Golf on Long Island

Local entrepreneur eager to make Rope It Golf a hit on Long Island

At a time when more and more born-and-raised twenty-somethings are flying free from Long Island in no hurry to return, Marc Reda went out and came back.  And when he returned, he brought with him a golf business founded on the same principle -- go out and come back.  All that differs between Reda and the training product at the center of his growing company is that the 26-year-old entrepreneur is not tethered to his Long Island starting point by rope.

Reda, a Kings Park High School graduate, is the co-founder of Rope It Golf, which manufactures a product that gives beginners, experienced players and just about anyone with a golf club and some open space the opportunity to work on their golf swing without paying for a bucket of range balls or rigging up a net.  "The Rope It" is a real two-piece golf ball that allows full-swing contact and 20 yards of ball-flight feedback before it's yanked to the ground by a pair of attached cords.  It's a simple tool that Reda intends to make a fixture at Long Island golf courses and shops by the end of this season.

Nearly four years since Reda launched Rope It Golf with a University of Delaware classmate, his plan to get the product out Islandwide through face-to-face demonstrations and marketing is off to an encouraging start.  A few practice shots at a Timber Point Golf Course demo day last month were enough to land The Rope It, which sells for $19.95, in the Timber Point pro shop and its sister retail outlet, South Shore Golf in Oakdale.

"One guy saw me hit one ball and handed me $20," says Reda, who demoed The Rope It for a dozen players at Timber Point and sold to half of them. 

Results like that support his claim that as soon as players see The Rope It in action, they love it.  That's why Reda will show it off this year to as many course pros and attend as many demo days as possible, either selling directly to golfers or handing out coupons for purchase on his company website.

"I'm just looking to promote The Rope It any way I can," Reda says.  "It's a great product."

It took years of trial and error with different types of attachments before The Rope It's simple design was finally perfected.  John Girifalco, father of Reda's business partner Louis Girifalco, developed the practice tool over 15 years, the ultimate goal being the creation of a tethered golf ball that won't detach from its constraints or boomerang back toward the golfer.  The ropes are anchored to a small weight (or staked into the ground) and are long enough to allow shot feedback before dropping the ball to the turf.  Setup is so quick that the company website includes a video -- set to Benny Hill theme music -- contrasting the ease of The Rope It against the hassle of a backyard practice net.

In 2009, the elder Girifalco gave the green light for his son and Reda, who both attended Delaware's business school, to create a company selling the product.

"We were seniors talking about what to do after graduating," Reda says.  "I tried the product and thought it might be a good idea.  We focused on taking what we learned at school and applying it to our own company."

Funding from government organizations helped the two founders get Rope It Golf off the ground and into the hands of golfers, either through eBay or the company website at first, and eventually at Rockbottom, their first major retail partner.  Later, a small business loan plus a $30,000 grant from the Delaware Economic Development Organization enabled Reda and Girifalco to grow the company without help from investors.  The Rope It is now sold online by Golfsmith, with a breakthrough into their brick-and-mortar stores possible in time for the 2013 holiday season.

While Reda travels across Long Island to demo the product, students at Delaware are working to develop The Rope It Pro, an advanced version that includes a built-in accelerometer to measure ball speed.  The university's engineering program is spearheading a project that would create both the device and a related app to convert each shot into charts and graphics showing expected ball flight and other data.  A prototype is expected as soon as next month.

Rope It is also hoping to finalize a partnership with another equipment company that would pair the product with a golf mat, meaning less wear and tear on the backyard lawn.

It's clear Reda isn't standing pat, neither in business nor on the course.  He hits 50 to 100 shots a day with The Rope It, keeping his swing fresh between rounds at nearby Sunken Meadow or Smithtown Landing.  An inherent bonus of his particular business is that the harder he works on the demo trail, the more practice swings he logs.  This month he's scheduled to head back to Delaware for a demonstration before returning to the Long Island circuit.

For Reda, that's a familiar route.

Newsday runs correction for use of false data in golf business feature

Newsday has published a correction of the false data that ran in a graphic in the Sunday LI Business cover story on April 7 regarding Long Island golf courses.  The correction appears in the Wednesday, April 17 print edition.

