Roger Rulewich has had some fortuitous meetings in his professional life. As a recent graduate of Yale University in New Haven in the early 1960’s he was working as a civil engineer on the construction of Shea Stadium in New York and not really loving it.
While visiting the Yale Alumni Club in New York City, he saw a job posting on the bulletin board looking for a golf course architect. Having never heard of such a thing, he applied anyway thinking he would be designing clubhouses.
Roger got a response from the poster and was asked to come to Montclair, NJ for an interview. It turned out the potential employer was none other than legendary golf course architect, Robert Trent Jones, Sr. At that point Jones’ career was in full flight. He was jet setting all over the world designing courses on six continents. After a brief meeting Jones hired Rulewich and immediately took off on one of his world wide jaunts. That was the beginning of a professional relationship that lasted over 34 years.
The early years with Jones saw Rulewich mostly in the office preparing plans and documents for Jones’ courses. Eventually he made it out in the field to some job sites and that is when he fell in love with the process of designing and building golf courses. Slowly Jones gave Rulewich more responsibility in the design phase.
In the late 1960’s a young Texan named David Berelson came through the door at Jones office with big plans and a bunch of inherited money. He wanted to build a destination type golf resort somewhere in the Northeast but didn’t have a piece of land for it. Jones handed Berelson to Rulewich and told him to run with the deal which would be his first solo job.
Eventually by the early 1970’s they found 600 acres of craggy woodland just off an interstate highway exit in northwestern Massachusetts and decided this would be the place. After finding the remnants of the Crump and Fox Soda Company on the site they decided to call the place The Crumpin Fox Club. Rulewich set about designing the course and got nine holes built before Berelson’s money ran out.
The bank took over and auctioned the property off to Andy St Hillaire, a local industrialist who was the caretaker for a few years until he sold out to Bill Sandri, he the scion of a local family that owned gas stations from Canada to Connecticut. St Hillaire and Sandri owned the only two houses on the golf course. That would be Rulewich’s second fortuitous meeting.
With new energy and a new vision, to say nothing of new money, Sandri set Rulewich loose to build the other nine holes. Sandri’s vision was to have a semi-private high end daily fee “Country Club for a Day” kind of course. The other piece of the puzzle was to hire a high profile head professional to run the day-to-day. That would be one Ron Beck who was imported from Illinois.
The plan worked to perfection. The full 18 hole golf course opened in the early 1980’s to rave reviews and set off a wave of play that turned a sleepy, little out-of-the-way nine hole course into New England golf’s version of Coney Island.
Bursting with confidence after his success at Crumpin Fox, Sandri decided he wanted to expand his little golf course hobby and set out to look for other opportunities, The first deal he pulled the trigger on was a stalled former Jones design in a New Port Richey, Florida housing development. Since the course was already permitted Rulewich and company marched right in and knocked off that design and build in fairly short order. Continuing with the Fox theme, the course became known as Fox Hollow Golf Club.
Shortly thereafter Sandri became enamored with Southern Connecticut and started scouting for sites in that area. After looking at a couple locations, Sandri and Rulewich settled on a parcel of land in East Haddam next to the Devil’s Hopyard State Park that had most of the features needed for a golf course; some open rolling terrain, some brooks, some ledges and just as importantly as Rulewich put it “Everything we needed to build the course right on site.”
The most prominent feature they encountered on the property was a large ledge formation standing sentinel in the middle of the land. “It just hit you in the eye”, said Rulewich, “as a site to build the clubhouse.”
With that center piece Rulewich went about routing the course but this being the 1990’s and this being Connecticut the permitting was arduous. With wetland issues and vernal pool issues to drainage issues to blasting issues, they had it all.
Eventually the permitting was successful and construction was completed in 2000. The result has it all; Playing at nearly 7,000 yards from the back tees, this Par 71 layout has woods, meadows, water, wetlands, and wildlife combine to make this one of Roger Rulewich’s most memorable designs.
To prove that this was one of the Sandri/Rulewich teams crown jewels, they brought the A team to run the pro shop. Ron Beck who had been at Crumpin Fox assumed the position of Director of Golf at Fox Hopyard and now has been there for its entire ten year existence.
The Hopyard has gone on to host a Celebrity Tour event for several years attracting some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment including Danny Ainge, Ray Allen, Geno Auriemma, Charles Barkley, Jim Brown, Jim Calhoun, Michael Jordan, Carlton Fisk, Hank Haney, Donny and Mark Wahlberg and others.
Many visitors combine a trip to nearby Foxwoods Casino and Mohegan Sun Casino with a stop at Fox Hopyard or a visit to the beautiful Connecticut seashore. You can reach the pro shop at 860-434-6644 or golfthefox.com