Hooper Golf Course

Detailed description of Hooper Golf Course

Hooper Golf Course is a Semi-Private, nine-hole golf course located in Walpole, New Hampshire.

The golf course at Hooper Golf Course first opened for play in 1927. Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek designed the course.

The course is located at the top of Prospect Hill in the quaint village of Walpole. The land on which it sits was once a working farm. Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek had an uncanny ability to use the land's natural contours and augment them with dips and rolls, bumps and hollows, numerous bunkers and greens that test one's short game.

In 1997, the New England Golf Guide rated Hooper Golf Club the number one 9-hole golf course in New England.

The golf course at Hooper Golf Club plays to a 9-hole par of 36 and a maximum 9-hole distance of 3,033 yards.

In the news:

On April 2, 2018, Frederick Dill of Walpole,  who owned the former Perkins Lumber Co. in Keene, officially purchased the land and the business from the Hooper Trust at Walpole Town Hall on July 2nd.

The land was part of a trust established by George L. Hooper and left for the town of Walpole.

For years, the New Hampshire’s Attorney General’s Charitable Trust Unit—which oversees trusts in the state—said the town had a duty to maximize the value of the land and wasn’t doing so by leasing it to the Hooper Golf Club. That position prevented selectmen from using trust money to maintain aging buildings on the property and led to the formation of the Hooper Study Committee in 2011.

The study committee eventually recommended selling the property at its assessed value of $1,188,000 to someone willing to maintain it as a golf course. The trustees then partnered with the Monadnock Conservancy of Keene to put the bulk of the property under a conservation easement. The Monadnock Conservancy purchased the easement with $450,500 raised by individual donations from Walpole residents.

While the conservation easement protected the course from development, the trustees still needed someone to purchase the property. The price tag was set at $737,500, reflecting the property's assessed value minus the conservation easement.

The trustees eventually lowered the price to $500,000. In addition to the golf course, the property includes the pro shop, a barn, a cottage, and a mansion that dates back to 1788.