The business feature, which analyzed the "shrinking" of the local golf course industry, claimed that the number of golf courses on Long Island has fallen from 279 in 2004 to 269 in 2012 (after rising from 247 in 1993).  However, none of those figures are accurate.  Golf On Long Island's reaction to the original Newsday story can be found here.

Newsday's correction reads as follows:

"The number of Long Island golf facilities -- defined as a single location where one can play at least nine holes of golf -- fell from 129 in 2004 to 127 in 2013.  A graphic in an April 7 story misstated the number of golf facilities."

As Newsday's golf writer Mark Herrmann reported last week, the recently closed Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside will reopen next month as the semi-private South Bay Country Club.  So that 2013 figure will soon be back up to 128, leaving The Links at Shirley as the only course to close permanently since 2004.

Newsday report features false data to support negative view of Long Island golf industry

[Newsday published a correction in its April 17 print edition for the use of misinformation in its April 7 feature.  Read the correction here.]

While there's no way to dispute that rounds are down from previous highs and that Long Island golf courses are competing for customer dollars against additional and often cheaper leisure alternatives, nothing in Newsday's report is a new revelation.  And some of it is simply false.

There are not 269 golf courses on Long Island, as Newsday’s Sunday feature claims (Newsday photo and graphic pictured right; click to enlarge).  Not even close.  Careless misinformation like that calls the entire Sunday Business cover story into question.  Chop that number in half and you're closer to the ballpark.

The "shrinking" of the Long Island golf industry is a local symptom of an ongoing national problem.  The golf explosion of the 1990s created a tremendous supply of golf courses nationwide, and changing social and economic conditions have since stalled demand.  In some areas of the country, golf courses come and go with much more regularity.  For instance, along Myrtle Beach’s "Grand Strand," where supply swelled in the ‘90s boom, more than a dozen publics have closed – most, if not all, since 2000.  (MBGA.com, a constantly updated Myrtle Beach course directory, has the current closed-course count in the area at 22.)  We played at a course in 2005 that was closed for development the following year, and to date, still sits vacant, its 54 fairways and greens deteriorating and left to nature.  (Read more in this Sports Illustrated piece from May 2006.)

Here on Long Island, of the more than 70 public golf courses, fewer than a dozen were built within the last 20 years.  Some others were expanded or redesigned during that time from previous clubs or courses.  And only one – The Links at Shirley – has closed in the recent past.  The private Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside, one of roughly 70 private clubs on the Island confronted with their own unique set of issues in terms of modern-day business models and membership interests, closed earlier this year, unfortunately, with assistance from Hurricane Sandy.

The Newsday report says “many courses are scrambling for customers,” then supports the statement by pointing at discounted membership rates offered at two clubs, and uses that data to represent all of Long Island golf – both public and private. 

One of those clubs, the private Woodside Acres in Muttontown, lost many of its members as a result of the recession (as Newsday wrote in January 2010) when it was known as the Woodcrest Club and filed for bankruptcy in December 2009.  As Newsday's Mark Herrmann reported in September 2011, the owners who purchased the club at auction decided to keep membership rates high in order to attract members looking for a classic country-club experience, while neighboring clubs were doing the opposite.  Yet Newsday cites this facility as a representative of the entire local industry.

It should also be noted that the semi-private Island’s End Golf & Country Club (pictured left), the other facility cited for its membership discount, recently announced on its website a 10-year extension of its property lease and the opening of a new on-site restaurant, amid other upgrades.

Rather than ring in the new season by taking a negative angle supported by false data and cherry-picked information, Newsday could have taken a different approach and focused on the management and maintenance staff at courses like Lido Golf Club and Timber Point that succeeded in making their facilities – submerged and severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy – playable again by March.  Or the crews at Bethpage that cleared hundreds of trees across five courses and will have all 90 holes open for play by mid-April, as usual.  From a business standpoint, Newsday could have spotlighted the courses around the Island that have worked proactively through hard times to retain and grow their customer bases, like Sandy Pond in Riverhead and Great Rock Golf Club in Wading River, the latter of which has renovated parts of the course to players’ benefit each of the past two seasons while keeping rates steady.

