Location: Pine Valley, NJ

Architects: George Crump & H.S. Colt

Year: 1918

August 14, 2008

I was surprised in the weeks leading up to my trip to Pine Valley Golf Club how many golfers I ran across who were not familiar with the club.   The most common question I get these days from my golf friends is “Where are you off to next?”  When I would respond with “Pine Valley” more often than not I would receive a blank stare and the question “Where is that one?”

 

To answer that question once and for all, Pine Valley is in Clementon, New Jersey right outside of Philadelphia and it is, at the time of this writing, not only the #1 course in America, but also the #1 course in the World.  Because there has never been a PGA tournament held at Pine Valley the course is little known outside of golf course fanatics and aficionados.  Among those who know the course it is widely considered the greatest test of golf on the planet.  The course is a par 70 and plays to a rating of 72.7 and a slope of 153 from the member tees.  For those of you following along at home, that not only makes it the #1 course in the World, but those slope and rating numbers also mean it is the hardest course in the World as well.  Lets make that the greatest and most fearsome test in golf.

 

Pine Valley is so hard there are legendary stories about the course.  Some certainly are true and some are probably just urban legend.  Some of my favorites are the player who went out in 38 on the first nine and then took a 38 on the 10th hole; Professional Gene Littler’s 7 on the par 3 5th hole during Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf match in 1963; British writer Bernard Darwin who played the first 7 holes in even par and then after hitting a nice drive to the middle of the fairway on the 8th took a 16 for the hole.  

 

On a more positive note, in the knowing when to cut your losses department, we have Woodie Platt - an excellent amateur player in his day.  In the summer of 1951 he had the greatest start in the history of Pine Valley.  He birdied the 1st hole, then holed his approach shot on the 2nd hole for an eagle.  At the par 3 3rd hole he recorded a hole in one and then drained a putt for birdie on the 4th hole.  Six under through 4 holes at Pine Valley is not too bad.  In the short walk from the 4th green to the 5th tee box players walk right past the clubhouse.  Woodie decided to go inside for a drink to help calm his nerves before carrying on his spectacular round at the par 3 226 yard 5th hole.  He never came out of the clubhouse.  He decided that it could only get worse and that he should quit while he was ahead.  Can’t say I blame him.

 

So my day at Pine Valley started with the quick drive from Wilmington, DE, where I had spent the night, to Clementon, NJ.  Upon checking in at the gate the guard told us that our host was waiting for us at the range.  He gave us directions and we were off.  I was surprised at how enormous the actual property of the club is.  Pine Valley is incorporated as a town with it’s own fire department and even it’s own mayor.  Eventually we wound our way around to the range and met our host.  Today was to be a father/son affair.  We were playing with our host, his son, my father and me.  My Dad and I warmed up a bit and then we all drove down to the clubhouse to drop the cars off and get on our way.  

 

Some of you may be disappointed that I didn’t take any photos during the round.  Let me say a couple of things about the lack of photos.  First, this golf course is so hard that as a 16 handicapper it would have been a disservice to the course, an insult to my host and a thumbing of the nose to the great game of golf if I had done anything other than concentrate on making the necessary shots.  Second, I felt just a little punch drunk by the entire experience.  I was so busy taking it all in and absorbing the environment, I didn’t want to miss anything because I was busy snapping a picture.  Third, Pine Valley enjoys their privacy and I was not 100% clear on their photo policy so I just left the camera at home.  Sorry to my loyal readers who were looking forward to pictures.  You’ll have to watch Ebay for the Pine Valley history book if you want to see the course or you can click here to see the write up on the course at Golf Club Atlas.

 

Here is my brief summary of the #1 golf course in the world . . . it’s hard.  With bunkers sporting the monikers “Hell’s Half Acre” and another one named after an unprintable part of the Devil’s anatomy I should have expected nothing less. The fairways are pretty generous and hitting them is not the real challenge here.  It’s all about the second shot.  You simply have very little margin for error on your approach shot.  There are sand hazards and trees everywhere and if you get off track it can be very costly to get back on.

