# The Best Golf Courses in Westerly

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-westerly-ri/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Rhode Island


A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Watch Hill sits above the water like it owns the view, which, in summer, it more or less does. Big houses, a carousel down by the beach, boats in the harbor, and tucked into that old summer colony, a golf course with Donald Ross and Tom Bendelow in its lineage. That is Misquamicut. Down the road, Winnapaug gives the public a Ross of their own. The contrast tells you most of what you need to know about golf in Westerly.

This is a short bench and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Three courses make the conversation, two of them private and hard to reach, one public and right there for anyone with a tee time. Westerly golf is coastal, old money at the top, democratic at the bottom, with very little in between. We score the golf itself first, then the quality of the day, then what it takes to actually get on. By that measure the order at the top is not close, and the fight is for second.

## 1The Misquamicut Club (Watch Hill)

Misquamicut gets the top spot on pedigree and place together. The hook in its record is simple: Ross and Bendelow in Watch Hill's summer colony. Two of the most important names in early American golf touched this ground, and the ground itself, rolling toward the Atlantic above Watch Hill, does the rest. Seaside golf in New England is often golf near the sea rather than golf shaped by it. Misquamicut belongs to the first, better category in spirit, a classic members' course where the wind is part of the architecture whether the architects planned every gust or not.

The honest concession is access, and it is a big one. This is a private summer colony club. If you do not know a member, you will likely never play it, and a ranking that ignores that fact would be dishonest about the day it is actually offering you. Estimates for clubs of this type sit at a level that keeps the gate firmly shut, and we treat any number you hear as an estimate, not a published fee.

None of that changes the golf argument. A Ross and Bendelow course in this setting, kept for a membership that summers in one of the East Coast's oldest resort enclaves, is the best golf in Westerly by a distance. The ranking rewards the course first. Misquamicut wins it.

## 2Shelter Harbor Golf Club (Charlestown)

Shelter Harbor, just over the line in Charlestown, takes second as the modern private counterpoint. Where Misquamicut is the colony classic, Shelter Harbor is the quieter inland test, built for golfers who want their challenge without an audience of beach umbrellas. The setting turns away from the ocean and into South County's woods and open ground, and the round feels removed from the summer traffic in a way Watch Hill never quite does in August.

The concession here is that it lacks the other two courses' clear public story. We have no Ross lineage to point to, no public tee sheet to praise. What it has is reputation in broad strokes: a serious private course that local golfers speak about with respect, and a setting that holds its own once you accept it is not trying to be seaside golf.

It edges Winnapaug on the quality of the test. It loses to Winnapaug, clearly, on the only question a visiting golfer can actually act on, which is whether you can get a game.

## 3Winnapaug Country Club

Winnapaug is the public Ross down the road, and that phrase alone earns it real affection. A Donald Ross course that anyone can book is a rare thing in New England, where most of his work sits behind private gates, including the one at the top of this list. Winnapaug gives the Westerly golfer, and the visitor priced out of Watch Hill entirely, a genuine piece of classic architecture without the introduction letter.

The concession is conditioning and polish. Public Ross courses carry heavy play and modest budgets, and the gap between the design on paper and the course on a busy Saturday is the gap you have to accept here. Play it as a design study and a good walk near the coast and it rewards you. Play it expecting Misquamicut with a public tee time and you have misunderstood both courses.

That trade is still worth making, and for most readers Winnapaug is the only course on this list they will ever play. It finishes last on quality and first on access, and in Westerly that split personality is simply how the town's golf works. The public golfer gets Ross too, just with the rough edges left on.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.