Dripping With History, Brae Burn Adds New Chapter to Championship Legacy

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Judy Bell needed a trophy. Every USGA championship needs one, after all. In this case, it was for the inaugural U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, to be played in October 1987 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla.

Fortunately, Bell, later the USGA’s first female president but then serving on the USGA Executive Committee, knew exactly where to go: Natick, Mass., and the home of Henri and Mildred Gardinor Prunaret. Bell was acquainted with the couple through amateur golf circles and considered them to be her second parents. The Prunarets were staunch supporters of women’s golf and, fortunately, had accumulated a rather large collection of silver bowls from successfully showing their beagles in competitions over the years. They enthusiastically accepted Bell’s request.

“It was a question of which silver piece they had in their home,” recalled Bell of her trophy search. “We settled on a sterling silver bowl, a favorite of Mildred’s, that she had received at a dog competition.” Prunaret’s father, a veteran of the silver business, removed the existing inscription and etched his daughter’s full married name onto the bowl. When Bell presented it the following year to champion Cindy Scholefield, she told the crowd, “This is forevermore to be known as the ‘Prunes’ bowl.”

That trophy is presented each year to the champion of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur. This year, the 37th edition is at Brae Burn Country Club in West Newton, Mass., where the Prunarets were longtime members.

An avid golfer, Prunaret won the Women’s Golf Association of Massachusetts Senior Championship in 1954 and 1955, and also served as president of the association. One of three Brae Burn members to have served on USGA committees, she chaired the USGA Women’s Committee from 1959-63 and was the non-playing captain of the victorious USA team in the 1960 Curtis Cup Match. She also helped establish the ongoing Women’s World Amateur Team Championship in 1964.

“The way we’re looking at this year’s championship at Brae Burn is that we are bringing the cup back home,” said Marian Dunshee, co-chair of the club’s Heritage Committee, “and we’re very excited about that.”

It’s a home overflowing with golf history. Harriot Curtis winning the 1906 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Brae Burn established the club’s championship bona fides. At least, it did according to a story in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, which stated, “Will the persons who have been long declaring that Boston has no club capable of conducting a national golf championship stand up and be counted? When the vanguard of New York delegations for this week’s women’s competition reached town and inspected the links and the clubhouse, the universal interrogation was ‘What’s the matter with Brae Burn?’ And the answer: ‘She’s all right.’”

Curtis and her sister Margaret, who won three U.S. Women’s Amateurs as well as the 1908 Massachusetts Women’s Amateur, went on to play a key role in the founding of the Curtis Cup Match, a biennial competition between the USA and Great Britain & Ireland that was contested at Brae Burn in 1958 and 1970. The Curtis sisters donated the silver bowl that is awarded to the winners, starting with the first match at the Wentworth Club in England in 1932.

A year after his historic win at the 1913 U.S. Open, played 7 miles away in Brookline at The Country Club, Francis Ouimet won the Massachusetts Amateur at Brae Burn. In fact, the club was reportedly in the running to host the 1913 U.S. Open but did not because Newton was a dry town at the time. That had changed by 1919, when Walter Hagen captured his second U.S. Open title in a playoff, edging Mike Brady, a native of nearby Brighton, by a single shot at Brae Burn.

In 1928, Bob Jones won the U.S. Amateur at Brae Burn. (A plaque on the 18th tee commemorates his victory, the fourth of his five.) The U.S. Women’s Amateur has also been staged twice, in 1975 when Beth Daniel won, and again in 1997 when Silvia Cavalleri of Italy claimed the title. That championship returns to Brae Burn in 2028, continuing its distinction with the Country Club of Buffalo as the only host sites of a U.S. Open, U.S. Women’s Amateur and Curtis Cup.

The club’s impact on the game also extends to equipment. Longtime member and 1933 club champion Edward Stimpson developed a green-speed measuring device in 1935 in response to concerns about the pace of the greens at that year’s U.S. Open venue, Oakmont Country Club. The tool was later named the Stimpmeter in his honor, and two of his original versions are on display in the clubhouse.

And there’s the course architect, Donald Ross, who revised his original 1912 design in preparation for the 1928 U.S. Amateur. His routing and greens remain largely intact, although two of the latter were tweaked by architect Tyler Rae last year. The Ross legacy extends to his brother Alex, the 1907 U.S. Open champion, who was Brae Burn’s first head professional. And while Ross famously lived in
Pinehurst, N.C., he is buried in Newton Cemetery, less than a mile east of Brae Burn.

Ross’ connections to the Boston area, where he first arrived after leaving Scotland in 1899, run deep. His first job in the U.S. was as head professional at Oakley Country Club in Watertown, and he later took the same role at Essex County Club in Manchester. He lived in Newton from 1917 to 1925.

“It’s a true Donald Ross design that has stood the test of time,” said Tracy Parsons, amateur championship director for the USGA, of the Brae Burn layout. “His philosophy was to incorporate the general landscape and fit the course to it. The players will see a traditional layout requiring a broad spectrum of shots, with trees framing fairways and rolling topography producing many uneven lies.”

The club’s name is credited to the wife of member George Frost. During a meeting prior to the club’s founding in May 1897, Mrs. Frost spoke up regarding a name. “You have meadows and you have a brook – but don’t call it Meadowbrook,” she said, according to the club’s centenary book. “Golf is a Scottish game. Call it Brae Burn (brae is Scottish for a steep bank bounding a river valley; a burn is a stream or river).”

The club is duly proud of its role in high-level golf for both women and men. “I think people look at Brae Burn and say, ‘Oh, Jones won an Amateur here in 1928, and the Haig (Walter Hagen) won a U.S. Open here in 1919,’” said Dave Power, co-general chair of this year’s U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur. “People kind of start with that, but when you turn the prism a little bit and look at women’s championship golf, we have quite a pedigree.”

Power believes that a national championship can ignite a new passion for the game. “One member of our host club committee, Kathryn Cousin, took up golf because her dad brought her to the 1997 U.S. Women’s Amateur here,” he said. “I think we can unleash a new wave of golf interest for young women. Two of the four golfers I raised at Brae Burn were females, and one of them, Patrice, was a 5-time junior club champion.”

Because he felt Brae Burn shouldn’t just live off its reputation, Power encouraged the club to reach out to the USGA a few years ago. “If we are to be considered one of the cathedrals of golf, as the USGA has referred to us, one of the historical facts of New England is that every generation needs to repair the steeple on the church,” he said. “It’s sort of a generational duty.”

Judy Bell is confident that Prunaret, who died in 1998, would be thrilled to see Brae Burn hosting the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur. “That’s what she stood for,” Bell said. “Mrs. Prunaret would go to the ends of the earth for amateur golf.”

Marian Dunshee agrees. “She’d be over the moon,” she said of Prunaret. “She had such passion for women’s golf. As her competitive years wound down, she was so involved with keeping the game out there. It’s easy for me to imagine her sitting in an Adirondack chair overlooking the 18th hole and watching the players come in.”

Tom Mackin is an Arizona-based freelance writer who frequently contributes to Golf Journal and USGA websites.