The 1990s era was one that we will likely never see again.  Waits were hours long on nine-hole munis.  We recall walking off a packed Bay Park Golf Course in the summer of 1997 because it took three hours to play six holes.  Ask any golfer from that time and they will undoubtedly have similar stories to share.  Rounds at Eisenhower Park hit the six-hour mark with regularity.  Business was off the charts, but it didn’t make for a great playing experience.

Since then, the market has brought demand down, perhaps to a more sustainable level.  Tee times remain hard to come by at many Long Island courses during peak season.  If golf courses have to work a little harder to generate more demand and come up with creative ways to appeal to more players, they are in the same boat as plenty of other local businesses and industries in this economic climate. 

Newsday chose to dump on an important local industry on the eve of a new season, which is certainly its right.  But it could have at least used legitimate information in the process.  It claims that the Long Island golf industry is “in the rough” and “off course.” 

While Newsday might have a problem using factual data, at least it has a strong handle on its use of metaphors.

New owners continue upgrades in second season at Sandy Pond

Ken Weinstein and Chris Wahlers ended their first season as owners of Sandy Pond Golf Course the same way they began -- by making improvements from top to bottom at their nine-hole course in Riverhead.

More accurately, the improvements went from bottom to top.  One of their first projects, according to this Riverhead News-Review profile from last June, involved cleaning out the course's three namesake ponds.  And among a host of renovations last fall was a resurfacing of the elevated fourth tee.  (A time-lapse video of the teebox reno can be viewed at Sandy Pond's Facebook page.)

The results of their hard work on and around the course late in 2012 will soon become evident to returning golfers, though by that time, Weinstein and Wahlers will already be far into their 2013 to-do list.  Aside from the reshaping and extension of the #4 tee, the Sandy Pond crew renovated tees on #1, #6 and #7, all of which will debut this spring.  They also added mounding and tall fescue to some rough areas between fairways. 

Much of the effort, however, was devoted to the putting surfaces.  "The biggest improvement has to be the greens," Wahlers says.  "Last winter when we took over, some of them had up to 40% turf loss.  As of right now every green has been expanded and is in great shape."

While last season's cleanup and renovations were designed, Wahlers says, "to try to get the worst out of the way," the tasks in year two -- besides bunker restoration on #1 and #9 -- will focus a little more on the periphery of the course.  One project already underway is the "clearing and beautifying" of some of the outside out-of-play areas.  The bathrooms and clubhouse are currently being upgraded. 

If all goes according to plan, when the warm weather arrives golfers will be able to unwind on a new shaded patio with food and drinks.

For more on Sandy Pond, check out the course flyover or visit the Sandy Pond website (Facebook).

[PICTURED, above left: View from the elevated fourth, which this season will have a newly shaped and surfaced teeing area.]

Riverhead's nine-hole Sandy Pond Golf Course thriving under new owners

In June, the Riverhead Times-Review profiled Ken Weinstein and Chris Wahlers, brothers-in-law and new owners of the nine-hole Sandy Pond Golf Course in Riverhead.  The duo took the reins of the 1,070-yard course this past January.

With the help of the mild winter, the new owners immediately began making improvements at the course. “We turned up all the willow trees and cleaned up the ponds,” said Weinstein. “We want to make the ponds a focal point when people walk onto the property. We overseeded and cleaned up all the grounds to make it more presentable. We installed new irrigation around the entire property and on the tee boxes and greens.” -- Jay Dempsey, Riverhead Times-Review, 6/26/2012

According to the article, Sandy Pond players say the new ownership group is taking the course in a positive direction while maintaining its small-town character.  Newsday profiled the course a few summers ago, calling it a "homespun" throwback so quaint that green fees were accepted on the honor system when the pro shop was empty.

Sandy Pond is located at 1495 Roanoke Avenue in Riverhead, not far from the Woods and Links courses at Cherry Creek.

Golf On Long Island featured in Networking magazine

Special thanks to Sally Gilhooley, Miranda Gatewood and the rest of the staff at Networking® magazine, which profiled Golf On Long Island in the golf section of its May 2012 issue.  The feature includes a description of our site plus some course photography and a general overview of Long Island's public golf scene.  To view the feature on the magazine's website, click here.

