1901 - SORRENTO'S FIRST GOLF LINKS & A.H. FENN

1901 - SORRENTO'S FIRST GOLF LINKS & A.H. FENN

Blink Bonnie Golf Links, which was established around 1916, is what immediately springs to mind when associating golf in Sorrento. When I posted my history of Blink Bonnie in the spring of 2021, (see: Part 1 & Part 2) I hinted that there had been earlier golf links built at the resort decades before today’s course opened.  At the end of Part 2 of the Blink Bonnie post, I speculated why golf may have first come to Sorrento and the influence that Parker W. Whittemore, an expert amateur golfer of the time, may have played.  Recently while doing some unrelated research, by chance I ran across some important new information that documents a bit more about the story of the original golf links in Sorrento.

Sorrento had been founded as a seaside resort in the middle 1880s by several Boston businessmen with ties to the Waukeag House in Sullivan Harbor and before that to silver mining businesses in Sullivan.  In addition to laying out over 1,000 lots of land for sale, the Frenchman’s Bay and Mt. Desert Land Company built a large hotel overlooking the harbor.  During the 1890s the resort became a bustling enterprise in the Summer months and played host to vacationers from cities along the East Coast looking for a healthy place to escape the heat and humidity.  The town's cottages and the hotel played host to a lively social scene that was equal to establishments in Bar Harbor.

Control of the new resort, along with the land company and the hotel, eventually passed into the hands of multimillionaire ale brewer Frank Jones of Portsmouth, NH.  Jones and his extended family spent Summers at Sorrento in cottages they built in town and entertained their guests at the resort’s restaurant and hotel.

Just before the turn of the 20th century, golf was in its earliest stages in America and was becoming a favorite pastime among the wealthy. Recognizing the sport’s growing popularity, many vacation spots in the Northeast built courses where guests could play.  A golf course in Bar Harbor at the Kebo Valley Club opened in 1891.  A few years later in 1894 rumors circulated that a similar course might soon be built across the bay in Sorrento.

Golf would not be a new sport for a resort owned by Frank Jones.  In 1895 Jones had a 9-hole golf course built at one of his other properties, the Wentworth Hotel in Portsmouth, NH.

Despite the stories circulating four years earlier about golf coming to Sorrento, a course was not built at that time.  In 1899 the Bar Harbor Record once again heralded that in addition to new roads and a swimming pool, that golf would soon be coming to Sorrento.  This report said that adding these “...imperative improvements...” would be the amenities needed to “…make Sorrento second to no place in the world.” 

It seems that by the next year the resort's ownership did begin to focus on making needed improvements.  At the opening of the Summer season of 1900, the NY Times reported that the Hotel Sorrento had undergone extensive renovations.  These upgrades included expanding the size of the rooms and adding both public and private baths.   A new brick boiler house was also built so the hotel could provide steam heat to keep the guest comfortable during chilly mornings and evenings.

Five years earlier Sorrento had separated from the town of Sullivan, and it appears that Frank Jones was preparing Sorrento to enter the new century as a modern resort.  Paying for improvements to the hotel and the grounds was not a concern for Jones.  He had recently sold the beer company that bore his name to British investors in 1899 for over $6 million.  Although not yet 70 years old, Jones suffered from several health issues, and apparently had no qualms with spending and enjoying his fortune. 

But it would take until the spring of 1901 after the renovations to the hotel were completed, that a golf course was eventually built on land in close proximity to the Hotel Sorrento. According to The Ellsworth American, a noted golf expert was invited to visit the town to design the new golf links.  Arthur H. Fenn, originally from Connecticut, was the golf professional at the Poland Spring Resort.  A remarkable athlete, Fenn had only learned to play golf ten years earlier when he was already in his mid-30s.  In 1895 and 1896 he won the prestigious Lenox Cup championship for amateur golfers with President William McKinley in attendance both times to present him with the prize.

Fenn had designed the 9-hole course golf course at the Poland Spring Resort in 1896.  Two years later in 1898, Fenn turned professional and would begin to spend Winters in Palm Beach Florida, and his Summers in Maine.  Fenn is credited as being the very first American-born professional golfer and course designer.

In addition to his design at Poland Spring, Fenn had drawn up plans for half a dozen 6-hole and 9-hole courses in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire before being invited to plan the Sorrento links.  His other work in New England included courses at the Portsmouth Naval Yard and Fall River, MA.  Fenn’s course at Sorrento would only include 6 holes, probably due to space limitations on open land near the hotel. Golf courses at the time were not as long as today’s modern courses and were often simply laid out in open fields.

