Eastman Golf Links

Eastman Golf Links opened for play in 1973, designed by Geoffrey Cornish (some sources also credit Bill Robinson and later work by Ross Forbes/Craig Schreiner), and underwent a substantial renovation between 2006 and 2008. The 18-hole, par-71 course plays to roughly 6,731 yards from the back tees and is routed through the community's hilly, wooded terrain -- reviewers describe an "adventurous and varied" set of holes with no two alike. It has been repeatedly recognized in regional readers'-choice polls (Valley News, WMUR-TV) as among the best courses in the Upper Valley/New Hampshire.

Eastman Golf Links is explicitly semi-private: the course is open to public play, golf club membership is optional, and -- per the club's own public-facing materials -- you do not need to own property in Eastman to become a member. Property owners receive discounted daily and membership rates and slightly earlier tee-time booking windows (7 days out vs. 5 for the general public; club members book 14 days out), but golf access is never bundled into or required for a home purchase, and non-owners can join the club on the same optional basis. This makes Eastman's access model meaningfully different from a mandatory-membership country club: the community's residential integration, not a hard golf-membership barrier, is what qualifies it here.

Eastman is one of New Hampshire's largest and longest-established planned communities, now roughly 50 years old, spanning 3,700+ acres of environmentally protected woodland in Grantham. The Eastman Community Association governs a mix of 987 single-family homes, 336 condominiums, and remaining buildable lots, and operates the golf course, the 345-acre private Eastman Lake with its six beaches and boat docks, tennis and pickleball courts, a Nordic ski center, a recreation center, and a full-service restaurant as a shared amenity package funded through the Association's Use Assessment Plan (UAP) rather than a single flat HOA fee.

Eastman markets itself explicitly as a four-season lifestyle community: golf, tennis, pickleball and lake recreation (boating, swimming at six beaches) in the warmer months, and a Nordic ski center in winter, all within the same private, member-governed landholding. The community sits in the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee region, giving residents relatively easy access to Dartmouth College/Hanover, Lebanon, and the broader Upper Valley in addition to the immediate Sunapee-area lake-and-ski recreation base.

Eastman sits in Grantham, Sullivan County, just off I-89 in the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee region of west-central New Hampshire, roughly midway between Lebanon/Hanover to the north and New London/Sunapee to the south.