Fox Hopyard Golf Club – Private Club – East Haddam, CT.
History & Development
Fox Hopyard Golf Club opened for play in 2001 but its roots and pedigree were established far before. In 1988 Massachusetts businessman Bill Sandri purchased an ambitious yet stalled golf development in Bernardston, MA called Crumpin-Fox Club. Bill brought back the Robert Trent Jones Sr team that had started the project to complete the task. The entire 18 holes were opened in 1990 to popular acclaim from its golfing patrons and critical acclaim from the media. The golf course ascended to the top, or near the top of, every media platform course ranking. At the same time the golf operation model became one of the most copied in the Northeast. The skyrocketing success of Crumpin-Fox opened many doors for Mr. Sandri and his next golf project was to develop and open Fox Hollow in Trinity, Florida just a few miles from his winter base at Innisbrook Golf Resort in Palm Harbor. The Fox Hollow opening in 1994 and continued success in golf spurned Bill to seek out his next “field of dreams”, this time he set his sights on Southeast Connecticut.
According to Bill “after kissing many frogs” he came upon the perfect site. The site was a 530 acre parcel of land bordering Devil’s Hopyard State Park that was just “waiting to have 18 holes of championship golf laid across it”. Robert Trent Jones Sr’s protégé Roger Rulewich designed the layout which flows seamlessly through some of Connecticut’s most interesting topography. The course is complemented with several attractive club buildings designed by John Matthews as well as 53 house lots. Bill Sandri passed the torch of Chairman of the Board of the Sandri Companies, primarily energy related as well as the golf courses, to his son-in-law Tim Van Epps shortly after the opening of Fox Hopyard in 2001. Tim immediately embraced the commitment to excellence and the responsibility to preserve and enhance the legacy of Bill Sandri, particularly through his golf courses. Tim’s most prolific vision of turning Fox Hopyard into a private club came to fruition in 2022. His vision was not just to transition into a private club but to add the necessary programs, services and facilities to make it one of the most highly regarded private golf clubs in the Northeast. The “Hopyard” as it is affectionately called by it’s members is warm and welcoming, a place where members and guests feel right at home.
