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Tennis, Squash, Trapshooting & Baseball

For a brief period, tennis rivaled golf as Knollwood's headline sport. The club was famous for its grass courts. In 1914, there were five of them, and three dirt courts as well, located in the area now occupied by the swimming pool and extending across Knollwood Road Extension to the site of the present fourth green, sandwiched between the first and second holes on the old course.

The club hosted many local tennis tournaments back at the turn of the century. Tennis reached its apex at Knollwood in 1908 when the club hosted the American Davis Cup team consisting of Ray Little, Bill Larned, Beals Wright, Harold Hacket, Robert Wrenn, and his brother George Wrenn, Jr., in a"practice tournament"on September 12. The team was tuning up for a match the following week against the British team in Boston for the right to challenge the Australians in the Davis Cup finals.

But a club report dated 1919 noted that tennis had been a "dead issue"at Knollwood for a number of years. It was suggested that the club try to revive the sport by hiring a professional that year (Edgar Troth). A special tennis membership was established in 1921, but to no avail. The courts remained inactive in 1922.

Eventually, the courts were sacrificed for the redesigned golf course. A single court was built on the present site in 1928, financed by a gift from member Walter H.Sykes in memory of his father. That court fell into a state of disrepair during the Depression and war years, but was rebuilt in 1973. The club had a squash court for at least one decade (1915-1925).

For a number of years through the 1920's and into the early 1940's, Knollwood exchanged privileges with the Indian Harbor Yacht Club (and its affiliated Calves Beach Swimming Club) in Greenwich, Connecticut.

In 1914, the club boasted of "magnificent baseball grounds." There were games that matched the club's married members against the bachelors, five innings or less, depending on the condition of the players!

Lawn bowling started at Knollwood on Columbus Day, 1922, and the first set of balls a gift to the club from member W.T. Grant. Apparently the game received a lukewarm reception, and it wasn't until September of 1925, when the club received one of the finest sets in England, that the game's popularity at Knollwood soared. The club had a bowling green, adjacent to the clubhouse.

Although the club had stables and horses, it did not have a polo field. This did not stop the members from engaging in polo matches, though, and these were preceded by a parade of players and "ponies." The players dressed in genuine polo attire including caps, riding breeches, boots and spurs, and carried genuine polo mallets but their horses were wooden hobby horses. The games took place on the clubhouse lawn.

Winter sports were popular at the club, and included sleighing, tobogganing, bobsledding, and skiing. A popular ski run headed down the second fairway from the fourth tee, banking left across the first fairway and practice area, eventually finishing in front of the clubhouse.A number of the members enjoyed ice skating on the club's two ponds, the "upper"on the 18th fairway and the "lower"down below the clubhouse, beyond the parking lot. The latter was illuminated on Friday and Saturday nights.

Knolllwood ladies trapshooting circa 1914
Knollwood ladies occasionally competed against the male members in trapshooting events. Circa 1914.


Perhaps the most popular of all winter sports at Knollwood was trap shooting, which usually began after Halloween when the golf season was winding down. New traps and a shooting lodge were built for the 1913-1914 season, on club property near the old 14th tee, on the side of the hill in back of Goddard's house (which still stands today across Knollwood Road from the 16th tee, where the road bends). That same season, the women were invited to shoot and three of them, Kate Fox, Esther Waterman, and Marie Zimmerman, accepted the invitation. The latter became Knollwood's "Annie Oakley," and outshot five of nine men a few years later while winning a handicap competition known as the Holiday Cup.

When the redesigned golf course replaced the Old Course, the club's trap shooters moved their headquarters to the area behind the clubhouse once occupied by the old 18th hole. They shot from where the exit road bends near the 19th green into the hillside below Knollwood Road, with the sole tennis court off to their right.

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