A month after Fenn’s visit to Sorrento he traveled to Boston to compete in the 1901 US Open golf tournament held at the Myopia Hunt Club.  This was Fenn’s first entry in what was only the 7th US Open and where he would finish in 17^th place.

Harry Vardon teeing off in a match with R.M. Hawkins, Arthur Fenn, and Alex Findlay at the Fenn designed Fall River CC, Fall River, MA on October 20, 1900.  Vardon was a 6-time Open Champion, and in this year of his first US tour of 70 exhibition matches, he also won his only US Open at the Chicago Golf Club by 2 strokes over JH Taylor.

Fenn’s new golf links at Sorrento were ready for play a few months later when the season opened in July of 1901.  In the early history of golf in America, layouts were often rudimentary and not as well manicured as modern courses. A description of Fenn's design for the first course at Fall River, meant to be played with hickory shafted clubs and gutta-percha balls of the era, is contained in that golf club's course history:

A biography of Arthur Fenn's golfing and course architecture career is included in the 1993 edition of The Architects of Golf by Geoffrey Cornish and Ronald Whitten.  The authors include many details on Fenn's life and list the golf courses he is credited with building.  Interestingly, they also note that Fenn's daughter, Bessie Fenn, followed in her father's footsteps to become the first woman golf professional at the Palm Beach Country Club.  This list of know Arthur Fenn course designs does not include one in Sorrento, so until now, this layout seems to have been forgotten to time. Unfortunately, it also seems that no plan of Fenn's Sorrento golf links survives or any photographs of golfers playing on the course.

All that remains to document Fenn's involvement in planning the original golf course in Sorrento are period newspaper accounts.  An article in the Thursday morning Bangor Daily News in the first week of July 1901 included reports about the opening of the Summer season at Sorrento.  US Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller was the headliner but also includes details about the Hotel Sorrento’s new management, new chef, and orchestra members.

W. H Lawrence, the General Manager of the resort, provided the detail that Fenn had designed new 6-hole golf links.  He also told the reporter that William Donovan of Newport had been hired to teach the sport, and golf would be free for guests of the hotel and cost $10.00 for the season for cottagers.

A golf tournament was planned for later that Summer with a cup awarded by Eva Cochran similar to the prize she endowed for the Sorrento tennis tournament.

During mid-July of 1901, the first of those weekly golf tournaments were held at the new course.  There are no later reports, however, of who the winner may have been or if a cup was ever awarded.

A little more than a year later year, Sorrento’s fate was forever changed when Frank Jones died in October of 1902.  His estate would take several more years to settle due to numerous complications, the most troublesome being the lawsuit demanding monetary compensation filed by his former mistress.  In 1906 the Hotel Sorrento was sold by his estate to new investors from Boston. However, just days after the sale closed and weeks before the season was set to begin, a fire that originated in the new boiler burned the hotel to the ground.  With the demise of the large hotel by the harbor and the lively summer social scene it hosted, the original Arthur Fenn golf links evidently went dormant as well.

In my earlier pieces on Blink Bonnie (Part 1 & Part 2), I speculated that these first golf links were located somewhere closer to the harbor.  I have not located any photographs of Fenn's course, however, a picture from a Chafee photo album is identified in the book Islands of the Mid-Coast Maine as having been taken from the former golf links.  With what appears to be Prebble and Calf Islands in the distance, place this location on the hill above the back harbor.

 

Another clue to the location of the first links comes from Francis Lamont Robbins’ 1930s remembrances of Sorrento.  She describes the "battered gazebo" from the golf course “...on the hill above Willie Andrews’ house.”

An article from 1904 also notes that these golf links were "...originally quiet hay fields..." and very close to the harbor.

The last reference I have found to a golf course before Blink Bonnie was built, is in an article from the winter of 1916 describing a golf course among the many recreational facilities offered by Sorrento Estates Incorporated.  My theory is that Fenn's original 6-hole golf course passed to this new real estate firm along with other pieces of Jones property.  It is possible that the Sorrento Summer families, believing they might lose access to that course, took it upon themselves to organize the purchase of another larger piece of land in town where they would build a new and better golf course.  Blink Bonnie would open for play in either 1918 or 1919 and this is where members of the VIA and the public have been able to enjoy rounds of golf ever since.