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DAN SMITH

DAN SMITH
Longtime member of the Yale Golf Course
Interviewed on October 19, 2004

Interview (48 mins)

Dan Smith learned to play golf as a caddy in 1930’s at Brooklawn. Typically, he would earn 75 cents for 18 holes. He caddied for Julius Boros and watched John D. Rockefeller play and give 5-cent tips. Smith went to Yale on a Beardsley Estate Scholarship from 1937 to 1941. He played the course 3-4 times per year, when there was “very little play of the course.” His first year of Alumni membership in the 1960’s cost him $75.

The most notable changes in the course for Dan are the improvements in “general conditioning.” He also noted the removal of the bunker just over the creek on the left of #2, the 6th green’s change from a punchbowl to a crowned green, the 12th hole’s front bunker, the removal of the rock cliff across the pond in front of the #17 tee, and the removal of the bunker at the top of the second hill on #18.

He noted that the hill going up to the seventh green is called “Horse Hill” because a dead horse was buried there during construction.