Newport Country Club

Theodore Havemeyer, a wealthy sportsman whose family owned the American Sugar Company, played the game of golf on a trip to Pau in the south of France in 1889 and returned to his summer home in Newport excited about its future. In 1890, he and his friends rented some property on the old Castle Hill Farm and played golf on a primitive course. He convinced a few pals from the summer colony's social elite, men such as John Jacob Astor IV, Perry Belmont, and Cornelius Vanderbilt II - to purchase the 140-acre (0.57 km2) Rocky Farm property for $80,000 and establish the golf club in 1893.

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