When Doug Halbert decided to buy the Royal and Ancient Chappaquiddick Links, the 138-year-old golf course on the small island, he approached it with a distinct mindset.
“I’ve come at this with sort of a Hippocratic approach, to do no harm,” he said this week. Mr. Halbert purchased the three parcels of land that encompass the course — 36, 40 and 48 North Neck Road — last month for just over $1 million. He takes over ownership of the course from George Bennett, who bought it with Brad Woodger and Kim Bennett in 2005.
The new owner doesn’t have any big changes in store for the nine-hole course.
“All I really hope for with the place is that it finds itself an inherent part of the community, and people find value in it,” he said. “I know there are many people who already do, and I hope to build on that.”
Mr. Halbert is no stranger to Chappaquiddick, having bought the Big Camp, a historic fishing camp that used to be a part of the course, in 2016. By proximity, he became familiar with the golf course and its history.
“It’s not lost on me that the course, at one point, was inherently part of the Big Camp,” he said. “In some ways, it feels like we’re repatriating it.”
Mr. Woodger, whose great-grandfather Frank Marshall built the course in 1887, will remain in close partnership with Mr. Halbert and will continue to oversee the course. He has managed the course for over 40 years and is hopeful for a more stable future.
“It’s been a long and winding road, not altogether unpleasant, but shepherding it to this place has been a lot,” Mr. Woodger said. “We have kind of a definitive future now, which is really exciting.”
For Mr. Halbert, Mr. Woodger is a key part of the course’s future.
“Having known Brad now for nearly 10 years, knowing what [the course] means to him, it was important to me to find a way to involve him in the course going forward,” Mr. Halbert said.
The remote and rustic nature of the course is part of the charm, and Mr. Halbert intends on keeping that.
Longtime manager Brad Woodger is staying on to help run the course.
— Ray Ewing
“When so many golf courses are famous for being more and more exclusive and more and more expensive, it felt right to try and preserve something that was, in many ways, the opposite,” he said.
To prepare for the upcoming season, little tweaks are being made, from upgrading some tee boxes to implementing new policies. But the feeling of the course being a place of gathering will remain the same, with hopes to organize more community events.
“You’ll look out on that course on any given day and see a family with a dog or someone pushing a stroller, and the golfers, half of them are barefoot, and it just is a sense of community and place unlike any other,” he said.
Community support is essential to keep the course running, Mr. Woodger added.
“We’re going to continue doing it this way, in the way that everybody loves it, if we get the support that we need,” he said.
