Hooper (Alternate Tees) at Hooper Golf Club

Hooper Golf Club sits in the Connecticut River Valley town of Walpole, New Hampshire, a course designed by Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek during the prolific partnership that shaped numerous New England layouts in the 1920s and 1930s. Stiles, a landscape architect who studied under the Olmsted firm, brought a naturalistic design philosophy to his golf work, while Van Kleek contributed engineering expertise. Together they created courses that work with rather than against their native terrain, and Hooper reflects this approach in its use of the rolling New Hampshire landscape.

The course occupies terrain typical of this region—wooded hillsides, modest elevation changes, and natural drainage patterns that the architects incorporated into the routing. Stiles and Van Kleek courses of this era generally feature strategic bunkering, greens with subtle contours, and holes that reward thoughtful placement over pure distance. The "Alternate Tees" designation indicates the course offers multiple teeing grounds that allow for varied yardages and playing angles, a common feature at clubs that serve diverse memberships and accommodate different skill levels.

Hooper functions as a community golf club in a small New England town, part of the region's tradition of accessible, unpretentious golf facilities. The course provides a straightforward test of golf in a rural setting, where the design's age and the work of its respected architects give it historical interest within the broader context of classic New England golf architecture.