Based in Remsenburg, Networking® is a monthly magazine that's been a "Who's Who, What's What for Enterprising Executives" on Long Island and in the New York metropolitan area for more than two decades.  Among its 50,000 readers are business associates, professionals, CEOs, senior-level business executives and entrepreneurs who are positioned to connect corporations with small businesses, sponsors and philanthropists with charities, and so on.  By showcasing local companies, the magazine helps expand business networks and bring like-minded professionals together.  Networking® is available by subscription and is also distributed at many local charity events, including golf outings.

For more on Networking®, check out the magazine's website -- NetworkingMagazineUSA.com.  And be on the lookout for monthly Golf On Long Island columns throughout the golf season.

Closer Look: Bethpage Yellow #12

by Phil Carlucci

"Not many people realize that Tillie did design a driveable par-4 for Bethpage, but not for the Black Course.  He put it on the original Blue Course." -- Phil Young, golf historian and author

When Bethpage Black hosted the U.S. Open in 2002 and 2009, many golfers who hadn't already known of famed course architect A.W. Tillinghast -- "Tillie," for short -- found it difficult to escape the written or televised references to the man's work at Bethpage State Park.  In the 1930s, with the formerly private Lenox Hills Country Club now the new park's beautiful public Green Course, Tillinghast transformed Bethpage into a golfer's paradise by designing the Red Course, the Blue Course and, though debate exists about the extent of his participation, the Black Course.

Today, rounds go by on the Alfred Tull-designed Yellow Course with very few players understanding its history.  Several holes, most notably the 10th through 14th, are pieces of the original Blue Course, and one of them is "the only named golf hole at Bethpage," according to Phil Young, local golf historian and author of Golf for the People: Bethpage and the Black.

Yellow #12 is one of Tillinghast's "Reef" holes, a risk/reward design he typically used for long par-3s ("one-shot holes," as he wrote in a 1926 edition of The American Golfer).  The key feature is a diagonal ridge or hazard protecting the green from aggressive tee shots, with a safe haven short of the reef for more careful players.  Bethpage's version -- once the original Blue's fifth hole -- is possibly the only Reef par-4 Tillinghast ever created.

ABOVE RIGHT: A wide view of the hole.  The bunker left and mounding right pinch the fairway into a narrow opening around 190-200 yards from the tee.  LEFT: Pull or hook a drive and you might find the left-side bunker, the only hazard remaining on Tillie's Reef.  Use the spruce in the distance as a guide to the green.  BELOW RIGHT: The right side of the opening is bordered by mounds. 

What exists today near the southern edge of the park is merely a stripped-down edition of a design eroded by time and circumstances.  It is a short 312-yard par-4, and to many a safe haven all its own before the supremely difficult par-4 13th just ahead.  There is a bunker left and a bailout area right that reaches around a line of mounded rough like a raised arm.  But what's a bailout area without any danger?

Tillinghast designed the Reef with his family's maritime history in mind, according to Young.  "Picture a reef," Young says, "as a treacherous, rocky formation protecting the approach to a harbor, and typically there's only one safe way to get through it.  This is what Tillinghast envisioned when he created the hole."  The original design at Bethpage shows large bunkers both left and right of the main fairway, and a sharp downslope on the far side of the reef's left.  Rough-covered mounds hindered shots to the right.  There was even an irrigation pond short of the bunker on the left that "adds a mental hazard to the drive," as written in a 1935 edition of the Farmingdale Post.  "The long player must carry mounds 190 yards from the tee."

All of these features combined to protect a narrow opening in the central fairway.  Unlike Tillinghast's other reefs, this one did not completely bisect the hole.  Players could get through the opening without going over the reef, but there were sandy, sloped, blind, buried and even wet prices to pay for inaccuracy.

This chapter in the hole's history, however, is very brief.  Some of the original features were likely lost during World War II, Young says, when the Black and Blue courses were completely shut down and left to nature.  "Both had to be rebuilt in order to open for play in the fall of 1945," Young says.  A 1953 aerial shows no evidence of an irrigation pond.  Later in the '50s, work began on a new fifth course -- the Yellow -- which would incorporate some holes from Tillinghast's Blue layout.  Reef features were likely smoothed down and filled in during this time as Blue #5 took on a new, tamer identity as Yellow #12.

