Based in Stamford, Connecticut, Kevin Coutant is a longtime Merrill Lynch financial executive who leads the Coutant Wealth Management Group. An avid golfer, Kevin Coutant has had the chance to compete on a number of courses in his home state. When it comes to links in Connecticut, destinations consistently ranked highest include the Stanwich Club in Greenwich and Yale Golf Course in New Haven.
The latter course dates back to 1926 and the vision of Charles Blair MacDonald and Seth Raynor, who were given a 700-acre tract of swampy woodland by Mrs. Tompkins in honor of her late husband Ray. The course architects were also given $400,000 to work with, which, at the time, was the largest amount ever allocated for building a golf course.
One of the unique elements of the course is its cavernous bunkers, which require clambering down wooden steps, armed with a hot sand wedge and infinite patience. The par-four 10th, spanning 396 yards, is also notoriously challenging. This has to do with the placement of the tee at the bottom of a steep incline, which blocks off any view of the landing area. Even with a textbook 240-yard shot off the tee, the golfer must still face the challenge of being in swale and unable to view the flag. There is dense forest on either side of the fairway and the green is set 40 feet above a deep sand trap that will capture any short shots. In addition, the green is double tiered, which means that balls need to land precisely, or they will run off the hill. These factors have merited it ranking in Chris Millard’s book Golf’s 100 Toughest Holes.
The Yale Golf Course closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and there were concerns about its long-term viability, given its aging infrastructure. In 2021, Yale University commissioned a study for a complete reconstruction that would include overhauling the bunkers, expanding putting surfaces, and installing proper drainage and irrigation. If the plan is enacted, trees will also be trimmed and removed to bring back the “massive scale” of the original grounds.
