Fifty cents won’t buy you much these days. A banana. A Tootsie Roll. If you’re lucky, a game of pinball.
This week, though, it’ll also cover a round of golf.
That’s thanks to Stow Acres Country Club, a 27-hole public facility about 30 miles west of Boston, where weekday green fees on the 18-hole South Course are typically $50. To honor its 100th anniversary, Stow Acres is offering not only a throwback routing but also throwback fees.
Two quarters for nine holes.
The deal was available Tuesday and Wednesday and will be again on Thursday. But good luck getting a tee time.
Paul Melo, who works in the pro shop and also has served as the starter this week, said the tee sheet has been jammed. “Sold out both days and we are again Thursday,” he told GOLF in a phone interview Wednesday evening.
Some golfers are regulars but Melo said the promotion has drawn many first-time visitors from afar. “We’re losing money but we’re getting new eyeballs on the course,” he said.
David Carlson, the course’s general manager, dreamed up the discount as a means of paying homage to a course with a rich and important history.
The property, which opened in 1926 as a 9-holer called Mapledale Country Club, is one of the the country’s first Black-owned and -operated courses. The same year it debuted, Maplewood played host to the National Black Men’s Championship, and did so again in 1927 and ’28.
The original owner, Robert Hawkins, ran the course for three years before forfeiting it during the Great Depression. Through the decades, the course expanded to 36 holes and became Stow Acres before recently shuttering nine holes on the North Course as part of a sweeping renovation.
Carlson didn’t cap his tribute by offering only prices from yesteryear — he also studied old aerial imagery of the South Course and rewired the front nine so it resembled the original 1920s-era routing. That meant nixing the par-5s, adding three temporary greens and lopping roughly 4,000 yards off the routing, knocking it down to about 2,100 yards. The 1st hole, for example, which usually plays 365 yards from the tips, this week is playing 165 to a temporary green. The tee shot on the new — well, old — 2nd hole now plays to the 1st green. The 5th hole cuts across a swath of trees.
“It’s all very confusing,” Melo said.
But very fun, too. And an ideal way to celebrate the property’s history.
The 50-cent fee isn’t an arbitrary number; it came by way of an old road sign the course recovered years ago. The origin of the placard is unknown but it touts weekday green fees at the course for 50 cents.
Melo said the deal has been available from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., a period in which the course can push through somewhere between 15 and 20 groups. Let’s call it 17 groups with 4 golfers per group. That’s 68 golfers paying 50 cents/each, which equals about $34 in revenue for Stow Acres.
