Vermont has been out of the USGA rotation for over a century. That changes in 2030.

The United States Golf Association announced this week that Ekwanok Country Club in Manchester, Vermont, will host the 2030 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, while The Lakewood Club in Point Clear, Alabama, gets the 2029 edition.

Michael Herzog, general manager of the Grand Hotel Golf Resort & Spa, called the selection an honor.

"On behalf of the membership, the Fairhope community and The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, we look forward to welcoming the world's best senior women's golfers to the great state of Alabama," he said.

Lakewood knows this event well, as the club in Alabama has already hosted the Senior Women’s Amateur multiple times, in 1974, 1986, and again in 2021.

Lara Tennant won the most recent edition there, on the Dogwood Course. It is a Perry Maxwell design and has been part of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail since the club opened in 1947.

A Championship Returns To Vermont After 116 Years

Ekwanok last hosted a USGA event in 1914. Ouimet had won the U.S. Open at Brookline the previous year as an amateur, one of the most famous upsets the sport has ever seen.

He came to Manchester the following summer and claimed the U.S. Amateur title, beating Jerome Travers 6 and 5 in the final. Travers had been gunning for his fifth Amateur crown, but Ouimet shut that down.

Then nothing. There wasn’t another USGA championship in Vermont for over a century. The 2030 Senior Women's Amateur breaks a 116-year drought, the longest stretch between national championships for any state in USGA history.

Reggie Parker, a member at Ekwanok and a two-time quarterfinalist in the Senior Women's Amateur, put it simply: "It is an honor to host another USGA Championship at Ekwanok, more than a century after Ekwanok hosted the 1914 U.S. Amateur Championship," he said.

Walter Travis and John Duncan Dunn built the course in 1899. It runs along the eastern side of the Green Mountains and still operates a full caddie program, the last in Vermont to do so.

The Senior Women's Amateur is open to women aged 50 and older with a Handicap Index no higher than 14.4. The winner earns entry into the next two U.S. Senior Women's Opens.

Lakewood continues its established hosting legacy while Ekwanok returns to the national stage for the first time in over a century.

116 years is a long time for any state to wait, but was Ekwanok worth it, or do you think another Vermont course deserved it more? Share your thoughts below.

Written by

Sneha Abraham

Edited by

Pulkit Prabhav