ABOVE LEFT: The view from the bailout area is obscured by mounds, and a short-side trap is completely out of sight.  RIGHT: You'll be fighting this trap with a blindfold on if you go for the green from the bailout area.  BELOW LEFT: Looking back at what was once a more treacherous Tillinghast Reef complex.

Nearly all players today stroll up to the 12th tee with a driver or fairway wood in hand, never stopping to consider any safer options.  The teeing area and green site have remained the same, and like in the original design, the fairway opening is still 190 to 200 yards away, a distance that many can now cover even with a mishit.  Unless a shot plops into the left bunker, the penalty for inaccuracy is not often severe.  Barring some overpowering sand phobia, there's no reason not to direct tee shots straight out toward the flag.  The reward for a well-executed shot is a 100-yard approach, or less, to a wide-open green.

If you miss right, your ball will probably settle into a comfortable spot in the bailout fairway, which now exists as a carpeted collection area for right-handed slices.  That's not to imply, of course, that the hole is a total pushover, or that it will offer up similar cushy benefits on the second shot.  From here, it is a mostly blind approach with a beefy short-side bunker creating a terrible angle to the pin.  In other words, it's exactly the type of shot Tillinghast wanted the safer player to encounter in his par-4 Reef design. 

Will the original features and daring line of play ever be restored on Yellow #12?  Though it would please plenty of golf course historians and architects, a restoration of the true risk/reward features of the hole will probably not take place in the near future. 

In the meantime, smart players will cash in on the high-reward/low-risk design that exists today.  The brutal 13th just ahead is not nearly as generous.

Phil Young is an A.W. Tillinghast historian and the author of several local golf books, including "Golf for the People: Bethpage and the Black" and "Golf's Finest Hour: The Open at Bethpage Black."  Read more about Young and his work at Golden Age Research.  You can also hear Phil's radio interviews with Anthony Scorcia at the Scorcia On Par website.  Scorcia On Par is a weekly radio show broadcast throughout the playing season on WGBB 1240 AM.  Also be sure to visit and support the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University, where archives of Long Island's local and regional newspapers are available for research.

For more on the Yellow Course, check out the course flyover.

Off-Course Destinations: 1st Tee Fitness & Performance, St. James

Bethpage Black slipped into its annual winter hibernation earlier this month, but inside a small St. James strip mall, the fairway leading up to the Black's famous fourth-hole glacier bunker is still a deep, healthy green and the air is a May-like 72 degrees.

Conditions are the same at Pebble Beach, Pinehurst and more than a dozen other renowned golf courses available for virtual play in the High Definition Golf simulator at the new 1st Tee Fitness & Performance facility in St. James, where brothers Jason and Richard Greco hope to make indoor golf -- including leagues, tournaments, lessons and physical therapy -- a healthy and recreational outlet for Long Island golfers.  Jason and Richard are golf fitness instructors certified through the Titleist Performance Institute with more than 25 combined years of experience working with and rehabilitating patients.  (Their primary office, Greco Physical Therapy and Sports Performance, PLLC, is located in Greenvale.)

At 1st Tee Fitness -- which opened in December 2011 -- the Grecos use much of the space to exercise and rehabilitate the muscles and joints that work together to swing the golf club, while the rest is reserved for the swing itself.  In the back of the facility, a two-person practice net is available for simulator warm-ups and private lessons conducted by professionals from several area courses, including nearby Smithtown Landing.

But the main attraction is up front, where the High Definition Golf simulator leads frost-delayed Long Island golfers on a virtual excursion to nearly 20 world-class golf courses.  At its most basic level, the simulator simply recreates the local driving range.  It offers a technical breakdown of each swing with recordings of club and ball speeds, launch angle, swing path, clubface position, spin and more -- all useful information for the on-site professionals to translate into real-world results for their students.

