Kent Country Club history

Christened the Grand Rapids Golf Club in 1897, the officers wrote Tom Morris in St Andrews and asked him for recommendations for a golf professional and teacher.

Wanting a larger golf course, the club, now renamed Kent Country Club to broaden its appeal, relocated to its current site in Grand Rapids in 1901.

In June 1904, 32 golfers, including four amateurs, traveled to Grand Rapids and KCC for the Western Open and its purse of $400.

Martin Sweet died in 1905 at age 86.

The inaugural Michigan Amateur in 1906, conducted by the Michigan Golf League, was held at KCC and was won by Saginaw’s James Wylie who defeated member Phil Stanton.

1911 was a banner year for the club as President William Howard Taft—the first sitting President to play golf while in office—visited the club and made a speech inside a packed clubhouse.

With a record field of 200 players, the Michigan Amateur returned to Kent for the final time in 1928.

Evans went on to a Hall of Fame career and in 1929 asked the WGA to establish a caddie college scholarship in his name.

A few weeks later, Ford was elected to Congress, thus beginning a remarkable political career capped off by the Presidency in 1974.

Due to the increasing expense of maintaining the House, in 2004 the Women’s City Club voted to form the Sweet House Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, to raise funds to maintain this historic landmark.