 

On the par 3 3rd hole I hit my tee shot to the right.  I reloaded with a provisional and hit it to about 15 feet.  Stupidly, I went looking for the first ball because I didnt want to take the stroke and distance penalty for a lost ball if I didn’t have to.  Unfortunately for me I found the first ball which ended up being a much greater penalty as I carded a 7 after knocking a couple of shots around in the trees.  Had I played my second ball I probably would not have done worse than a 5.  My caddy Steve had an annoying habit of finding my wayward balls.  I think he took pleasure in it.  

 

Late in the day we were in the woods looking for a ball for one of the players in our group (as we were on more than one occasion) and we found an abandoned ball that didn’t belong to any of us.  I flipped at it with my wedge to knock it further down the hill and the ball hit a tree ricocheting deep into the woods.  My caddy says “You even hit a tree with that shot”.  It was just that kind of day.

 

Another story to reiterate my point about running into trouble when you get off track is the par 5 15th hole.  I hit a great drive to the middle of the fairway, a great second shot that left just 130 yards to the green from where my ball sat in the middle of the fairway.  The lie for this third shot was a little above my feet and I squirted a 9 iron out to the right.  4 shots later I was on the green and then after I three-putted the green finally holed out for a 10.  The course is hard.

 

I may not have played as well as I would have liked, but at the other end of the spectrum my Dad came to play.  He hit his drives in the fairway, hit great approach shots and generally speaking avoided trouble and as a result gave me a sound thumping.  It was like he’d been saving up 5 good shots from each of his last 7 rounds and used them all on one day.  On the par 3 10th hole he hit a chip that Phil Mickelson couldn’t have repeated with 20 tries.  From a hardpan lie on the right side of the green he flew it over a bunker, landed it on the fringe and rolled it down the hill to less than a foot for a gimme par putt.  It was a a true pleasure to see him play so well at this course.  I was afraid I was going to have to make him ride back to Richmond in the trunk so I wouldn’t have to hear the victory song all the way home.  Lucky for me he is a gracious winner and he didn’t make much mention of the way he beat me like a rented mule.  On the occasions that he does beat me he likes to say “Every now and then the old man rises up and shows the youngsters what he’s made of.”  He sure did that day at Pine Valley.  Congrats on the win Dad!

 

One other thing I thought was pretty cool was that there are actually houses inside the gates of Pine Valley scattered around the course.  I only saw two of them, but apparently there are several more around the property.  They are all very inconspicuous and if I hadn’t been so, um, how should we say it . . . off the beaten path . . . I never would have even seen them.   At one point the homes were owned by companies that held corporate memberships at the club but when the corporate memberships were done away with the homes were sold to members of the club.  Living on a house at Pine Valley brings golf course living to a whole new level!

 

We rounded the day out with a great lunch which included the world famous snapper soup and it was a day well spent.  Our host broke out his own Top 100 list to show me the ones he had played and how many times he had played each of them.  Cypress Point, Seminole, Oakmont and Pebble Beach each had 10+ rounds, Merion was 20+ rounds and Augusta was an amazing 80+ rounds.  Thats what I like to call a good golfing life!

 

Yes, Pine Valley is tough, but it is fair and you most certainly can score on it if you hit your drives in position to be able to make good iron shots to the middle of the greens.  A great golf course and certainly worthy of it’s high ranking . . . just don’t let it get in your head!

The Itinerant Golfer :: Aug.18.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »

Location: Farmingdale, NY

Architects: Joseph H. Burbeck & A.W. Tillinghast

Year: 1936

August 3, 2008

I cheated at Bethpage Black.  Those of you who know me well know that if I am nothing else I am a die hard purist follower of the rules of golf.  It is true though, I played the Black Course at Bethpage State Park and I cheated.  As anyone who followed the stories about the U.S. Open’s groundbreaking visit to this municipal golf course knows, the only way to get on Bethpage’s Black Course is to park in a numbered spot and sleep in your car the night before you want to play.  At about 4:30AM each morning tee times are distributed to the overnight campers and that is how golfers get on Bethpage’s Black Course.  Its the local rule.

