Massachusetts golf course celebrates 100 years with 50-cent rounds, honoring Black pioneer

Golfers at a Massachusetts course are paying just 50 cents for a round of golf this week, but the throwback prices are part of a celebration honoring tradition and a little-known piece of Black history.

Stow Acres Country Club is celebrating its 100th anniversary by offering nine-hole rounds for just 50 cents Oct. 27-29. The price is inspired by an old sign discovered on the property.

"We have a sign that was recovered off the property many years ago. We're not sure what year the sign is from, but it says 75 cents on weekends and it's 50 cents on weekdays. So that's where we came up with the idea of the price," said Stow Acres General Manager David Carlson.

While the 50-cent rounds are drawing golfers to Stow, Carlson hopes the history they learn will leave a more lasting impression.

"In our posts, we've made sure we advertise the history is the reason we're doing this," Carlson said.

In 1926, Massachusetts businessman Robert Hawkins purchased what was then farmland in Stow and transformed it into Mapledale Country Club.

At a time when segregation prevented many Black Americans from playing at golf courses, Hawkins created a place where Black golfers could compete.

"That very season, they hosted the first National Black Championship. And they ended up hosting it two more times in 1927 and 1928," Carlson said.

Hawkins owned and operated the course for three years before eventually losing the property during the Great Depression.

Over the decades, Mapledale expanded and eventually became Stow Acres Country Club, but much of its history faded from public awareness.

"I've been here for 30 years and the first 10 years I was here, I'm not sure anybody even knew the history, so it's kind of recovering what had been lost," Carlson said.

In preparation for the centennial, a committee called Rediscover Mapledale was formed to help preserve and celebrate the course's history. The group raised money for historical signs installed throughout the property to educate golfers about its past.

For the first time in decades, golfers are playing a recreation of Mapledale's original nine-hole layout.

"This is probably the first time in 80 years that anyone's played this routing," Carlson said, pointing to an aerial picture of the old layout.

The original course measures about 2,100 yards, significantly shorter than the roughly 3,100-yard front nine of the modern Stow Acres South Course.

To recreate the historic layout, the club established three temporary greens in areas that are normally fairways.

Carlson said golfers today are also benefiting from significantly better playing conditions than those Hawkins and other golfers experienced a century ago.

"He wasn't renting a Caterpillar truck and moving dirt to mound greens and such back that first summer," Carlson said, explaining that golfers likely played on much rougher terrain.

The celebration has attracted golfers interested in both the bargain and the history.

"Fifty-cent golf, that's why I got a couple of friends. I said, '50 cents, you got to play,'" said Walter Johnson of Framingham.

Johnson said he previously participated in golf tournaments at Stow Acres organized by a Black church in Framingham to raise money for scholarships. It was through those tournaments that he first learned about the property's history.

"It's just really great history to know and it's fun to be here at a place that was that historical," said Johnson.

For Johnson and others, the anniversary is an opportunity to recognize a largely overlooked chapter of Massachusetts golf history.