Marketing Exec Breathes New Life into Golf Course

Golfers on the Hilltop Golf Course. Photo by Annie Card Creative Services.

Starting a new venture can be frightening. But for Annie Card, photographer and owner of Annie Card Creative Services, it was worse. The day she took over Hilltop Golf Course in Peterborough seemed right out of a scary book, beginning with “It was a dark and stormy night; … ”

“I took ownership of the course on Halloween 2017, in the midst of a three-day power outage. Winds had felled trees all along the power lines that border the seventh fairway.” Card describes the day her passion project officially turned into her new business. “It’s a bit of a rescue mission and quite a crazy thing that I now own a golf course and wedding and meeting venue.”

The course was created in 1901 as the Peterboro Golf Club by Marian and Edward MacDowell, founders of The MacDowell Colony, an artists’ retreat that abuts the property. They wanted a place to golf with their friends. But by 1932, they deeded the golf club to local residents, and it has been a public course ever since.

When local residents took over in the 30s, it was renamed The Monadnock Country Club and operated until April 2017, when it filed for bankruptcy, Card says.

When the property went up for sale, The MacDowell Colony purchased it to protect the land from being developed and sought to lease it to someone willing to run the business, but that effort failed, Card says.

When residents sought to revive the course, Card helped out and eventually stepped forward to run it herself, presenting The MacDowell Colony with a business plan. She has taken ownership of the business, while MacDowell retains ownership of the property.

The function room at Hilltop Golf Course. Photo by Annie Card Creative Services.

“It’s worth saving,” Card says, who views the function hall as a very important part of the business and a social hub for the community.

Card has been focused on building up the event business, hosting up to 12 functions per month. “A lot of people in the community want this to work and have stepped forward [to help],” Card says.

For information, visit hilltopgolf.net.