 

While I was researching this course last year I discovered something that is common knowledge among residents of New York state, but not so common knowledge to non-residents.  A resident of New York state is able to book a tee time using the automated phone system 7 days prior to the day they want to play.  I wanted to play the Black on 8/3 so on 7/27 at 7PM I was smiling and dialing.  At 7:05 I made it into the system and using my a friend Jay’s  New York drivers license number I booked a tee time for Sunday 8/3 at 10:36am.  So there you have it.  I cheated at getting on at Bethpage Black.  I did not drink beer and grill out in the numbered spots in the parking lot and I did not sleep in my car.  Hell, I didnt even SEE the numbered spots in the parking lot.  As far as I was concerned if I was going to spend a 6 hour round waiting to play shots on the Black, I didn’t need to spend the 12 preceding hours waiting in a parking lot to do so.  I cheated and I don’t even feel bad about it.

 

The Black Course at Bethpage State Park is yet another A.W. Tillinghast design and yet another U.S. Open course.   There is much debate about how much of the course was designed by Tillinghast and how much was done by Joesph Burbeck, the long time superintendent for the golf facility at Bethpage.  I won’t go into the details of the debate here, but if you want to read more just do a Google search on Joseph Burbeck.  

 

When the U.S. Open was held at the Black in 2002 it was the first municipal golf facility to host the event.  It was a huge success that year and Tiger Woods won with a score of 3 under par.  The U.S. Open will be back at the Black next year in 2009 and it will no doubt be another great championship providing the usual mix of drama and tragedy for the players.

 

Because the Black Course is owned by the state of New York it is a public access course which means that they run A LOT of golfers through the course each day.  Also because the course is SO long, SO difficult and prohibits golf carts, the rounds can be excruciatingly long.  We were told to expect a 6 hour round and that is was we were mentally prepared for.  Incidentally, if you follow the traditional color coding of tee markers the ladies’ tees (red) here play 6200 yards and the regular men’s tees (white) are 6700.  The championship tees (blue) play a whopping 7,468.  Yikes!  

 

As I mentioned above I booked the tee time using my good friend Jay’s resident status.  The NY resident who books the tee time must be playing in your group so don’t go getting any ideas that you can use your Great Aunt Hazel’s drivers license number to get a tee time at the Black.  If you do so you had better have your Great Aunt Hazel with you when you check in and she better be able to walk the course.  We were booked as a 3 ball so there was great speculation between the 3 of us as to whom our 4th player would be.  You just never know what kind of person you will be paired up with at a public play facility on Long Island.  I was hoping for a Long Island native that would give us a little local flavor.  

 

As luck (bad luck) would have it one of our guys was unable to post on Sunday morning, which effectively created another open spot in our 10:36AM tee time and the park would be producing 2 random players to join us.  We ended up getting paired with 2 great guys.  One from Buffalo, NY and the other from Florida who had lucked into the spot that was made available when our 3rd cancelled that morning.  (side note for Baker: The soup is the meal Bania!)

 

On to the course.  The battery on my camera died on the 3rd hole, so there are not many photos to post.

 

Below is a picture of the driving range for the Bethpage golf facility.  You could say it’s a little different from the typical pyramids of Titleists stacked on the grass that I have encountered on most of my Top 100 excursions.  I liked the feel of it though.  It reminded me of going to the range where I grew up in Omaha.  At the Bethpage range we saw everything from guys who looked like they stepped out of the clubhouse at Augusta to guys with muscle shirts that were not tucked into their shorts.  It was quite an interesting scene.

 

 

Of course I have to post the photo of the famous sign that presides ominiously over the first tee at the Black course.  ‘Highly skilled golfers’ . . . we didn’t let that stop us!

 

 

Below is a look from where my ball sat after my drive on the first hole.  An interesting thing to note is that the fairway and green you see on the right is the fairway and green for the 1st hole on the Green Course.  The shortest route from the tee to the green on the Black Course’s 1st hole is to hit your drive way right into the fairway on the Green Course’s 1st hole and then have a nice mid iron into the Blacks first green.  During the US Open this Green fairway is staked with white Out of Bounds markers to keep the pros from doing this.  I hit a pretty poor slice off the tee and ended up in the rough with just 160 yards in on a 429 yard hole.  Not bad for a mishit.

 

 

The photo below is a look from the US Open tee box of the 4th hole.  This is a great par 5.  A well positioned drive will carry the bunkers on the left and be in the ‘go zone’ for reaching the green in 2.  After hitting my 2nd shot fat I made a miraculous shot out of the 2nd set of bunkers to get on the green in 3 and 2 putt for my par.  I wont bore you with any more shot by shot analysis of my round!

