Ken Uracius has purchased Cohasse Country Club in Southbridge from the club’s members, and he has big plans for the nine-hole Donald Ross golf course.
There’s no reason to doubt that he’ll succeed because he already has done an impressive job of restoring Hardwick Crossing CC in Gilbertville on the grounds of the former Dunroamin Golf Club, which had been closed for a few years.
Uracius said he plans to restore the 107-year-old Cohasse CC to its former glory days. Cohasse is nine holes over 3,061 yards and plays to a par 35.
“It’s a beautiful piece of property,” he said, “and I didn’t want to see it developed (for housing).”
Uracius, 72, of Brookfield, assumed Cohasse’s debt and has committed to pay whatever it takes to restore the club, even though he doesn’t expect it to turn a profit for the next few years. He figures he’ll end up spending about $3 million, the same he has spent at Hardwick Crossing.
“You’ve got to give back once in a while,” he said. “I’ve done very well working for the government.”
Uracius owns Stone & Lime Historic Restoration Services in North Brookfield, and he’s restored many government buildings across the country, most of them for the National Park Service. Now he’s restoring golf courses even though he’s not a golfer.
Uracius expects the renovations to begin in November after the golf season winds down and to finish in about three years. He also plans to restore the clubhouse and to eventually build a restaurant and deck on the second floor of the pro shop building.
Cohasse CC has been a private club since it opened in 1918, but will become semi-private this season to generate revenue with public play along with memberships. Uracius hopes new people will play Cohasse and decide to join. He said he expects Cohasse to return to a private club after the renovations have been completed.
Uracius said the club has about 140 members, but he hopes to boost that total to 250. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Cohasse had about 240 members. Uracius has committed to not raising membership dues until after the club becomes private again.
“There’s going to be a public element at Cohasse every day now,” new head pro Greg Farland said, “and frankly, it needs it. It wasn’t sustainable financially. I think the members are extremely lucky that Ken came along and was willing to purchase the club. Who knows what would have happened if he didn’t? You’ve got a Donald Ross gem that might have become condos or something else if nobody stepped up and did what Ken did. So I’m so thankful for that.”
Farland, 60, left Marlborough CC after 12 years as head pro to return to Cohasse where he learned the game by playing with his grandmother, Rita Farland, when he was 6 or 7 years old. Later, he caddied for his father Jack in several invitationals at the club. While he starred in golf for Southbridge High, which played its home matches at Cohasse, he worked on the grounds crew.
“A lot of family history, and I have so much love for this place,” Farland said. “It’s such a special place to me like it is for so many other people.”
Farland had a 16-2 record in golf his senior year at Southbridge High and suffered both losses to St. John’s standout Fran Quinn, who went on to a successful professional career in golf.
Farland lives in nearby Sturbridge, and he always thought of returning to Cohasse one day. After serving as head pro at Cohasse for four years, Mark Klotz left this year to become head pro at Quinnatisset CC in Thompson, Connecticut. New superintendent Frank Kulig reached out to Farland to see if he would be interested in coming to Cohasse. Farland met with Uracius and began working at Cohasse on Feb. 17.
Uracius also hired Kulig from Ludlow CC as superintendent and architect Tim Lewis of Tyler Rae Design to restore the greens and bunkers to their original shapes and sizes. Kulig also helped restore Hardwick Crossing, and he recommended that Uracius purchase Cohasse CC.
St. John’s High School golf coach Sean Noonan has been a Cohasse member for the past decade and on and off since 1987. He was one of the members who walked the course with Lewis twice late last fall.
Lewis has aerial photos of the course from the 1930s, showing the size of the green complexes, bunkers and tees. He plans to restore some bunkers which have been eliminated and add others. He also plans to remove some trees and upgrade the practice facility.
“None of this would be possible if Ken didn’t buy the golf course,” Noonan said, “because we couldn’t assess members the amount of money he’s committed to putting into the golf course to restore it.”
Cohasse members will continue to have their own tournaments and preferred tee times. Public play is allowed all day on Mondays, from 7 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, from 11 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and after 1 p.m. on weekends.
“We should have opened it up to the public years ago,” Noonan said. “Everyone said, ‘I love driving up there and no one’s there.’ Well, there’s no revenue.”
Noonan, 57, of Sturbridge, said Cohasse had many dedicated people serve on the board of directors over the years, but they had their own careers off the course and couldn’t devote the amount of time required to run a golf course full time.
Noonan coached the St. John’s golf team to its second consecutive state title last fall. Now he’s looking forward to playing Cohasse this season.
“When people finally go out to Cohasse,” Noonan said, “I think they’re going to say, ‘Wow, this is a pretty cool place because it’s all golf.’ There are no houses around. It’s a gem, and it’s been hidden because it was private.”
Friends convinced Uracius to buy Dunroamin, a nine-hole public course that had closed in 2018, so they would have a place to play. Uracius reopened the nine-hole public golf course in Gilbertville in 2022 as Hardwick Crossing CC.
Dunroamin became overgrown after it closed, so Uracius paid a local farmer to mow and bale the weed-filled property. When Uracius asked him if he was going to take the bales home to feed them to his cows, the farmer replied that his cows wouldn’t eat that crap. Actually, “crap” was a cleaner version of the word he used.
Uracius upgraded the course, gutted the clubhouse and built a new restaurant and wedding venue.
“It’s doing very well, it’s very successful,” he said. “Nobody believed it would ever happen, but on Friday and Saturday night, you can’t even get into the place.”
“Everyone we’ve talked to says he has done an amazing job reforming that course because it was completely dead,” Noonan said.
Uracius said he explored purchasing Bay Path GC in East Brookfield, but decided against it. Tony Staiti, owner of Dunroamin, then called him to see if he would be interested in buying his closed course.
The Wells family, which owned American Optical Company in Southbridge and founded Old Sturbridge Village, hired Ross to design a nine-hole golf course for the AO employees. The course opened in 1918 and was named Cohasse, a Nipmuc word for land of the tall pines. Eventually, the Wells turned ownership of the club over to the members. Members owned the club until they sold it to Uracius last fall. The sale closed in March.
Farland served as head pro at Broken Sound Club in Boca Raton, Florida, from 1993-2004, at Quaboag CC in Monson from 2005-2012 and at Marlborough CC from 2014-2024. At Marlborough, he and his wife Liz, a certified LPGA teaching pro, owned the golf shop. Last year, Liz left Marlborough to teach and run the golf shop at GreatHorse in Wilbraham.
Lewis is a design associate for Tyler Rae Design, and he has worked with Coore & Crenshaw, which redesigned the Pines Course at the International in Bolton. He also worked with maintenance teams at such esteemed clubs as Eastward Ho! in Chatham and Hyannisport Club.
In 2018, former Southbridge resident Anthony Pioppi ranked Cohasse as the eighth best nine-hole golf course in North America in his book, “The Finest Nines.”
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