In professional sports, there is always a “Comeback Player of Year” award or a feel-good story about an athlete or team who succeeded despite the odds or obstacles that stood in their way.
The Boston sports landscape is no stranger to comebacks – from the 2004 Red Sox team that overcame a 3-0 series deficit in the American League Championship Series to win four games in a row and send the hated New York Yankees home to Boston Strong, the city’s battle cry after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
Golf also is notorious for producing these feel-good comeback stories – Ben Hogan’s championship run after his horrific car accident, that miraculous Sunday at the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club in Brookline and Tiger Woods’ miraculous returns at the 2019 and 2022 Masters, all come to mind.
Another comeback in the golf and Boston landscapes is catching everyone’s attention, and it is happening on the west side of Beantown. The International Golf Club – a 36-hole golf complex in Bolton – shut its doors in 2020 and was left for dead. The golf courses went unmanicured, outside events were canceled and workers no longer had a place to get a W-2.
Then in February 2021, Escalante Golf acquired The International and immediately went to work on preserving the club’s 120-year legacy and expanding on its vision to reimagine the club. Part of that vision included making the club fully private and building a membership that shares in the responsibility of shepherding a new era of golf at the club.
Fast-forward to today and the comeback is nearly complete. Escalante immediately went to work on updating the club’s infrastructure and its two championship layouts, the Oaks and the Pines. Tripp Davis and Associates revamped the Oaks Course by enhancing the tees and bunkers on the Tom Fazio design, as well as the property’s expansive practice areas. The project began in March 2021 and was completed nearly seven months later.
The recently underway construction of the new Pines Course promises to be one of the most anticipated projects in New England golf in recent memory. The famed course architecture tandem of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are laying a new golf course on top of the Geoffrey S. Cornish/Francis Ouimet original design and allowing the land to dictate the characteristics of 18 brand-new golf holes. Among various other modernizations, the Coore and Crenshaw team are carving out new corridors to complement their refinement of the existing, awe-inspiring tree-lined corridors to produce an end product that will be sure to bring excitement and greater challenges.
The club updates, along with the revamped Oaks Course and ongoing reconstruction of the Pines, have created quite a buzz in the Boston golf scene and sparked plenty of interest in private membership. Currently, more than 200 members call The International their golf home, with a projection of 300 by the end of this year. That is quite an amazing comeback in less than two years’ time.
“The Oaks redesign has been phenomenal with the elevation changes, new tee boxes and bunkers, which are second to none, and the scenic views,” says Evan McCullough, who joined The International this past September. “The Pines Course will keep its character; yet we are pumped about the renovation and what is to come from the Coore and Crenshaw team.
“The International is a golf club with 36 phenomenal holes, and that’s a huge selling point,” McCullough adds. “While the golf brings you in, it’s everything else that keeps you here – the food, the staff, the entire vibe – that has you coming back for more.”
For more information on joining The International Golf Club, visit TheInternational.com.