 

 

Thats the end for my photos which is a shame because this course is so visually intimidating off the tee that there were many great photo ops.  The forced carries on The Black are numerous and each one very long.  I’ve never played a course where I hit a perfect tee shot and immediately after it left my club started praying that it was going to make the carry.  The rough was also particularly long.  Having just hosted the NY State Open the course was set up for tournament play.  I missed the first green and my ball was so buried in rough that my first attempt to pitch it onto the green resulted in moving the ball about 2 inches.  The rough was brutal all day long.  If you’d like to see more photos of this course click here to visit Golf Club Atlas’ write up on this course.

 

Another thing I will note about this course is that the greens leave a lot to be desired.  Many of them are as flat as pancakes and not difficult to putt at all.  The 2nd green was like putting on a tabletop!  I suppose that if you put the Tillinghast greens from Winged Foot on this course you would turn a 6 hour round into an 8 hour round as guys toiled over their 4 foot breaking putts all day.  Incidentally we made it around in five and a half hours despite being double stacked on a couple of tee boxes.  It was long, but not quite as bad as we expected.

 

You will want to make sure you are in good shape when you get to the Black.  If you are not used to walking make sure you warm up with a couple of walking rounds prior to playing here.  The scale of this course is huge.  The holes look huge, the course feels huges and when you finish you may not be sure if you just played a round of golf or ran a cross country half marathon.  

 

Having a caddy here is highly recommended.  You can hire them through the pro shop if you book a tee time in advance.  It was $40 per bag plus tip which I thought was very reasonable.  If you are not playing with a NY state resident and are sleeping in your car you will have to hire one of the non-affiliated caddies that hang around the facility.  I’ve not heard great things about them, so beware.  Several people went so far as to tell me that they would rather carry their own bag or have a pull cart than one of the non-affiliated caddies.  They are more than double the cost and apparently can be quite suspect.  Proceed with caution if you elect to go this route.  Our caddy, Sean, who we got through the pro shop had more hustle than any caddy that I have ever had at any course.  He was always there within seconds of me reaching my ball and at times I actually saw him running with both bags slung over his shoulder.  If hard work were money this kid would be Bill Gates.  Simply put, he was great.

 

Tee to green The Black has turned out to be one of my favorites that I have played so far, but the putting surfaces themselves were more than underwhelming.  While they were well maintained, they were for the most part the flat circles you would expect of a municipal golf course.  Of course the easy greens help a notoriously bad putter like me and I had a great day on the course for scoring playing several strokes below my handicap.  The Black is well worth playing and to be able to play a U.S. Open course for a mere $120 it is a no-brainer.  Find a NY resident to play with you though . . . it’s the only cheating in golf you’ll feel good about.

The Itinerant Golfer :: Aug.11.2008 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Location: Mamaroneck, NY

Architect: A.W. Tillinghast

Year: 1923

August 2, 2008

Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, NY is a serious golf club.  To say that these guys like golf is to say that the Pope likes Catholicism.  Winged Foot has the distinct privilege of being the only club to have both of it’s courses (West and East) listed in the Top 100.  There have been five U.S. Opens contested over the West Course which have produced the five champions Bobby Jones, Bill Casper, Hale Irwin, Fuzzy Zoeller and Geoff Ogilvy.  The PGA Championship has been held here once which was won by Davis Love III.  On the Amateur front there have been two U.S. Amateurs and a Walker Cup played here as well.  The trees down the left hand side of the 18th hole were the scene of the infamous Phil Mickleson meltdown during the 72nd hole of the 2006 U.S. Open.  You could say there is a bit of history here.

 

My friend Jay, with whom I played Shinnecock Hills with last year, arranged for us to play Winged Foot’s West Course today.  All morning the skies looked ominous and rain was falling sporadically, but we remained optimistic that we would get the round in.  

 

Pulling into Winged Foot is a great feeling for any golfer.  After driving through the gates and down a tree lined drive you see what must be the most beautiful clubhouse in all of golf.  The magnificent stone structure with its slate roof lets you know that you are somewhere special and makes a player stand a little straighter and walk a little taller.  I forgot to take a picture of the clubhouse so I found this stock photo on the web.  It doesn’t do justice to the grandeur of the building, but you can get the idea.

