New Hampshire Mountain

Kingswood opens the loop in the heart of New Hampshire's Lakes Region, just minutes from Lake Winnipesaukee in the village of Wolfeboro. Ross built this course in 1915 on gently rolling terrain, threading fairways between five ponds and three creeks — water comes into play on thirteen of eighteen holes, demanding strategic thinking off every tee. The layout is a classic study in Ross's residential-era design: tight sequencing between greens and tees, sand bunkers guarding every putting surface, and those signature turtleback greens with false fronts that devour approach shots that come up short. Tom Clark revisited six holes in 1990, but the course's Ross DNA remains unmistakable. The club's reputation for immaculate conditioning — plush bentgrass fairways and velvet-smooth greens — has made it a destination for Ross enthusiasts from across New England.

This is where Donald Ross's New Hampshire story begins. A 9-hole course opened here in 1898 to serve the summer visitors flocking to Bethlehem's mountain hotels — at the time, a season pass cost five dollars. By 1909, Ross was engaged to redesign and expand it to 18 holes, making it his first course in the Granite State. The clubhouse, built in 1912 on the site of the former Bellevue Hotel, still overlooks his fairways today. Bethlehem CC is an early Ross at its most honest — shorter than his later resort designs but brimming with the slopes, angles, and elevation changes that would become his hallmarks. The fairways mostly play straightaway with pot bunkers scattered across partially hilly terrain, but the greens are where Ross shows his hand: small, contoured, and deceptively challenging. The course was town-owned from 1949 to 2020 and continues as a public course under new private ownership, with White Mountain views from nearly every hole.

Nicknamed "The Jewel of the White Mountains," Maplewood is the surviving gem of one of New England's most spectacular grand hotel developments. The property first operated in 1816 as a small cottage, eventually growing into the legendary Maplewood Hotel — so prestigious that Presidents Grant and Roosevelt stayed here. When a fire destroyed the hotel in the 1960s, only the 1889 Casino building survived, now serving as the Inn at Maplewood. The golf course, thankfully, endured. Ross expanded the original 9-hole layout (built 1904) into the current 18-hole championship design in 1914, threading fairways through tall pines and young maples with the White Mountains as a constant backdrop. The most distinctive feature is the par 6 on Hole 16 — over 650 yards of strategic challenge that you won't find on any other Ross course in New England. Ross's greens here are notoriously deceptive — several feature dramatic slopes that are nearly invisible on approach, and a few greens are among the smallest he ever built. The Lady of the Fairways Shrine, built in 1958, commemorates the generations of caddies from Boston's North Bennet Street School who served here from 1915 to 1963.

The crown jewel of the loop — and Golfweek's "Best Course You Can Play in New Hampshire" consistently since 2009. Commissioned in 1915 by Carolyn Foster Stickney, widow of the hotel's builder, the Mount Washington Course was Ross's most ambitious New Hampshire design: a 7,004-yard, par-72 championship layout set on the ancient riverbed of the Ammonoosuc, surrounded by the Presidential Mountain Range and the iconic grand hotel. In 2008, architect Brian Silva completed a meticulous restoration to Ross's original plans, rediscovering fairway bunkers perpendicular to the line of play — including the signature "Principal's Nose" bunker on the fourth hole. Silva also restored Ross's "meadowland design" by strategically removing trees to enhance the wide-open mountain vistas. The result is an archetypal Ross layout with wide fairways peppered with bunkers, swales, and two-tiered greens, all with mountain views from every hole. The hotel itself is a National Historic Landmark — the site of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference that established the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Built between 1900-1902 in Spanish Renaissance style, it remains one of the last surviving grand hotels of the White Mountains.