Early Story

     In 1878, because of chronic illness, Russell Montague's doctor encouraged him to leave Boston for a more healthy climate. After considering various alternatives, he selected the town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in part for its "healing springs" and purchased property a couple miles from the Greenbrier Resort -then called the Old White Hotel.

     A few years later, at the urging of George Grant and several of his neighbors also living in the small valley, Russell Montague offered his property as a site to build a golf course. The immediate impetus was the anticipated arrival, from India, of Grant's cousin - Lionel Torin - a noted golfer whom Grant did not want to disappoint. The course was laid out and named "Oakhurst Links". By 1884, if not earlier, a golf club was formed consisting of Montague, Grant, Torrin, brothers Alexander and Roderick MacLeod and George Donaldson. Although often ignored in previous accounts of the early history of golf in the United States, Oakhurst Links predated the St. Andrews Golf Club of Yonkers by at least four years making it America's first organized golf club.

     Documents reveal that the members of the Oakhurst club played an annual tournament for the "Oakhurst Challenge Medal" - the oldest known tournament and recognized as the oldest known golf prize in the United States. A copy of the Oakhurst Challenge Medal is on display at the USGA Museum, Far Hill, NJ. Play on the Oakhurst Links faded around 1910 as the majority of the members moved away. Some returned to Scotland and Russell Montague moved his primary residence to Richmond, Virginia where his son Cary resided. Cary would return to the Oakhurst estate to live - where golfing legend Sam Snead would become the catalyst for the eventual restoration of the golf course.