 

 

We met our host Bill in the locker room around 11:30 and went to the grill room for lunch.  Below is a picture of the locker room which has a great feel to it.  It has the classic old time look.

 

 

As we sat at our table having lunch the rain started to sprinkle.  Then it started to really come down.  Then it started to absolutely pour down.  As we watched the rain coming down sideways in sheets we decided that it was probably best to call it off and reschedule for another time.

 

Rather than call the day a total wash we decided to stay and have a couple of beers and enjoy the grill room.  Bill is a lifelong member and gave us some great history on the club and a great insight to what Winged Foot is all about.  This place breathes golf.  The members love to play golf, watch golf and talk golf.  The camaraderie amongst the membership was very apparent as numerous people stopped by our table to greet Bill and talk about their golf games.  For a such an elite private club there was not the slightest air of pretension to the place.  The club had a really great and welcoming feel to it.

 

After a couple of hours to hanging out in the grill room the rain actually stopped.  We decided to give it a try and see if the weather would hold for us.  We threw a couple of umbrellas in the bag and hit the course.  Considering that we received 7 inches of rain in an hour and a half the course had drained spectacularly well.  There was some standing water in a few places, but not really anywhere that it would come into play.

 

Winged Foot doesn’t do tee times so when we arrived at the first tee Bill placed a ball in line behind the tee marker.  When our ball reach first in line it was our turn to tee off.  I’m usually not overly intimidated by a course on the first tee, but here with 15-20 guys hanging around the first tee waiting to go off I was a little jittery as I hit my opening tee shot.  The first hole from the tees we played is a tough 423 yard dogleg left.  Not an easy way to get started after the rain, drinking a few beers and with a gallery watching!  All three of us got a ball in play and we were on our way.

 

I never really settled down and got comfortable with my game, so I didn’t break the camera out much for this round.  Below are the couple of photos that I did take.

 

This photo below is the 3rd hole which is a par 3 playing 185 yards from the tees we played.  It felt like it played a lot longer than those 185 yards.

 

 

Here is another view of the 3rd green taken from the 4th tee box.  The real beauty of the green complexes at Winged Foot is the bunkering.  This photo is but a hint at how deep some of the bunkers are on this course.

 

 

The next photo below is of the 7th hole which is a par 3 playing 151 yards from the tees we played.  Note the way the green is pushed up above the ground level.  This is one of Tillinghast’s hallmarks at Winged Foot.

 

 

The 9th hole which is a 462 yard par 5 from the tees we played is certainly reachable in 2 if you hit a good drive.  More of those Tillinghast bunkers guard this green, so if you do go for it in 2 you had better be on target or you’ll be pitching out of the beach.  Not only is it a great hole, but the view from the 9th tee box of the green, bunkers and the clubhouse is pretty spectacular.  Below is a photo take from about 150 yards out from the green.

 

 

I loved this first par 5 on the back nine #12.  It is a dogleg left to an uphill approach playing 510 yards from the white tees.  

 

 

Incidentally the shortest tees available on the West course play 6600 yards.  Those early members were not kidding when they asked Tillinghast for a “man’s sized course”.  There is no quarter given to the senior members at Winged Foot who might benefit from a shorter set of tees as they start to lose their length.  Of course you can also argue that with the shortest tees playing 6600 yards the course forces all players to keep their game as sharp as possible which certainly seems to fit with the culture at Winged Foot.

 

Below is a photo of the green from the 409 yard 18th hole and the clubhouse in the background.  This of course was the scene of Geoff Ogilvy’s dramatic up and down at the 2006 U.S. Open that ended up clinching the win for him as Mickelson and Montgomerie both imploded on the 18th hole.  A great finishing hole and a beautiful green complex with the clubhouse as the backdrop.

 

 

 

Winged Foot Golf Club is one of America’s great old clubs.  The membership consists of serious golfers who hold the game in the upmost of reverence.  The West Course is no doubt one of Tillinghast’s finest works and the club has done a magnificent job of keeping this jewel looking its best.  Bill invited us back to play the East Course next year and I can already hardly wait.

The Itinerant Golfer :: Aug.08.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »