One of the oldest golf courses in the country has been sold on Chappaquiddick Island.
In late February, three parcels encompassing the nine-hole Royal and Ancient Chappaquiddick Links — 36, 40, and 48 North Neck Road — were bought by Douglas and Catherine Halbert for $1.035 million from the Bennett family, who’ve taken care of the course for more than 10 years.
Douglas Halbert told The Times the plan is to maintain the course in “all her quixotic splendor,” and work with his business partner, Brad Woodger, to make improvements starting this golfing season.
“I bought the course from my neighbor, George Bennett, who’d benevolently sustained it for more than a decade,” Halbert said. “I’ll do my best to fill his shoes.”
The golf course was founded in 1887 by adventurer and outdoorsman Frank Marshall as a place for “a small group of golf enthusiasts to kick off their shoes — sometimes literally — and play 24 holes with no stuffy rules or stringent dress codes.”
Woodger, Marshall’s great-grandson, would keep the operation running, and the Bennetts would later purchase the course.
Halbert has been learning of the course’s “long, semidocumented history” from Woodger, who kept “vintage pictures and ephemera” to teach the new owner about the golf course. And while the course’s design may have changed over the years, Halbert said its spirit hasn’t, and golf is “only half of the equation.”
“It has always represented a sense of community, camaraderie, fun, and folly. It is at its best when it serves as a gathering place for friends and family, old and new,” Halbert, who’s golfed at the course before, said. “Don’t get me wrong — if you want to play a cutthroat, high-stakes round of nonregulation golf with people you might have to apologize to later, the RACL’s got you covered. But I’d like to think amends are more quickly made here than elsewhere. It has that sense of place.”
The golf course isn’t the first Chappaquiddick property the Halberts have purchased. They also purchased a property known as Big Camp, a fishing camp from the late 1800s adjoining the course on North Neck Road. The sale went through in 2016 for $2.875 million. The waterfront property was also what attracted the Halberts to Chappaquiddick.
“We’d been renting the same house in Edgartown for a long time, and Chappaquiddick seemed an exotic, distant land,” Douglas Halbert said. “We went exploring, found Big Camp in its ragged glory, and it was love at first sight. The place did all the work. The course has done the same.”
Currently seasonal residents, the Halberts plan to eventually increase the amount of time they spend on Chappaquiddick to around 11 months of the year.