League play and tournaments will be scheduled throughout the winter months to hold eager Long Island golfers over until they can push a peg into an actual teebox.  Players can take part in leagues run by 1st Tee, or create their own group of family and friends, compete at their leisure and set their own rules and prizes.

"It takes about an hour for two people to play nine holes," Jason says.  "We envision a scenario where players book their simulator tee times online, arrive early to warm up in the practice net, play for as long as they wish and have their results recorded in the league and available online."

Jason says simulator tournaments range from 18 to 72 holes and can include contests like closest to the pin and longest drive.  "The simulator tracks everything," he says.

Indoor league and tournament information is announced by e-mail and at www.grecopt.com.  The simulator is open for general and league play until 9 p.m. during the week and 4 p.m. on weekends.  Rates vary based on length and time of play.

For more information, visit the First Tee website or call (631) 686-6600.  You can also follow First Tee on Facebook and Twitter.  The St. James facility is located at 430-7 North Country Road, about five minutes east of the public Smithtown Landing Golf Course.

Observations: Great Rock Golf Club's new 12th green

The namesake rock at the Great Rock Golf Club in Wading River is hard to miss as it waits atop the summit of the course's steadily climbing 10th hole.  A recent discovery turned up another boulder that had taken up a much more secluded position on the course since Great Rock debuted back in 2001 -- buried underneath the old 12th green.  Considering its effect on putts during its ten seasons in hiding, this particular rock, in the eyes of most players, was far from great.

Great Rock's current staff unearthed the boulder when it began its regrading of the par-3 12th green this offseason.  Rather than remove the rock, previous owners built the green on top of it and thus created a putting surface that was so severely sloped that even the shortest putts built up enough velocity to careen off the side or roll back down to a player's feet. 

General manager Brian Curtin said the changes were made to create more playable hole locations.  Superintendent Dan Wolf, who worked with Curtin previously at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, completed the project in ten days.

"Dan did an amazing job," Curtin said.  "Subtle to the eye but totally different when played."

 

Golf On Long Island visited Great Rock last week to test out the new green for the first time.  Wolf raised the front and left edges of the surface to counteract the slide off the dramatic right-to-left slope.  Tee shots can now hold the green in a sort of collection area in the left-center portion of the surface.  But that's not to say the 12th has gotten any easier.  It remains one of Great Rock's most challenging putting tests.  Putts along the new seam have plenty of movement and require a careful read.  And the surface stays true to Great Rock's reputation as the place to be for speedy greens.  Balls still go for a ride when tapped from above the hole.  It's just that now the player has some control.

Curtin said feedback on the new green has been overwhelmingly positive since it opened.  "Dan is a great super and it will really show this season," he said.

To read more on Great Rock, check out the updated course flyover and previous observations.

Long Island golf comes to your AM dial every Saturday with "On Par" on WGBB 1240

The drive to the golf course as the sun rises on a Saturday morning is usually bleary-eyed and coffee-scented.  Now, thanks to Anthony Scorcia and WGBB Radio, you can tune in to the sounds of golf over the airwaves as an added AM pick-me-up.

Scorcia is the host of "On Par with Anthony Scorcia," a 30-minute radio show that has aired on WGBB 1240 AM every Saturday morning at 7:00 since its debut on May 7.  A passionate golfer for more than 20 years and a former Whittier College team captain, Scorcia is using his time on the air to promote Long Island golf, check in with nationally renowned players and guests, provide tips from the pros and discuss golf news. 

In the first month of the program, Scorcia welcomed pros from several local courses.  Guna Kunjan of Harbor Links discussed the development of the Port Washington course from a former sand mine, as well as the par-3 "Oasis" 17th and the facility's popular adult clinics.  Tim McAuley of Great Rock Golf Club spoke of the course's new 12th green and its Zagat-rated steakhouse, and Chuck Kupfer of Lido Golf Club delved into Lido's rich golf history and described the intimidating double-fairway 16th.  Scheduled guests in the coming weeks include representatives from Oyster Bay, Tallgrass and Eisenhower Park.

"On Par with Anthony Scorcia" can be found on 1240 AM every Saturday morning from 7:00 to 7:30.  For more information about the show and the host, check out the On Par website.