lake shoreline.

Configured somewhat unconventionally with five par fives, five par threes and only one par four longer than 400 yards (“Westward Ho,” the 433-yard 10th hole), the course remains basically unaltered from the layout that was fashioned almost a hundred years ago within an enormous 850-acre property.

The 147-yard 5th (“Punch Bowl”) is a feature hole, dropping down towards the lake and a sand-protected, two-tiered green and the front nine routing returns uphill to the clubhouse at the 500-yard 9th (“Some Hole”), where even big hitters require three shots to reach the green.

On the back nine, the 138-yard 12th (“Battleship”) is another memorable par three, backdropped by the Ossipee Mountain range. The hole plays slightly downhill to a putting surface that not only tilts from back to front, it also falls away steeply in every direction.