Lake Sunapee Country Club - New Hampshire, U.S.A.

Lake Sunapee Country Club is located in New London, in the western part of the Granite State, southeast of Hanover, sitting at an elevation of 1,125 feet facing  Mt. Kearsarge. The course is a very fine but not very well-known example of the understated brilliance of architect Donald Ross. Ross was brought to the area in 1927 by E.J. Poor, a founder of the club and a prominent member of Salem Country Club outside Boston, another vintage Ross design. Ross selected the site for the course and Lake Sunapee opened in 1928 as a public course, but changed to a private club sixty years later. At more than 6,700 yards with a par of 70, the course is no pushover, with eight of the 12 par-fours playing over 400 yards. Henry J. Homan, Lake Sunapee's first professional, manager, and greenkeeper, acquired the course in 1945, and it has remained in the family ever since. Nowadays the course is owned by Homan's grandson Doug Homan. In 1999, Doug hired architect Ron Forse to undertake a gradual but extensive restoration of the original Ross features that had been lost over time. Gene Sarazen summered in the area for many years and was a regular player at Lake Sunapee.

Equinox Resort - Vermont, U.S.A.

The Gleneagles Golf Course at the Equinox Resort lies at the base of the Green Mountains in Manchester and has long been a New England beauty. The rugged layout with steeply canted greens and panoramic views across the valley and over the steeple of the First Congregational Church to 3,816-foot Mount Equinox was designed by Walter Travis in 1926. In the early 1990s, Rees Jones, who has distinguished himself with his sensitive restorations of a number of classic American courses in preparation for the u.s. Open, reworked and revitalized the course. Guinness, the Irish brewery that acquired the Equinox Resort in 1992, also refurbished and upgraded the historic hotel, which dates to 1769. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys were regulars at the hotel's Marsh Tavern. Several presidents have been guests at the Equinox, and Mary Todd Lincoln spent summers at the resort with her two sons both before and after the assassination of President Lincoln.